Education Refugees
By Albert B. Kelly
Recently, I came across an
OP-ED in the New York Times by Sara Goldrick-Rab and Katherine Broton entitled
“Hungry, Homeless and in College”. The focus of their article was the number of
college students (University and community college) who don’t have food and
shelter.
I was struck by the piece
because “homeless college student” are not words you see together. Say the
words “homeless person” and maybe the picture is one of a strung out disheveled
soul lying in a doorway somewhere. Say “college student” and the image is
something else.
I recall my own college
days at Trenton State without a place to stay. Luckily, I was able to score a
little floor space in a friend’s attic to sleep, but mostly I closed the
library. Food was a day-old sandwiche and vending machine crackers.
What we generally don’t do
is conjure a mental image of a student sleeping in the library, studying in an
abandoned building, or doing homework in the homeless shelter. But according to
Goldrick-Rab and Broton this is becoming a real problem.
That’s why they undertook
their own survey of 10 community colleges in 7 states (New Jersey, New York,
California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Louisiana) totaling 4,300
students, a reasonable representation across the board.
What they found is that in
a given month one in five college students have gone hungry because they lacked
food and the money to buy food. A full 13% have been homeless at some point in
the last year and no less than 50% are at risk for being homeless or hungry or
both.
The troubling thing is
that a fair number of these students have jobs and financial aid of some sort.
The other thing I suspect, though not mentioned in the article, is that some of
these students will be, in addition to hungry and homeless, in major debt for
college tuition whether they get a degree or not.
There’s something wrong
with this picture and even beyond the issue of high tuition, it is to our shame
as a society that we have students trying to work their way through college,
living on the streets that can’t get a decent meal.
For the record, students
in college, carrying even half a load in credits, are ineligible to receive
SNAP benefits in order to get food. Think about the last time you went a day
without food other than when you were sick or having same-day surgery.
Do you get a headache if
you go too long without eating? Try to study, perform well on a test or quiz,
concentrate in class, and maintain a decent grade point average so you don’t
lose your financial assistance with your headache and an empty stomach.
We recognize that being
able to eat a decent meal is vital to success in school which is why we have
programs for K-12 in the form of free or reduced breakfast and lunch. That
necessity doesn’t change because we’re talking about older kids in college.
The Georgetown Public
Policy Institute’s Center on Education and the Workforce says that within 4
years (by 2020) 65% of all jobs will require a college degree. Square that with
too many of our young people struggling just to stay above water, yet they have
to get a degree so they can make a decent living?
For years, higher
education was about academics and ideas, but then college wasn’t for everyone.
That was ok when you could make it into the middle class with a factory job. No
more. Now you need a college credential just to get in the door- any door- to
earn a living wage.
It’s not enough that we’re
crushing a generation of college students with loan debt, now we have some of
them going hungry and homeless. Something needs to change.
The old assumptions about
what higher education is and who it serves, at least at the junior college level
aren’t valid anymore and the proof of this are the increasing number of kids
living on the fringes trying to hustle their way through like education
refugees.
Maybe it’s time that we
demand more on the federal level to support community college tuition, create a
floor or ceiling for the students that need it. If a college credential is the
minimum ante to enter the workforce of the 21st century, we’ve got
to find a way so getting into the game- and staying in- isn’t so hard.