From hunger and homelessness to debt-burdened drop-outs, Sara Goldrick-Rab sees the hope of college fading from view for middle America
Scholar-activist Sara Goldrick-Rab often reflects on an eye-opening day after class when a student came to her and said she was hungry. The student didn’t have money for food, and the lack of food was hurting her school work.
It was cases like this and the well-documented impact hunger has on education that prompted lawmakers to create the free lunch program – back in 1946 – for young students who were coming to school unfed.
Only this was college. This was Temple University. And in college, there is no free lunch.
Nor was this an isolated situation on campuses across the country. Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple, has dedicated her career to researching the challenges facing students. She launched a campaign for better understanding who today’s college students are and what they need.
She founded the Hope Center for College Community and Justice in Philadelphia and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, which research the needs of what she calls “#RealCollege” students. At realcollege.org , students are encouraged to tell their stories as part of a movement to create an economic environment welcoming to all students.
In 2015, she published the results of a Hope Center survey in a New York Times op-ed titled “Hungry and Homeless in College.” It resonated with colleges across the country that wanted to find new ways to address poverty on campus.
Last year, Goldrick-Rab co-authored an updated report from the Hope Center on the basic-needs security of college students, the most comprehensive national survey of its kind on a relatively unexamined issue.
That survey, taken by 43,000 college students across the country, found that 36% of university students were food insecure in the 30 days preceding the survey, and the same percentage reported being housing insecure in the past year. Those figures were even higher among community college students. The survey also revealed 9% of university students and 12% of community college students were homeless in the past year.
In 2016, Goldrick-Rab authored “Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.” That same year, Politico Magazine named her one of the top 50 people shaping American politics. Education Week ranks her sixth in the nation among education scholars, and in 2018, the Carnegie Corporation named her a Carnegie Fellow. The Chronicle of Higher Education has described her as “a defender of impoverished students and a scholar of their struggles.”
She writes and speaks regularly about the growing inaccessibility to higher education, which disproportionately affects communities of color. On May 3, Portland State University will host Goldrick-Rab for a presentation titled “Addressing Students’ Basic Needs with a Culture of Caring.”
By coincidence, Street Roots spoke with Goldrick-Rab the same day presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled her debt forgiveness plan for college student loans, a plan the professor supports. Because unlike some headline-making scandals of late, #RealCollege students are not wealthy socialites with movie-star parents.
Sara Goldrick-Rab: No, that’s not what we’re talking about. Certainly the news is giving us some interesting images. Most people don’t have parents to buy their way into college.
The vast majority of college students these days don’t live on a college campus. Only about 13% of them do, which is much smaller than people imagine. And they’re incredibly diverse. You’re very likely now to see plenty of students who are a far cry from 18. They may be in their 20s; they may be in their 30s. We see a growing number who are coming to college with children. About one in four students have a child of their own; others are raising children who are not theirs. They are younger brothers or sisters, they are cousins, that sort of thing.
These folks are dealing with a very different reality than most people imagine – including those who created the financial aid system. The financial aid system was envisioned for a time when only a handful of people would need help paying for college. And we’re in a moment when most people need help.
Joanne Zuhl: They’re not who we think they are so they’re not getting the help that they need?
Goldrick-Rab: That’s certainly right. One of the reasons we have trouble getting them what they need is because we’re held up by a set of images that tell us they don’t really need those things, they just need to work harder. Even if you just look at the reactions to Elizabeth Warren today, a lot of it is people saying taking student loans is a choice. I’m not sure when they went to school, but even if it was 10 years ago, maybe it was a choice then, but it doesn’t feel like a choice now. So that’s a big change.
Zuhl: These are students you’ve had yourself, right?
Goldrick-Rab: They are. This is my everyday. The majority of them are working: 70% of all college students are working. Another hard fact is when you take the other 30%, probably around half of them are not working only because they can’t find work. It’s not because they don’t need work. It’s not because they don’t want to work.
