State grant aid programs are vital in supplementing federal aid like the Pell Grant and lowering the price that students must pay to get to and through school. When designed equitably and intentionally, state aid can help to reduce the high levels of “unmet need” that so many students face after accounting for their non-tuition expenses such as food, housing, and other essentials.

The most effective aid programs are guaranteed to qualifying applicants—not just “first come, first served.” Aid programs should also minimize application requirements and barriers and should advertise—in plain language—to prospective students and their families beginning in K-12 and to adult learners alike. Sending clear and early messages to students about the financial aid they are entitled to can make all the difference: Research indicates that notification of financial aid prior to application increases applications and enrollment among lower-income students.

In contrast, some states currently impose significant eligibility barriers or use limited financial aid dollars to attract more well-off students—often the effect of so-called “merit aid” programs. In these instances, state financial aid programs can reproduce or widen inequities and increase the likelihood that low-income students cannot attend college or complete their degree or credential.

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Examples from the Field

🎓 The Washington College Grant is designed to cover most or all of tuition costs for low- and middle-income students attending in-state public institutions. The aid program allocates awards on a sliding scale—which covers up to 100% of tuition for low-income students—allowing Pell Grants and other aid to be used for remaining direct costs and other living expenses. The grant also offers some assistance for students attending private institutions.

💵 Meanwhile, dozens of states across the country have instituted tuition-free community college programs, often known as “Promise Programs,” that cover the difference between tuition and existing federal financial aid. Notably, New Mexico has expanded its promise program, the “Opportunity Scholarship,” to include “first-dollar” aid that covers tuition and fees before a student’s other grant and scholarship aid. This allows Pell Grant, work-study, and other institutional aid to cover other components of cost of attendance, substantially reducing costs to students. The program is available for students seeking a training certificate, associate degree, or bachelor's degree at any New Mexico public college or university.

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📖 Read more: The Century Foundation’s report, A Better Hundred Billion: Improving State and Institutional College Financial Aid, outlines how states and institutions can better distribute financial aid to the students who need it most.

In addition to the cost of tuition and fees, students must cover a range of other expenses, including housing, food, utility bills, transportation, books, and supplies. These costs often far exceed tuition, fees, and other direct costs, and they can change dramatically throughout the semester or academic year.

To help students and families better understand the full financial burden of college, postsecondary institutions are required to publish. Each COA element must be publicly disclosed on the institution’s website anywhere that it discusses tuition and fees. In addition to providing clear and accurate information, these estimates are also crucial in determining eligibility for federal, state, and institutional financial aid awards. However, colleges receive limited federal and state guidance in creating and updating realistic, comprehensive cost of attendance estimates.

Inaccurate estimates pose significant challenges for students by creating a misalignment between the price of a degree program and students’ financial aid. When COA estimates are significantly lower than students’ actual expenses, their aid package is insufficient to cover their costs. When students run out of financial aid, they are forced to find alternate financing, exhaust any meager savings they have, and work more hours to cover expenses that would have otherwise been covered by federal or state aid. In other, more limited cases, students may overestimate their total costs and avoid enrolling altogether.

States should provide regular guidance to institutions on how to calculate each COA component—and regularly update guidance to reflect local and regional changes in the cost of living and costs of other essentials. Doing so will ensure that available aid is aligned with students’ actual costs.
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Examples from the Field

🧮 Colorado’s FY 2024-25 Student Budget Parameters provide robust guidance for calculating attendance costs that better capture the expenses of today’s students.

🧑‍🍼 California has also instituted a requirement for all public colleges to create a data-informed cost of attendance estimate specifically for parenting students.

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📖 Read more: Learn more about opportunities to improve cost of attendance estimates in The Hope Center’s report "How Colleges Set Their Prices: The Need for Federal Oversight of Cost of Attendance in Higher Education."

Financial aid processes are often burdensome, particularly for students from low-income families who must navigate multiple, duplicative layers of bureaucracy to access financial aid, public benefit programs, and other safety net programming.

States can reduce administrative burdens and communicate early eligibility for need-based financial aid by guaranteeing—or “pre-qualifying”—students from households who have already proven eligibility for programs that serve low-income households, including SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, and other programs.

