In March, the release of our Student Basic Need Survey Report again documented the massive scale of basic needs insecurity among college students. The Hope Center’s data show that three out of every five college students continue to struggle with at least one form of food or housing insecurity. More than 1 in 10 students are experiencing homelessness. The rate of students with basic need insecurity rises to an astonishing 73% (!) when students are asked about other essential needs like access to mental health care, child care, and transportation. Millions of students are facing an unacceptable status quo.
Hidden behind these tragic data, however, is a story of possibility. Consider, for example, how many more students and families might be able to meet their essential needs and afford their living costs if college was designed with their needs in mind. Colleges nationwide have been responding to the new visibility of student basic needs insecurity, often starting with a food pantry and then expanding to more comprehensive interventions like creating basic needs hubs and conducting outreach about public and tax benefits.
However, too many students don’t know these supports exist. In The Hope Center survey, nearly 3 in 4 students (72%) who experienced basic needs insecurity reported being unaware of the available campus supports that might have helped them.
Students are often at the forefront of addressing challenges their peers face in accessing nutritious food, stable housing, and affordable child care. In so many cases, colleges’ responses to basic needs have been driven by student leadership, so students must be part of the solution. What if campuses empowered and incentivized students to help each other by helping them get paid to do it?
About Work-Study
The Federal Work-Study (FWS) Program was established by Congress more than 60 years ago as a novel way to help students earn money to offset their college expenses while benefiting their campuses and communities. Today, Congress allocates more than $1.2 billion to Federal Work-Study, which is matched by roughly $300 million from the colleges. Twelve states operate their own state-level work-study programs in addition to FWS, totaling just over $65 million.
The result is more than $1.6 billion each year in federal or state work-study that is available to help approximately 455,000 students afford college. Students earn around $2,000 per year on average. This extra money helps students directly meet their basic needs through work-based learning.
In addition to the financial benefit of work-study, students who are engaged on campus are more likely to persist and graduate. Work-study positions often include a supervisor who can mentor or advocate for students as they figure out their career and educational paths. Students may also acquire hard and soft skills to help them navigate future employment.
Despite the value of work-study, too few students know it exists—and they aren’t to blame. Some may not even see work-study in their financial aid packages, and many don’t receive clear instructions on how to access the program. Even fewer students are aware that they might be able to use work-study to help their peers with their basic needs.
Using Work-Study to Support Student Basic Needs
For years, colleges have struggled to adequately staff, fund, and support their basic needs services—from food pantries to larger basic needs hubs to intensive case management work. Sometimes, “peer mentors” have been effective tools for students to reach and support their classmates. While peer support doesn’t replace the need for dedicated full-time staff to support basic needs services, it can amplify and expand limited resources.
Nearly a decade ago, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) conducted a wide-ranging review of the Federal Work-Study program. They recommended that colleges explore ways to make better use of peer mentoring with work-study. Many on-campus basic needs services, such as food pantries, are already embracing this best practice.
Swipe Out Hunger reported in 2022 that 66% of campus food pantries relied on student workers and volunteers, including FWS students. The University of California San Francisco reported employing 57 FWS students as student workers in 2023-24 to support its campus-wide basic needs services. Two Utah institutions—Southern Utah University and Utah State University-Logan—report employing Federal Work-Study students in their on-campus food pantries. The Community College of Aurora in Colorado has employed work-study students in their “Office of Student Advocacy,” helping refer other students to basic needs resources. Mount Wachusett Community College in Massachusetts uses FWS students to help with their drop-in child care center.
Students are highly capable of helping with a broad range of staffing needs for basic needs services and centers. They can help with intake processes by asking their peers what they’re experiencing and what kinds of help they’re looking for. They can answer questions by email, text, and phone that come in, and help refer or direct their peers to the right place. They can share their experiences with their classmates about various programs and supports on campus and with public benefits, helping to allay fears of stigma, deservingness, and scarcity that frequently show up in help-seeking.
