In Stephanie Land’s brave and important new book CLASS (a follow-up to her memoir MAID, the basis for an award-winning Netflix series) she explains that even though she knew a college degree was the best chance she and her 6-year-old daughter had of escaping poverty, being deprived of food made it nearly impossible. The work requirements in the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the program that helped feed her family, declared her undeserving of its support if she devoted time to learning rather than working— as if school weren’t work. “Nothing made me question my life choices more than knowing that my hours spent cleaning other people’s toilets to put myself through college weren’t enough—and that my hours spent earning a degree didn’t matter…they were telling me that higher education was something I simply could not afford.”
When she recently visited the Free Library of Philadelphia, I asked Stephanie how she wanted colleges to respond to that problem. She suggested that they think hard about who their students are and what they truly need to succeed, then act to support them. Pointing to new federal data proving that on average 23% of college students experience food insecurity – and that rate is 37% for single parents like Stephanie—she stressed the importance of modernizing SNAP so that it doesn’t undercut higher education’s mission and trap people in poverty.
Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab
Today, thousands of institutions recognize that millions of students need – and certainly deserve – access to food assistance. These schools and their leaders have an extraordinary opportunity to work with the federal government to support those students—and it doesn’t require new institutional spending or a new Higher Education Act.