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Examples from the Field

💸 Washington guarantees state financial aid for students enrolled in SNAP. Similarly, in 2024, West Virginia temporarily suspended its requirement that students complete the FAFSA to access the state’s financial aid programs, allowing them to use proof of public benefit program eligibility to apply for aid.

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📖 Read more: Dig into the details about how Washington is doing this work on the ground with this presentation.

States have the power to establish permanent state funding for student emergency aid. States can then distribute those funds to institutions based on total enrollment of underserved and low-income students—along with clear guidance on the most efficient and equitable practices for distributing aid to students.

When emergency aid is available, students largely use funds to purchase food or cover housing expenses. Pandemic-era surveys have found that the vast majority of emergency aid recipients said it helped them stay enrolled and reduced stress.

It is also critically important that state emergency aid programs require institutions to conduct effective outreach to students. More than two-thirds of students report that they do not know whether emergency aid is available to them.

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Examples from the Field

💸 Minnesota’s Emergency Assistance for Postsecondary Students Program and Washington’s Student Emergency Assistance Grant Program offer models of statewide emergency aid programs that provide flexible funding for institutions to allocate as needed, with broad eligibility criteria.

🏁 In recent years, North Carolina has expanded an emergency aid program known as Finish Line Grants, which provides assistance for unexpected expenses that may prevent students from completing their degrees.

🏫 Tennessee’s tuition-free community college program, Tennessee Promise, has also embedded an emergency aid program called COMPLETE Grants to support the program’s students. Meanwhile, Virginia has created a set-aside for emergency aid in the state need-based aid program.

🗽 New York also recently announced their first dedicated funding program for emergency aid at public colleges, including the City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New York (SUNY) systems.
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Read more: Learn more about state emergency aid programs in The Hope Center’s reports, From Stopgap to Safety Net: Designing State Emergency Aid That Works and The Safety Net Is Gone: More Emergency Aid Programs, But Fewer Students Reached.

Nearly half of all students report experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness. Housing expenses are one of the most common uses of emergency aid. Rents and housing instability continue to rise, and students are often unable to leverage limited federal housing support and incentives, meaning they need immediate solutions to ensure they have a roof over their head.

Emergency housing, rental assistance, and comprehensive rapid rehousing programs can alleviate the burden of the rising cost of rent for students in need, while also providing greater assurance to landlords renting to tenants who may encounter financial difficulties down the road.

For example, states can re-establish the pandemic Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program and target funding to postsecondary students.

States can also ensure that institutions have dedicated staff or liaisons who are tasked with helping students experiencing homelessness navigate available resources, housing supports, and financial aid.
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Examples from the Field

🏘️ In 2019, California began to provide continuous funding for California State Universities (CSU), California Community Colleges (CCC), and University of California (UC) campuses to create campus “rapid rehousing” programs. A recent evaluation found that the programs have measurably improved participating students’ retention rates, graduation rates, mental health, and diet.

💵 Washington’s Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness program issues grants for colleges to provide students facing homelessness with a range of supports, including emergency housing resources.

📅 In California, public colleges and universities also prioritize access to year-round housing for current and former homeless youth and foster youth, helping ensure that students at especially high risk of basic needs insecurity have stable housing not only during the academic term but also during breaks.

☀️ Florida also requires public institutions to prioritize students experiencing homelessness for campus housing, year-round housing, and work-study opportunities—and waives or prohibits some cosigner requirements for homeless youth.

👥 Seven states—California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and Tennessee—require colleges and universities to designate a campus liaison to assist students experiencing homelessness and connect them with campus and community resources.

🗻 Colorado has also created a financial assistance program for students experiencing homelessness, established a navigator position within the state Department of Higher Education to provide support to qualifying students, and required the Department of Higher Education to enter into a data-sharing agreement with the Department of Education in order to identify prospective qualifying students.

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📖 Read more: SchoolHouse Connection highlights additional examples from the field in their resource, “State Laws Supporting College Students Experiencing Homelessness.”

Efforts to centralize resources and provide navigational assistance have been shown to increase benefits enrollment and reduce basic needs insecurity.

A basic needs hub model co-locates campus supports such as food assistance, emergency aid, housing supports, and, in some cases, mental health services in a single, easily accessible location. 
Basic needs navigators help students identify and access resources for which they’re eligible, including public benefits such as SNAP and Medicaid. 

