February 26, 2026

Access to high-quality higher education and training is fundamental to a resilient economy and a functional democracy in the United States. But access alone is not enough. Postsecondary pathways are only meaningful if students and families can afford both the direct costs of enrollment and the cost of living while pursuing their educational goals.

Today, millions of students cannot afford to attend—or remain enrolled in—college. While tuition and fees continue to rise, increasingly higher food prices, rent and utility hikes, overwhelming childcare costs, rising health care expenses, and inaccessible transportation force students to work long hours, lose focus on their studies, take on unmanageable and risky debt, or leave college altogether.

Data from The Hope Center’s Student Basic Needs Survey and other national and state sources show that basic needs insecurity remains widespread. Nearly 3-in-4 students lack reliable access to food, housing, child care, reliable internet, transportation, or mental health support. Basic needs insecurity is especially acute among Pell Grant recipients, parenting students, and students from low-income and working-class backgrounds. These challenges are compounded by high living costs and a financial aid system that too often fails to keep pace with students’ real expenses.

Recent federal policy changes have further undermined college affordability. Over the past year, the current Administration has attempted to dramatically shrink the federal role in higher education, shutter basic research and data collection, and cut funding for many of the programs that help students stay on the right path. Additionally, sweeping cuts in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are already restricting access to food assistance, health care, and federal student loans, while shifting major costs onto states and families. These changes threaten higher education funding, weaken proven anti-poverty programs, and increase reliance on risky private borrowing. With many of OBBBA’s provisions coming into effect over the next two years, the damaging consequences for students, families, and state governments will only accelerate. 

The limited resources at the federal, state, and institutional levels, combined with incremental approaches, are failing our students. It is time to renew a national commitment to college affordability—one that recognizes students’ real costs, reverses decades of disinvestment, and ensures that students can meet their basic needs while pursuing education. The Hope Center’s 2026 federal policy priorities focus on reforms that:

• Invest in comprehensive, evidence-based campus solutions that reduce basic needs insecurity
• Reverse federal divestment in safety net and higher education programs
• Remove barriers and improve outreach to public benefits that support students’ cost of living
• Ensure sufficient investment in federal financial aid, tax benefits, and related supports that reflect the full cost of attendance 

Federal Policy Recommendations

Priorities for the 119th Congress in 2026

Fund colleges’ comprehensive approaches to student basic needs security.

The Problem

Students experiencing one form of basic needs insecurity often face multiple overlapping challenges, yet campus and public supports are frequently fragmented and difficult to navigate. Food pantries alone are not sufficient. Comprehensive basic needs “hubs” and coordinated approaches are efficient ways to connect students to multiple supports, but these models require sufficient staffing, infrastructure, and funding.

Currently, the only dedicated federal funding stream for these efforts is the Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students Program within the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) at the U.S. Department of Education, commonly referred to as the Basic Needs Grant. Demand for Basic Needs Grants far exceeds available resources, leaving many eligible institutions without support. The Basic Needs Grant and other FIPSE programs have also been vulnerable due to shifting Administration priorities, but Congress has stated that the program must continue and that funds for it cannot be used for other purposes.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Increase annual funding for the Basic Needs Grant to $45 million in the Fiscal Year 2027 appropriations process—aligning it with other FIPSE grants—and continue including appropriations language that directs funds to meet their intended purpose.
• Pass the BASIC Act to codify and expand the Basic Needs Grant within the Higher Education Act, authorizing $1 billion to support a robust, long-term investment in basic needs infrastructure, data collection, and evaluation.

Reverse cuts to SNAP and improve access for students and families.

The Problem

More than four million students report low or very low levels of food security, with especially high rates at community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs).

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation’s most effective anti-hunger program, yet complex eligibility rules and recent policy changes have limited SNAP access for students. And, OBBBA has reduced future SNAP’s ability to keep up with rising food prices, expanded work requirements to older Americans and those with dependent children, and shifted billions in costs to already-strapped states. Current recipients may also doubt the stability of their benefits after the Administration withheld monthly SNAP payments during the government shutdown last year.