I’ve got students who are competing with people who are not in college. They’re going up for these jobs saying, “I can work on these days and not those days,” and the employer is frankly not very interested because they seem high-maintenance. And yet without these jobs, they can’t earn enough to really make ends meet. Even with 20 or 30 hours a week of employment, the minimum wage is so low that they still can’t make it.
Zuhl: How does financial aid fail students?
Goldrick-Rab: (Lawmakers) were supposed to make it so that money didn’t matter, and in order to do that, they were at 100 percent. It didn’t last very long. It was short-lived, and it quickly started to die for both two-year and four-year schools. It dove over time, and it continued to dive even during Democrat presidencies. And honestly, I think a lot of people just didn’t notice for a number of reasons, including that college prices just weren’t that high yet. So if the Pell Grant covered 50%, the other 50% wasn’t a whole lot of money. It just wasn’t that big a deal. But the thing is, the middle class also started to feel the pinch.
Zuhl: And the Pell Grant is the backbone for other types of financial aid.
Goldrick-Rab: It is. It’s the backbone for low-income students, but the really important thing is this: Many families are essentially considered too rich to get the Pell Grant, but they’re too poor to be able to afford college. So there’s the fact that the value of the Pell Grant is down, and the fact that many of the families that genuinely need the Pell Grant cannot get it.
Zuhl: And even with the expense, people still aspire to go to college.
Goldrick-Rab: And they’re responding quite rationally. It’s not like you can’t get a job without a college degree. But let’s say we focus on what are called good jobs, the stable, paying-a-decent-wage jobs. Only about 1 in 5 of what economists call good jobs are accessible to people without a college degree. There’s a bunch you can get with a community college certificate or associate’s degree, and that’s totally valuable, and I’m glad Oregon has drawn more attention to its community colleges. But you can’t forgo college completely.
Zuhl: For anyone experiencing poverty, one of the leading indicators is food insecurity and hunger. The implications of going hungry in college are many. Could you describe the path from hunger to a student actually leaving college in worse shape than going in?
Goldrick-Rab: Usually what happens is the finances get very tight and the student starts to make some trade-offs. A student will begin by not getting their books, and trying to go to class without your books is unfortunately becoming commonplace. Eventually, it’s not just the books anymore. Maybe there’s an unexpected cost in supplies – any number of courses have surcharges. Or your family makes a little more money this year, so you lose some of your grant aid, but your parents aren’t giving you more. So you get a little further along, fall short, and the food becomes something that’s eliminated.
They’ll start going down to one meal a day. I have a lot of students who eat one meal a day. And they’re distracted by it. They don’t have as much energy. They’re upset.
So the next thing that happens is your grades fall. And then there’s an even more vicious (consequence) in that financial aid is contingent on grades – all of it, including the Pell Grant. So you’re in a downward spiral. You’re losing your financial aid, and things are getting even worse. And that’s the pathway toward which you see students leave college and now they have debt.
Now you have someone who genuinely wanted to go to school and they tried and now they have debt and no degree to pay it off.
Zuhl: They’re worse off for having made the effort.
Goldrick-Rab: It’s the real tragedy. The real scary part, frankly, of the debt crisis is instead of people being lifted up by education, they are starting to be pushed down.
Zuhl: We’re saying education, but what we’re talking about is equity toward knowledge and opportunity, equity in power – given the lifetime advantages for college graduates. What do you see are the political implications for college accessibility?
Goldrick-Rab: There’s a lot. I don’t think we can be surprised that there’s such divisiveness over it. I think that there are those who are really threatened by this idea that college has become so very important. For some reason they still believe that we “liberalize” people in higher education. But the other thing is there’s a real pulling apart – by health, for example – based on whether or not you can actually get the degree. These are consequences not just for this generation; these are going to be generational consequences.
Zuhl: What are you referring to with health?
Goldrick-Rab: There are any number of health outcomes that we can see are associated with getting more education, whether it’s life span or cancer risk, and such. In general, we tend to see that as people get more education, those things are reduced. We don’t know exactly why. One of the possibilities is you get more information. You learn something. It’s not that college students don’t participate in risky behavior – they do – but it seems that over a lifetime, they live a healthier, longer and, I think from a taxpayer point of view, less expensive life. They’re less likely to have emergency room visits.