Hubs and navigators make it easier for students to access available resources and can connect students with additional, complementary resources that students may not have otherwise sought out.

In addition to establishing and funding hubs and navigators, states can provide technical assistance and professional development opportunities for basic needs professionals across institutions. State funding can be leveraged to equip frontline basic needs staff with the tools they need to succeed in their roles, reduce staff turnover, foster collaboration and sharing of best practices, and facilitate integration of existing state, county, and local resources with on-campus supports.
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Examples from the Field

👥 A handful of states—California, Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, and Washington—have implemented various models of state- or system-wide navigator programs. Michigan’s Grand Rapids Community College and Oakland Community College’s partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services offer additional models for basic needs navigator programs.

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📖  Read more: This report from Young Invincibles dives more deeply into the world of basic needs hubs and navigators. This resource from Today’s Students also outlines states that have taken action in this area.

Research, data, and insights from students, colleges, and other key partners can help states identify especially acute needs, disparities, or gaps in existing resources that need to be addressed. An inventory of current practices can illuminate what is effective, evidence-based, and needs to be scaled.

This information may then be used to develop statewide initiatives that fund colleges and universities to develop, implement, and scale solutions for high-priority needs and populations, especially those for which existing funding—such as federal funding—is particularly inadequate. 

For example, given insufficient federal resources for student mental health, evidence of rising concerns among students, stagnant gaps in access to care, and calls from higher education leaders for more support for student mental health, some states have created grant programs that provide funding to colleges and universities to grow, strengthen, better coordinate, and better promote evidence-based mental health supports for their students.

Likewise, as food prices rise and federal investment in SNAP and anti-hunger programming proves inadequate, many states are expanding initiatives that help campuses connect students with emergency food resources and identify students potentially eligible for benefits.
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Examples from the Field

🧠 The Illinois Mental Health Early Action on Campus Act requires all Illinois public colleges and universities to promote mental health awareness, strengthen student mental health screening, and enhance capacity for on-campus treatment and peer support. The Act supported the creation of the Illinois Campus Cares Technical Assistance Center, as well as grant funding to colleges and universities to enhance the identification and implementation of best practices. The legislation notably combines campus mandates with implementation support, data collection, technical assistance, and funding.

🫂 In 2025, Michigan’s Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential scaled basic needs best practices at colleges throughout the state by providing funding through two “Barrier Removal” grant programs. The “Barrier Removal: Direct to Students” program provided funding for institutions to establish or expand campus-level emergency aid programs that address students’ immediate financial needs. Meanwhile, the “Barrier Removal: Growing Institutional Capacity” program enabled institutions to strengthen their overall basic needs resource ecosystem by, for example, providing free meals to students, expanding mental health resources, and training faculty and staff on how to connect students with available supports.

🍴 Many states have also passed Hunger-Free Campus legislation—a textbook example of states funding initiatives to scale what’s working. This legislation provides one-time or, ideally, ongoing funds to support institutions’ efforts to strengthen and better connect students with food resources such as SNAP and campus food pantries.
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📖  Read more: For more on effective state investments in student mental health, check out The Hope Center’s resource page, Answering Your Questions About What Works for Improving Mental Health in Higher Education. This report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association outlines additional approaches states have taken.

For more on Hunger Free Campus legislation, check out Swipe Out Hunger, the organization championing these bills nationwide.

Food insecurity is one of the most pressing needs among today’s students. According to the Hope Center’s Student Basic Needs Survey, 41% of students reported experiencing food insecurity in the previous 30 days.

Participation in SNAP has been proven to significantly lower food insecurity among college students, and so streamlining student eligibility for SNAP is a powerful way to meet students’ needs on a large scale.

States have considerable flexibility to expand SNAP benefits to more low-income and working-class households, as well as flexibly interpret student eligibility rules in ways that simplify eligibility and improve take-up among eligible students. For example, states can make changes to their state SNAP plan to allow students to bypass onerous, additional work requirements by designating their degree program as equivalent to an employment and training program. States can also adjust their state SNAP plan to ensure rules do not render students ineligible for benefits due to a temporary loss in work hours or trouble securing work-study employment.
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Examples of the Field

📝 Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon, California, and Ohio have taken action to expand and simplify SNAP eligibility by defining enrollment in many academic, training, or degree programs, including those at community colleges, as equivalent to an employment and training program and thus as a qualifying exemption for SNAP. This allows students to bypass the 20-hour-per-week exemption—or other complicated exemptions—in order to be eligible for benefits.