Additionally, very few low-income students who experience food insecurity can reliably enroll in SNAP due to counterproductive eligibility requirements. The program imposes harsh rules for any student enrolled half-time or more, requiring them to meet one of a series of convoluted “exemptions” to gain access, most commonly by working 20 hours per week on top of a full-time course load. This “work-for-food” rule increases the likelihood that under-resourced students will fall behind and eventually drop out and is not aligned with any other safety net or financial aid programs.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Repeal harmful SNAP provisions from OBBBA, including limitations on re-evaluating the Thrifty Food Plan, matching requirements forcing states to fund benefits, increases to state administrative cost-sharing provisions, and expansions of work requirements that will increase hunger and red tape.
• Pass the Enhance Access to SNAP (EATS) Act, which would allow enrollment in higher education to satisfy all activity and participation requirements for income-eligible students and eliminate the student “work-for-food” rule.
• Pass the Student Food Security Act, which would simplify the current list of student exemptions to include categories of students who do not have the financial means to contribute out-of-pocket costs to higher education, including those who receive the maximum Pell Grant, those with a Student Aid Index at or below $0, and those eligible for Federal Work Study.

Allow greater use of existing funds for emergency aid.

The Problem 

Unexpected expenses—such as medical bills, car repairs, or family emergencies—are common among college students and can derail enrollment, particularly for students with little financial cushion. Emergency aid is an effective strategy for helping students manage unforeseen costs, including those related to basic needs, that traditional federal and state grants don’t cover. It is also highly useful during natural disasters and weather events such as fires, flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, winter storms.

Congress previously invested in emergency aid under the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), which led every institution of higher education in the country to offer these grants. This emergency aid helped students persist and graduate at higher rates. Congress also provided temporary flexibilities in the campus-based Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant (SEOG) program, allowing it to function as emergency aid when institutions withheld a portion of their regular allocation to provide to students facing unexpected expenses throughout the award year that could otherwise force them to drop out. However, data show that the rate of emergency aid usage has declined precipitously after federal funding has dried up.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Restore the ability of SEOG to function as emergency aid by allowing institutions to withhold up to 50 percent of their allocation each award year to disburse on an as-needed basis for students’ unexpected costs. This can be achieved by including language in the Fiscal Year 2027 LHHS-ED appropriations bill.
• Increase funding for campus-based aid, including SEOG and Federal Work-Study, in Fiscal Year 2027, to restore the programs’ purchasing power.
• Pass the Emergency Grant Aid for College Students Act, which would create a permanent, nationwide grant program for emergency aid.

Invest in bolstering students’ mental health.

The Problem

Students’ mental health challenges are extensive and widely undertreated; nearly two-thirds of college students are experiencing clinically significant symptoms of one or more mental health problems (i.e. screen positive for depression, anxiety, eating disorder, non-suicidal self-injury, and/or suicidal ideation). Yet nearly half of students with mental health needs report receiving no treatment at all in the past year.

Basic needs insecurity and mental health challenges are also deeply interconnected. Students with inadequate nutrition, housing, or other necessities experience higher rates of anxiety, stress, and depression—making them more likely to drop out.

Unfortunately, Congress has made the problem even worse. Last year, OBBBA included over $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which is already beginning to seriously disrupt the mental and behavioral health care infrastructure in the United States. New paperwork requirements could also disrupt student coverage, especially for part-time students. Congress’s failure to extend the subsidies for marketplace plans under the Affordable Care Act is likely to reduce students’ ability to pay for treatment.

Improving student mental health demands moving beyond federal policies that focus solely on treatment and instead invest in evidence-based prevention strategies. Stopping students from reaching a crisis point also means coordinating services to meet their basic needs.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Expand funding for GLS Campus Suicide Prevention Grant program in the Fiscal Year 2027 appropriations process, up from the current level of just $10.48 million, to at least the level of other mental health programs including GLS youth grants to states, and continue to direct SAMHSA to waive matching fund requirements to community colleges, HBCUs, TCUs, and other MSIs, where mental health needs are significant but resources are scarce.
• Require institutions of higher education to regularly provide students with clear information on mental health and other basic needs resources by amending Section 487 of the Higher Education Act regarding colleges’ “Program Participation Agreements.”

Address the unique needs of parenting students.

The Problem

Over 4.1 million students are raising children while enrolled in higher education, including nearly one in five undergraduates, and more than one in four graduate and professional students. Parenting students experience basic needs insecurity at substantially higher rates than non-parenting students, even though more than half work full-time.

Supporting family while in school means that parenting students face higher costs for everyday expenses, such as housing, clothing, and hygiene. But finding affordable, high-quality, and convenient child care is among their biggest barriers to enrolling and succeeding in college. Child care costs often dwarf tuition.