With the right training, work-study students can also help students apply for financial aid and public benefits that they might be eligible to receive. In the process, these work-study students will receive valuable training to prepare them for life and the workforce, from social work to marketing, by developing their interpersonal and practical skills, and engaging in the best type of problem-solving for their communities.
Unlocking SNAP Resources
There’s another little-known benefit to employing work-study students in roles that support student basic needs: employing those workers helps bolster their own basic needs security by unlocking other benefits.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) contains a maze of confusing eligibility rules that limit students’ ability to access the program’s valuable supports to help people afford groceries, worth potentially thousands of dollars per year.
About two-thirds of eligible students don’t currently receive SNAP. However, one of the ways students can qualify for SNAP (if they meet the program’s income limits) is by receiving federal or state work-study.
The work-study position does not need to be 20 hours per week, as it would if the student was employed in a “regular” non-work-study position. Students could work a more manageable 5-15 hours per week in a work-study position (for example) while simultaneously helping their fellow students address their basic needs challenges.
Work-study students who tap into access SNAP are also the perfect ambassadors for their fellow students, helping to relay first-hand experience with applying for food assistance.
Advice for College Financial Aid and Basic Needs Offices
Financial aid administrators are often overloaded, overworked, and understaffed. They also rarely have enough resources to help all the students they want to, especially at community colleges, which don’t receive their fair share of work-study funding. And work-study positions are, admittedly, more work for financial aid offices to administer than traditional grant programs because they require much more record-keeping to ensure students get paid fairly.
Placing work-study students into roles that help to leverage additional dollars and resources, like public and tax benefits for food and housing, is <strong>worth the effort.</strong> Helping meet students’ financial challenges with their ever-growing costs of living reduces the amount of unmet need among the student body and improves persistence and completion. Financial aid offices should consider <strong>establishing and maintaining relationships</strong> with campus centers, offices, or hubs focused on basic needs to solicit ideas for potential work-study positions and vice versa. These relationships could also create opportunities to support other aspects of student basic needs security, like referring students for emergency financial aid or getting “professional judgment” adjustments to their financial aid packages. These offices can work together to bolster student success.
Conversely, the basic needs centers, hubs, offices, and food pantries on campus that are working to help students avoid basic needs insecurity should also reach out directly to the financial aid office to establish partnerships and stay in regular contact. Staff who make this a core part of their work should let the financial aid office know if they could use work-study students and have available positions. They can also help inform financial aid about student opportunities to utilize public benefits such as SNAP.
For financial aid offices trying to stretch their limited FWS dollars further, they could consider how certain types of basic needs services on campus—particularly those that are open to other community members or residents—could be classified as “community service” and thereby receive a 100% reimbursement from the federal government.
Sometimes, colleges feel that connecting students with community service work requires extra time or effort, and these schools occasionally apply for a “waiver” of the small federal requirement to spend 7% of FWS on community service. Instead of requesting a waiver, financial aid offices should maximize community service employment for their students to increase the financial, social, and academic benefits to the college and students alike.
Time to Assemble a Wave of Student Workers
For most students seeking part-time work, the prospect of earning thousands of dollars per year to offset the high cost of their own college education, while simultaneously helping their peers address basic needs insecurity on campus, would be an opportunity that’s too good to be true.
Federal and state work-study is available for just such a reason: to support community and campus service opportunities. Students need to know where their next meal is coming from and have a safe roof over their heads to focus on their coursework. Campuses are expanding their basic needs services because they see the clear connection between meeting basic needs and helping their students graduate.
Campuses are also wisely going beyond simply creating a food pantry for their students and looking for ways to more holistically support their students’ housing, hygiene, transportation, child care, technology, and legal services needs (to name a few).
Student workers are the perfect fit for the roles needed to expand basic needs services on campuses and to meet the needs of the 3 in 5 students struggling today.
We’d like to extend our gratitude Iris Palmer, Director for Community Colleges with the Education Policy program at New America, and Peter Goss, Director of Financial Aid & Veterans Benefits at Portland Community College, for their thoughtful input on this post. We also thank the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their support in examining the campus-based aid programs. The findings and conclusions contained here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.