✅ California has adopted a flexible interpretation of work-study participation that ensures students are not penalized if they are approved for work-study but not yet placed in a role.

📅 Wisconsin permits students to average their work hours across the academic term, which can help students with highly variable work schedules (e.g., in hospitality and retail jobs) meet the 20-hour-per-week work exemption even as their hours fluctuate. 

🏫 Minnesota has permitted students to meet the “physically or mentally unable to work” exemption by attesting that they are facing mental or physical barriers to working 20 or more hours per week while attending school. A student who attests they cannot successfully complete their schooling while also working 20 or more hours per week qualifies for this exemption.
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📖 Read more: The Hope Center’s report, The State of State Choices, outlines the flexibility that states have in streamlining college student SNAP eligibility.

States can require postsecondary institutions to use existing student data, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and campus support utilization data, to identify students who are likely eligible for public benefit and tax benefit programs, such as SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, federal or state housing supports, health insurance subsidies, and tax credits.

Using data-sharing agreements and coordinated outreach strategies, state agencies and postsecondary institutions can then leverage student data to get more students connected to resources for which they’re eligible.

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Examples from the Field

💌 California requires institutions to use FAFSA data to identify students likely eligible for SNAP and conduct targeted outreach to those students. The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education engages in email outreach to FAFSA applicants notifying them about potential SNAP eligibility. And Washington launched a pilot program to test various outreach strategies.

🫂 Meanwhile, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System has a data-sharing agreement with the Department of Community-Based Services to support campus-based navigators in connecting students with benefits. 

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📖 Read more: Check out the U.S. Department of Education guidance on using FAFSA data to conduct benefits outreach, plus this follow-up FAQ resource from the Data Integration Support Center at WestEd.
 

Many students who are eligible for public benefits are not enrolled in the programs to which they’re entitled. Among food-insecure college students who are likely eligible for SNAP, for example, approximately 6 in 10 are not receiving SNAP benefits. Another analysis found that 498,000 young adults in the U.S. are students who are Medicaid-eligible but uninsured.

In many cases, there are on-campus resources available to students to help them apply for public benefit programs, but students frequently aren’t aware that those supports exist. According to The Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey, when asked about on-campus supports that helped students apply for public benefits like WIC and TANF, 44% of students reported they had never heard of those supports.

To reduce instances of students failing to connect with resources due to lack of awareness, states can require postsecondary institutions to mention the availability of major public benefits—or include links to state benefits application websites—in annual financial aid offers or packages and on their websites. States can also encourage colleges to better advertise the public benefits navigation assistance resources available to their students.
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Examples from the Field

🍴 Illinois requires colleges participating in the state’s need-based grant program to provide information about college student SNAP eligibility criteria and direct students to the state’s Department of Human Services and the Illinois Hunger Coalition's Hunger Hotline for more information about the program and how to apply. Minnesota is implementing similar language as part of its new standardized financial aid letter requirement. California and Virginia too, require institutions to conduct outreach to students about potential eligibility for SNAP.

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📖 Read more: GAO’s landmark study outlines steps the federal government—and in some cases, states—can take to help expand student awareness of SNAP.

Robust, statewide data can help institutions, state agencies, and other champions for student basic needs understand the scope of the problem, craft effective solutions, and advocate for needed change.

Many sources of data exist that shed light on students’ needs and access to resources, and students fill out many surveys throughout the year with items relevant to basic needs. However, rarely are these data collected consistently across enough institutions, aggregated, and made available at the state level to guide policy. Without these data, policymakers cannot easily answer important questions about which students are struggling, what is working, and where they should invest.

States can take action—and in some cases, are already taking action—to ensure that measures like food insecurity, housing insecurity, homelessness, mental health, and student resource utilization (such as ID card swipes at the campus food pantry) are defined and measured in a consistent way. States can adopt and implement standardized surveys and assessments across institutions, so data can be more easily compared and aggregated. States can also work with state agencies and higher education institutions to establish needed data-sharing agreements and ensure that existing data, such as which students are and are not enrolled in food assistance benefits, are available to guide action. 
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Examples from the Field

📊 Washington requires institutions to regularly collect prevalence data on student basic needs insecurity. The University of California system tracks and shares similar data through an online dashboard. Some states, including Kentucky, Virginia and California, have also begun reporting statewide data on SNAP eligibility and take-up rates. Kentucky’s Student Basic Needs Strategy Dashboard also allows users to track other key metrics, such as unmet financial need and its impact on student outcomes over time.