Despite the growing need, awareness, and benefits of supporting parenting students, the number of campuses offering on-campus child care has actually declined over the last two decades. Additional federal support is urgently needed. The Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) has been highly effective, but remains underfunded; only 1% of potentially eligible students are served by subsidized childcare provided by CCAMPIS. The vast majority of students cannot access federal child care supports through the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) due to complex eligibility requirements and limited resources.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Increase funding for CCAMPIS during the Fiscal Year 2027 appropriations process, to at least $500 million, to better meet the needs of parenting students nationwide and increase the number of campuses able to provide consistent, quality child care support.
• Pass the CCAMPIS Reauthorization Act, which would permanently reauthorize the CCAMPIS program and help connect parenting students with other benefits for which they may be eligible.
• Pass the Understanding Student Parent Outcomes Act, to provide consistent, robust federal data on costs, outcomes, and needs of parenting students.
• Pass the American Family Act, which would bring back and make permanent the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), providing families with monthly payments of up to $300 per child.

Protect, simplify, and expand federal financial aid.

The Problem

Federal financial aid, especially the Pell Grant, is essential for college access. But award levels continue to lag behind the rising cost of attendance, particularly living costs. The maximum Pell Grant now covers less than one-quarter of the total cost of attending an in-state public four-year college, forcing many students to work long hours, drop out, or take on tens of thousands of dollars in risky and often unmanageable student debt.

While awards have not increased fast enough, more students are qualifying for aid. Thanks to bipartisan reforms that simplified the FAFSA, over 1.7 million more students were eligible for the maximum Pell Grant in the 2025-26 award year. These gains, however, may be at risk due to a projected $16.9 billion cumulative shortfall in the Pell Grant program by the end of Fiscal Year 2027; eligibility cuts to close this gap would be devastating and must be avoided. Congress considered, but ultimately rejected, major cuts to Pell Grant eligibility during the debate on OBBBA, including the elimination of Pell Grants for students attending less-than-half-time, and increasing the number of credits required to meet the definition of full-time enrollment for Pell Grant eligibility from 12 to 15 per semester. Taken together, these provisions would have reduced or eliminated aid for millions of students. These proposals demonstrated the terrible harm of restricting Pell eligibility.

For most students who must borrow, OBBBA did make substantial changes to the federal student loan program, including new caps on annual and aggregate borrowing for parents of undergraduate students, as well as graduate and professional students. Under these caps, large percentages of graduate and professional students will hit the new limit, meaning they will run out of money to pay for their non-tuition costs unless the price of their programs drops dramatically, and be forced to find alternate financing including risky private student loans.

Additionally, OBBBA requires institutions to prorate annual loan amounts based on the enrollment intensity of each student. This provision will substantially reduce support for part-time students, even though they face the same or higher non-tuition costs as full-time students. The new law also provides dangerous authority for aid administrators to set separate program-level loan limits, which could further impede students’ ability to afford living costs and exacerbate existing equity gaps.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Pass the Pell Grant Preservation and Expansion Act to permanently fund the Pell Grant and substantially increase the maximum award, allow students more time to use their federal aid, and reform inequitable Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) policies that exacerbate basic needs insecurity and take away aid from students when they often need it the most.
• Repeal harmful provisions in OBBBA that place onerous caps on access to federal student loans, prorate loan limits based on enrollment intensity, and reduce Pell Grant eligibility for those who receive substantial outside scholarship aid.
   

Ensure students have affordable healthcare.

The Problem                                                                        

Students’ access to healthcare is complex and depends on their age, dependency status, the state where they live or attend school, and the types of plans offered by their college. Younger students can be enrolled on a parent or spouse’s plan, while others purchase insurance through the federal exchanges, get coverage through their employer, enroll in a plan provided by their college, use Medicaid, or go uninsured.

Access to healthcare is particularly crucial for staying enrolled for parenting students and others for whom a family medical cost is the difference between staying enrolled and dropping out. It is also essential for those experiencing mental or behavioral health challenges. But coverage rates remain insufficient.

The Affordable Care Act substantially expanded health insurance coverage options for students through coverage minimums, subsidized marketplace plans, and expanding Medicaid in 41 states, but federal policy has since moved in the wrong direction.

In 2025, Congress passed nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid under OBBBA and added substantial administrative burden to federal healthcare programs, including, for the first time, an 80-hour-per-month work requirement to access basic healthcare coverage. Although students enrolled half-time or more are exempt from the new Medicaid requirement, they will need to submit paperwork—an unnecessary administrative burden that will likely trip up many students—and less-than-half-time students will lose coverage unless they also work.

