College students must pay for housing, books and course fees. For many, that leaves little extra for meals. Some campuses are working to fill that need.
A college student considers buying food or books. (Illustration by News Decoder.)
University systems have long been promoted as the most reliable path to upward mobility and economic security.
Yet for a growing number of students, that promise is part of a troubling paradox: the act of seeking a degree requires a harrowing trade-off between paying for schooling and securing the eating. The result is a lack of physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life. It is a pervasive crisis of food insecurity,
Today, nearly nine in 10 United States campuses operate food pantries or “basic need hubs,” serving thousands of students each semester.
What began as a grassroots response to hunger is now becoming institutionalized — a subtle but significant shift in how universities define student success and well-being. According to a survey conducted by the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a national research center at Temple University focused on transforming higher education to improve student success and well-being, 59% of students of students at 91 institutions across 16 states experience at least one form of basic needs insecurity, while 41% of students experienced food insecurity.
Many campus pantries have transformed into one-stop centers that connect students with food assistance programs, financial aid, child-care resources and mental-health support.
Finding the funds for food
The Lancer Care Center, which began as the Lancer Pantry in 2015 at the Pasedena City College, has now been integrated into a centralized, holistic support center. Today, it provides coordinated assistance and functions as a single hub for various types of basic needs, ranging from housing, food, emergency funding, peer mentoring and financial assistance.
Yet, even as they expand, most remain under-funded and overstretched: 60% of campus food pantries lack adequate refrigeration and many rely on short-term grants and student volunteers to operate.
A survey conducted in 2023 by Swipe Out Hunger, a national non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating student hunger, reported that food pantries face three key challenges: funding, inventory and staffing. More than one in five among the 355 college food pantries surveyed reported that securing stable funding, maintaining streams of funding and obtaining grants remain the most significant challenges.
Beyond calories, these spaces also provide something harder to quantify: trust.
“If you have somebody that trusts a systemic function of your campus, like a food pantry, it is likely that they will also trust other systems that are in place,” said Laura Egan of the Clery Center, an organization that focuses on campus safety and student rights. “If and when they or someone they know needs to make a report of a crime or needs to access a resource because they are a survivor of a crime, they will be more likely to look to and trust their campus, who has already established a system of providing them regular support in a non-judgmental [way].”
When hunger is hidden
For Egan, said accessibility matters just as much as supply.
“What we really appreciate seeing with food pantries on college campuses is the community support that it provides, the ready access that provides a student, with no questions asked about why you might need to access that resource,” she said.
Despite their growing presence, hunger on campus often remains hidden, masked by stigma and assumptions about who is considered food insecure. New York University Izzy Morgan is the administrative coordinator at the College Student Pantry New York City and says that many students don’t even realize that they are food insecure.
“I come from a family with money and, you know, I have all these privileges,” Morgan said. “I’m on a pretty big scholarship at school, and even if all of that is true, you could still be insecure.”
The College Student Pantry, operated by New York City’s Trinity’s Services and Food for the Homeless, serves college and graduate students across the city.
Affording healthy food
For Morgan, that self-realization came upon discovering that the pantry provided access to fresh vegetables that would otherwise be unaffordable.
“Part of why I got this job was because my boss, who is actually my pastor, came up to me and said, ‘Izzy, I think you’re food insecure’,” Morgan said.
Daniela Bermudez, a volunteer and Outreach and Social Media coordinator at the pantry, said that For many students, hunger is normalized as part of the college experience. “A lot of college students have this (assumption) that they’re supposed to struggle,” Bermudez said. “It’s almost normal to not have a well-balanced meal daily.”
Understanding food insecurity often comes gradually. “It’s kind of hard to almost wrap your head (around the meaning of food insecurity),” Bermudez said. “I’m noticing that (when) I’m not eating the right food groups and I don’t necessarily have the continuous ability to access these foods, that is a sign of food insecurity.”
Universities often measure success through graduation rates and employment outcomes, but for a growing number of students, success must depend on something far more basic: the ability to eat regularly, without shame or uncertainty. As higher education continues to market itself as a pathway out of poverty, the persistence of campus hunger raises an urgent question: Can institutions truly promise opportunity while leaving students to choose between a meal and a degree?
Questions to consider:
1. Why do many university students struggle to pay for food?
2. What are universities doing to make sure students can eat?
3. Do you think food should be a basic right for everyone? Why?
Natasha Yu Chia Hu is a public health and food systems professional based in New York City. A graduate of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, she specializes in epidemiology, nutrition and food systems. Through her experiences in food marketing, community health, policy advocacy and research, she has seen how the systems around food influence health and prosperity. Having lived and worked across East Asia and North America, she also brings an international perspective to the ways health, food and culture intersect in shaping public well-being.