A new survey from Intelligent.com and Pollfish revealed that approximately three out of five college students in the US do not have enough money to feed themselves while paying for their education.
Bloomberg reported that 78 percent of survey respondents admitted to choosing between paying for their meals or paying for college-related expenses such as textbooks, tuition, and other indirect costs.
“A lot of college students end up being unprepared for the true cost of college. They’re very likely to not be financially literate or to have a robust emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses,” Claire Westbrook, a former college student who volunteered at a college food bank, told Intelligent.com.
The survey also found that 29 percent of students had to forego meals every day, with 39 percent skipping meals once a week, to save enough from their budget despite a majority of respondents working at least 15 hours per week.
The American Psychological Association published a study on food insecurity and the detrimental effect it has on a student’s academic and personal life.
“Compared with students who had reliable access to enough food, students who were food insecure experienced significantly higher rates of depression, loneliness, and anxiety. They also had lower self-esteem and lower grade-point averages and were more likely to withdraw from the university before earning their degrees,” it read.
Free Community College
Intelligent.com pointed out that President Joe Biden’s push for free community college could have made a difference for these students.
However, Biden recently announced that he had no choice but to abandon the $45.5 billion proposal due to lack of support for the initiative. The provision for free community college was then removed from the social safety net and climate bill currently being discussed.
But Biden vowed that his administration will continue to work hard to make this promise a reality, even if they’ve failed to pass it this year.