Taken together, these changes will not only jeopardize healthcare access and drive up costs for millions of families but also place substantial pressure on state budgets to cut elsewhere, including higher education. And finally, at the end of 2025, Congress failed to extend expiring health insurance subsidies that 24 million Americans (including nearly one million students) rely on for ACA marketplace plans—causing premiums to double, on average. Many students are losing health coverage right now.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Repeal harmful provisions in OBBBA that cut Medicaid, including those that restrict states’ ability to fund Medicaid, impose work requirements, and add new costs on low-income enrollees.
• Pass legislation to revive and extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies.

Reduce housing insecurity and homelessness for students. 

The Problem

Housing is the single largest basic needs expense for students. Rents for student housing have grown at a faster rate than other types of multi-family housing over the past two years, and utility bills continue to skyrocket. Rising housing costs have driven many to housing insecurity and even homelessness, and have forced students to make impossible choices, including working long hours, sacrificing meals, forgoing other necessities, or dropping out of college altogether. Former foster youth, and unaccompanied homeless youth, struggle at disproportionately high rates.

There are few federal resources to address the crisis of homelessness across the country, and even fewer for students enrolled in higher education, who are subject to additional and severe restrictions that exclude them from most housing programs. Additionally, financial aid received by students for non-tuition costs is generally counted as “income” for determining a family’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program eligibility, which significantly and unfairly disincentivizes young people in supported families from seeking higher education. And financial aid processes, while improved by the FAFSA Simplification Act, still fail to account for many circumstances in which students need help navigating on-campus resources, establishing when they don’t have parental support, or have difficulty qualifying for in-state tuition when they have had a stable address.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Remove the rider in the annual HUD appropriations bill that denies support for students and limits educational attainment for families.
• Exclude all financial aid from being counted as income in determining eligibility for housing support, which could be achieved through language added to the HUD appropriations bill.
• Pass the Housing for Homeless Students Act, which would allow students to live in LIHTC housing if they’ve experienced homelessness within the last seven years.   
• Pass the Higher Education Access and Success for Homeless and Foster Youth Act and Fostering Success in Higher Education Act to simplify the financial aid process for former foster youth and students experiencing homelessness. 

End the tax on Pell Grants, scholarships, and other vital aid. 

The Problem

Non-tuition expenses, including food, housing, technology, and transportation, make up the majority of the cost of attendance at both two- and four-year public colleges. Yet the portion of grants and scholarships that students spend on non-tuition expenses like food, housing, and child care is often treated as “income” for tax purposes, triggering a surprise tax bill for students who are already struggling financially. 

Not only does this approach overcomplicate the tax code, but it also penalizes students who receive need-based aid and undermines federal, state, and institutional efforts to make college more affordable.

For the majority of students who work, taxation of grants and scholarships can significantly increase their tax burden. State- and institutionally funded emergency aid programs are also likely subject to taxation, unlike several pandemic-era programs. Approximately three million students now have their grants and scholarships taxed each year. 

Despite enacting more than $5 trillion in tax cuts in 2025 through OBBBA, Congress failed to change the treatment of Pell Grants used for non-tuition expenses.

Legislative and Appropriations Priorities

• Pass the Tax-Free Pell Grant Act, which would make the full portion of Pell Grants tax-free and no longer require students to subtract Pell Grants from expenses for which the AOTC can be claimed.
• Introduce legislation to simplify and improve the taxes on students and their families, including the taxation of other need-based grants, scholarships, and emergency aid. This legislation should also simplify the AOTC and LLC into one credit and ensure all students who receive a 1098-T receive proactive assistance in claiming credits they may be eligible for.

Priorities for the Trump-Vance Administration in 2026

Implement existing law to maximize student success.

Each year, tens of millions of students rely on the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to deliver financial aid, administer student loans, fund programs that put higher education within reach, and protect their civil rights. ED also administers billions of dollars in Congressionally-directed grant funding that addresses students’ basic needs, fuels proven strategies to help students succeed in school, and overcomes financial and other barriers that stand in the way of their educational pathways.  

Over the past year, the Administration has undertaken several efforts to dismantle, restructure, rescind, or defund many of ED’s core functions, in many cases counter to the express will of Congress, which provided funding for key programs. These efforts have sent students and institutions scrambling at a time of rising costs and deep instability within higher education, and efforts to move offices to other agencies are likely to increase inefficiency and bureaucracy rather than reduce it. Recently, Congress has restricted the ability of ED to transfer funding across agencies, and explicitly stated that “no authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws… to other Federal agencies.”