Zuhl: You’ve come out in support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to get rid of student college debt. Is that the solution in one fell swoop?
Goldrick-Rab: First, it’s not just a proposal to get rid of all of the debt. It is some of the debt, not all of the debt. To me, if all she did was say she’s going to strike the debt, I actually would not support it. And that’s because it would be a fix to something that happened yesterday with no remedy for the future.
We have got to prevent the next generation from dealing with this. I think there are a lot of people in a lot of pain who are saying look, I’m not going to support making college free unless you deal with my debt. To that end, she’s saying let’s talk about your pain. And she’s saying for people under $100,000 of annual income, we will strike up to $50,000 of your debt. I think that frankly, part of the purpose of that is to help those who are in the deepest trouble, those who are defaulting on their loans, even though they only have $5,000 worth of loans. And those are disproportionately communities of color.
These are people who got, like, a year of education and they have this debt. So in many ways it’s a targeted intervention to be sure communities of color are not further disenfranchised from wealth creation because of this debt. It’s also politically savvy. (At $50,000) she’s making a meaningful dent. There are plenty of doctors and lawyers, et cetera, who have $100,000 of debt and this is going to cut it in half, and they’re going to say thank you. And they’re hopefully going to be part of the political coalition that is going to take the next step, which is we’ve got to make higher education tuition free, just like we did when we made high school free. And there’s a natural progression.
Zuhl: We were talking about the power issue. Who would be against this?
Goldrick-Rab: Lots of people! There’s even Democrats against this! What’s amazing to me, at moments like today, is how many so-called progressives will try to argue that these moves to subsidize higher education are regressive because the poorest people don’t go to college. Without recognizing that the poorest people want to go to college, and that the way to help them go – and this has been demonstrated over and over – is to remove these financial barriers.
Frankly, there’s this potent combination right now of two things. One of those things is admissions. These are gates. And we need to get rid of a bunch of those gates. They’re not necessary. But the second part is the price, and both of those things matter.
Zuhl: It’s interesting that the biggest obstacle to getting a college degree isn’t a person’s academic ability.
Goldrick-Rab: No. It’s poverty. We say poverty and we think the very bottom. But the way the middle class is being strapped is a version of poverty. The middle class is frankly disappearing. It’s falling. So this is an investment, very similar to the GI Bill, frankly.
Zuhl: There is clearly a burgeoning movement on college campuses to address struggling students. Tell us about that movement and what’s happening and the work you’re doing through #RealCollege?
Goldrick-Rab: About five years ago, I wrote an op-ed in The New York Times called “Hungry and Homeless in College,” and I wrote that because the data and story hadn’t been out there. And when I did, all of these tiny little (college) programs, these one-offs, started weighing in saying, “I have a food pantry,” “I know there are homeless college students.” And what I noticed first is that there is a real power in helping people connect to each other, and building a movement. And secondly, that we need policy action. These are structural issues. And so that’s what we’ve been building toward.
We’re only four years into the #RealCollege movement now. We have about 700 campus food pantries around the country. One of the first ones was at Oregon State. And there are exciting things, and one of the things I’m into at Portland Community is doing benefits access for college students. It’s a pretty radical shift to say that when you are going to college, your help to pay for it shouldn’t just be using the FAFSA (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). As sad as it is, we now need to help college students get food stamps. And another way to put that, without it being a sad thing, is we have to bring all our resources to bear.
Zuhl: That seems to get back to knowing who the students are and the misunderstandings around the economic plight of college students. It’s often viewed as a privileged class that has no right to complain. I’m thinking of the students at Sarah Lawrence, one of the more expensive educations in the nation, who recently put out a demand – among other things – that “All campus laundry rooms are to supply laundry detergent and softener on a consistent basis for all students, faculty, and staff.” What is your take on that?