📋 The Hope Center has partnered with entities such as the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system to offer our Student Basic Needs Survey to all state and system institutions, respectively. Similarly, Michigan’s Basic Needs Task Force fielded The Hope Center’s Inventory of Basic Needs Programs & Services to identify promising practices to scale and help inform the development of policy recommendations. Colorado also recently announced it will administer a statewide student basic needs survey.
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📖 Read more: SHEEO’s Basic Needs Data Academy offers additional insights about the importance of standardized, consistent basic needs data collection.

Nearly one-in-five postsecondary students care for a dependent child.

Being a parent places significant additional demands on a student’s time and finances, but parenting students rarely receive additional support from public or institutional resources. Institutions are not required to disaggregate data on parenting students to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), leaving institutions and advocates with little updated information on net price, student outcomes, and other important insights about this unique population. In the absence of data on parenting students, it is difficult to connect these individuals and their families with adequate supports or design programs that can best meet parenting students' needs.

States can lead efforts to collect this valuable data—and provide guidance on an implementation approach that balances robust data collection with individual student privacy.
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Examples from the Field

🧑🏿‍🍼 California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Texas have all required some form of parenting student data collection to help inform the creation and improvement of support resources.

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📖 Read more: The American Council on Education’s Student-Parent Data: What We Know, What We Don’t, and How to Find Out is a useful overview of the needs and methods to collect better parenting data. Additionally, the Urban Institute’s Considerations for Postsecondary Data on Student Parenting Status is a valuable resource to inform parenting student data collection efforts.

Addressing student basic needs requires ambitious, tenacious work that is sustained over multiple years. Having dedicated, adequately resourced staff and a workgroup focused on student basic needs is critical for sustaining momentum and building towards better outcomes over the long term.

So far, bursts of activity have led to important policy change across many states, but sustaining that work in a meaningful way has been a challenge. There is more work to do to ensure states improve outcomes and supports not only for a few cohorts of students but for generations to come.
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Examples from the Field

Many states have begun establishing needed infrastructure and doing this work, but there is not yet a perfect model that has guaranteed the work is sustained for good. For example, in Minnesota, a Student Basic Needs Working Group was legislatively mandated and had some associated funding, but it was a time-bound effort. 

In Michigan, The Hope Center collaborated with The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP) to establish a Student Basic Needs Task Force to understand how basic needs insecurity impacts college students across Michigan and identify strategies for securing students’ needs. The Task Force’s report, Barriers to Bridges: Strengthening Michigan Communities by Addressing College Student Basic Needs, is now catalyzing and informing policy work and implementation efforts in Michigan—and inspiring efforts in other states, too. However, these efforts have been funded by national foundations, rather than public dollars. In Washington, the state’s coordinating agency for higher education, the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC), has convened and participated in several different cross-sector advisory groups to discuss student basic needs security and potential policy and practice solutions. These groups designed and championed a state student basic needs survey and helped pave the way for the state’s landmark 2023 legislation requiring basic needs navigators at every public institution.

In each of these states—and in states across the country—state leaders will need to invest and act strategically to ensure this work is adequately funded, is sustained, and can withstand changes in administrations and political tides over time.

In states where a formalized, funded body does not yet exist, good work is still underway. In New Mexico, the New Mexico Basic Needs Consortium serves as an informal community of practice consisting of the public colleges and universities in the state. They focus on reducing food and housing insecurity among students, faculty, and staff through statewide collaboration.

There also exist opportunities for state agencies to engage with and support work led by non-state partners. In Washington, for example, WSAC serves in an advisory capacity to the Postsecondary Student Basic Needs (PSBN) Coalition, the forum for partner organizations to plan legislative advocacy around student basic needs that would typically be difficult for state agencies to sponsor.

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📖 Read more: For guidance on engaging in effective statewide basic needs work, check out The Hope Center’s resource, Every State, Every Student: Key Learnings for Statewide Efforts to Support Student Basic Needs.