Today, the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs led 89 organizations representing advocates, students, institutions of higher education, national and state higher education associations, labor unions, researchers, food banks, scholarship funds, and direct service providers in a letter calling on Congress to address the urgent crisis of food insecurity facing families across the country, including students in higher education.
Specifically, the letter calls on the Senate to amend the draft Agriculture Act of 2026 (commonly known as the "Farm Bill") to reverse or delay the new requirements that shift Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit and administrative costs onto states, overhaul the complex, burdensome, and unfair SNAP student eligibility rules, and remove administrative burdens and barriers that prevent many students currently eligible for SNAP from receiving benefits.
Federal data confirm that over four million students in higher education experience hunger or food insecurity. Yet students often cannot access SNAP due to confusing and counterproductive eligibility restrictions, insufficient outreach, and red tape. As a result, more than two-thirds of likely-eligible students do not report receiving benefits, a rate nearly four times as high as the general eligible population. Meanwhile, provisions in last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are set to force massive new fiscal burdens on states, likely resulting in cuts to vital social services, including public higher education.
We call on lawmakers to use the bipartisan opportunity provided by the Farm Bill to remove the restrictions in SNAP that create barriers for college students with low incomes to access food assistance, reverse the new state cost-sharing requirements that put those students at even greater risk, and reduce the administrative burdens that keep eligible students from the benefits they have earned.