Researchers blame ballooning college costs, inadequate aid packages and growing enrollment among low-income students — as well as some colleges’ unwillingness to admit they have a hunger problem. College hunger is not a new issue, researchers caution. But it appears to be growing worse, and not merely because college is getting more expensive.
"Prices have gone up over time," said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy at Temple and the lead author of the report. "But the rising price is just a piece. This is a systemic problem."
Goldrick-Rab's report is based on data from 43,000 students at 66 schools and used the Department of Agriculture's assessment for measuring hunger. That means the thousands of students it classifies as having "low food security" aren't merely avoiding the dining hall or saving lunch money for beer: They're skipping meals, or eating smaller meals, because they don't have enough money for food.
On top of that, the report found, 46 percent of community college students and 36 percent of university students struggle to pay for housing and utilities. In the past year, 12 percent of community college students and 9 percent of university students have slept in shelters or in places not intended as housing, or did not know from one day to the next where they would sleep.
Measuring college hunger and homelessness is difficult. Researchers depend on universities to distribute the surveys and on a self-selecting group of students to fill them out.
Goldrick-Rab says those constraints make it likely that college hunger is actually more prevalent than her data show.
And that is why the Occupy efforts were tamped down so brutally, quickly and so universally. Big money felt a threat. There was none, and Occupy was suppressed without its Kent State - Jackson State unprosecuted murders being a repeat "need."
A hope is that feeling the hunger leads to feeling the Bern. That we are a nation under a thumb is apparent from Trump, Pence, and the opportunistic climber types such as Ryan and Marco Rubio. Biden serves. Cory Booker. The deplorables Trump has picked and exchanged in his working circle are picked for a reason. And a torture camp dragon lady to run CIA? Who are we in allowing a two party imposition of the Trump-Clinton insane example? This IS a systemic problem. It needs fixing.