We urge the Administration to follow both the letter and the spirit of the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations law in supporting students in higher education and maintain a strong, student-centered Department. Specifically, we call on ED to ensure the robust implementation of Congressional directives for the Basic Needs Grant and CCAMPIS, and to hold grant competitions that allow institutions to access the resources they so desperately need. We also call on the Administration to rescind interagency agreements that would disrupt programs like CCAMPIS by introducing additional agency bureaucracy.

Defend federal research and data collection on college affordability.

The federal government plays an irreplaceable role in fueling research designed to improve the lives of people in the U.S. and around the world. Federal data is essential in helping policymakers and the general public understand what works to help students succeed and contribute to society.

Over the past year, the Administration has laid off many of the essential workers that help create this knowledge base. As of early 2026, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) has seen its staffing reduced by 87%; only 25 out of 191 employees remain to support research and data collection for millions of students and families. In addition, the Administration has attempted to slash billions of dollars in contracts to carry out research functions, including those mandated by Congress. After several lawsuits, some of these contracts have been reinstated, though tremendous uncertainty remains.

Fortunately, Congress allocated $765 million for IES in the bipartisan Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations deal. This provides an opportunity for the Administration to recommit to ensuring that ED remains a leader in basic research, data collection, and evaluation. We encourage ED to use this moment and resources to prioritize evidence-based strategies to measure and address basic needs. In particular, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey (NPSAS) must proceed and recent 2024 data collections must be released—given the critical insights this survey provides on college costs.

Over the past decade, institutions have quickly scaled up interventions to address student basic needs insecurity, such as rapid housing, food pantries and vouchers, emergency aid, case management, and basic needs hubs or centers. ED resources, from the What Works Clearinghouse, to NPSAS, to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), are essential for knowing the institutions, geographies, student demographics, and other areas experiencing the greatest need and the most promising interventions to address them.

Ensure students have accurate ‘cost of attendance’ and net price estimates.

Millions of students struggle with both the direct costs of their degree program and non-tuition, or indirect, costs, which are often much larger and can be difficult to plan for and decipher. Students’ ability to reliably meet these costs depends on reliable and accurate estimates that are clearly communicated before and during enrollment. Reliable and transparent Cost of Attendance (COA, often known as “sticker prices”) are essential for determining the amount of financial assistance students will need and receive to finance their higher education expenses.

Unfortunately, COA calculations are often opaque and woefully inaccurate. Institutional methods for determining the total COA and the individual estimates therein lack meaningful federal oversight and create widespread variation that lead to confusion. Research has shown a troubling variation in how institutions estimate living costs—including examples of significant “undercounting”—which can significantly limit students’eligibility for need-based aid and make colleges appear cheaper than they really are.  

The FAFSA Simplification Act, which went into effect in 2023-24, removed a longtime ban on regulating aspects of COA beyond tuition and fees, but this authority has not yet been utilized. In 2026, the Department should work to ensure consistency, transparency, and reliability for COA estimates, including mandating data-driven and accurate estimates, ensure information is clear and easy to understand for current and prospective students, and directing institutions to regularly update estimates to reflect the change in prices and costs of living over time.

Additionally, ED should remove unauthorized language from the FSA Handbook that currently blocks Congressional intent to use the negative Student Aid Index (SAI) to direct additional financial aid resources to the lowest-income students and families. The Administration must also ensure that ED, USDA, HHS, and other agencies have sufficient staffing to implement and execute grant priorities, provide necessary technical support to institutions, and engage in robust outreach to students that connects them with vital resources.

Invest in students in the Administration’s FY 2027 budget proposal.

While Congress remains the ultimate arbiter of spending levels and priorities, the Administration’s annual budget proposal sets in motion a discussion about national priorities and areas worthy of investment. Concerningly, in 2025, the Administration proposed deep, widespread cuts to most programs that support students’ basic needs, including zeroing out funding for the Basic Needs Grant and CCAMPIS, while slashing Pell Grant awards, campus-based aid, and more.

These types of proposals cause confusion and worry across institutions and students, who remain unsure whether they can rely on vital campus services from year to year, or will be able to attend at all. They also lead to delays in the ability of Congress to come together to fund programs, risking government shutdowns and the disruption of services and programming. In 2026, we call in the Administration to not only faithfully execute the programs as funded and directed by Congress in the FY26 budget deal, but to propose sufficient funding levels for programs at the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture that support student success.

Read our 2025 Federal Policy Priorities here.