Goldrick-Rab: People made fun of them, and they were wrong to do so. What they are missing there is this is simply an effort to get people to recognize that everyday things cost money. I wouldn’t be surprised if these same people who scoffed at them would scoff at the movement to make feminine hygiene products available. I’ve done a lot of work on homelessness at large, well before I got to the college issue, and there is simply a high price to pay for being poor. And the students were just trying to draw attention to the fact that laundry costs money. And it’s not a small thing. They’re scrimping for everything now. Maybe it wasn’t the most politically savvy move, but I think we all understand that the everyday things are adding up.
Zuhl: And tuition – the actual price for the classes – isn’t the bulk of the costs anymore.
Goldrick-Rab: No, the bulk of the cost is the cost of living. I know a provost who I was talking to when I was visiting a college campus, and her big issue that day was there was a student in the classroom who hadn’t bathed, and they were trying to figure out how to take this guy out of the classroom because he hadn’t showered. And if this somebody had had laundry. ... It’s kind of a big deal.
Zuhl: I got free basketball tickets when I went to college.
Goldrick-Rab: (Universities) give you free pizza and free basketball tickets. We act like that’s what you’re supposed to get. But God forbid we give you a free lunch or free feminine hygiene products or anything else, and we act like you’re pampered.
Zuhl: If allowed to continue, what do you see this trend leading to?
Goldrick-Rab: I think it’s pretty clear: We’re making college and we’re making education into something to avoid. That’s my biggest worry. I actually think what Sen. Warren did today is another stake in the ground saying, look, education matters. We don’t want it to be scary. This country loses if people feel like “I can’t do this. It’s too risky. I went into debt. I’m not sending my kids.” And the only reason that happened is we literally broke our promise to them. We told people to go to college, it was not the wrong thing to do, and then we didn’t set up the financing system to support it.
Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org .
IF YOU GO
What: Addressing Students’ Basic Needs with a Culture of Caring with Sara Goldrick-Rab
When: 11a.m.-1 p.m. Friday, May 3, 2019
Where: Smith Memorial Student Union, 1825 SW Broadway, Ballroom 355, Portland State University
Tickets: This event is free and open to the public, but guests are asked to register online .
DEBT BY THE NUMBERS
Total U.S. student loan debt: $1.56 trillion
Total U.S. borrowers: 44.7 million
Delinquency or default rate: 11.4% 90+ days delinquent
Direct loans 360+ days delinquent: $101.4 billion among 5.1 million borrowers
Direct loan in forbearance: $111.1 billion among 2.6 million borrowers
Source: Institute for College Access and Success, compiled by Forbes
PELL POWER
The Higher Education Act of 1965 originated from a bill authored by Rep. Edith Green of Oregon, which authorized the first-ever federal financial assistance for undergraduate students called Basic Education Opportunity Grants. In 1972, Congress reformed the program, and it became known as Pell Grants, after Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. They covered about 75% of college expenses. Unlike loans, Pell Grants do not have to be repaid.
Pell Grants are the single largest source of federal grant aid supporting undergraduate students, but today they cover less than half of their original value, averaging just over 30%.
For academic year 2019-20, the total maximum Pell Grant is $6,195.
The cost of attending the University of Oregon for the 2018-19 school year is $27,366, including tuition, on-campus housing, books and supplies, personal expenses and transportation. Less than $12,000 of that figure is the cost of taking classes.
Source: American Council for Education, U.S. Department of Education, University of Oregon.
THE WARREN PLAN
On Monday, April 22, presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced a plan to eliminate student loan debt of up to $50,000 for most debt-holding Americans. That would apply to more than 75 percent of Americans with student loan debt, according to Warren’s campaign.
The plan would also allow Americans to attend two-year and four-year colleges without having to pay tuition or fees. Warren said the plan would reduce the wealth gap for black and Latinx families and increase wealth for communities of color.
Without the burden of student loan debt, the economy would get a boost in economic growth, home sales and small business formation, all of which is stifled by student debt, according to Warren’s campaign.
The entire cost of the debt cancellation plan and universal free college would be covered by Warren’s proposed “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” – a 2% annual tax on the 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth.
Source: Elizabeth Warren 2020
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