Notes:
1) This interview in the Scholarship to Practice Series originally aired on November 18, 2020 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together podcast, appearing live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
2) This transcript is intended to serve primarily as a guide to the full conversation. We apologize for any inaccuracies and encourage you to listen to the podcast.
Click here to access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
So food insecurity, however, is a very serious issue. It’s an issue for populations all over the world, for people of all ages, and one of the reasons it's so serious is that it affects your cognitive functioning. It also affects things like your energy, and your ability to kind of get through the day and do the tests and other things that students have to do to be in school.
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together. A podcast produced by the University Innovation Alliance. This is the podcast for busy people in higher education who are looking for the best ideas, inspiration and leaders to help you improve student success. I’m your host, Bridget Burns.
Welcome. Today we’re having an issue of Scholarship to Practice, and as an administrator, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been part of far too many conversations where I hear things like, “If only we knew, or I wonder if.” And later on I found out that most of those topics, there’s actually relevant research that we could’ve been drawing upon that already existed. Too often, limited time, capacity or even academic writing can get in the way.
At the UIA, we know that we need to bridge that gap between scholarship and practice if we’re going to stand a chance to improve student success. We all need to be working together, leveraging research in the field and identifying where we need more research to support greater innovation in higher ed. So this show is designed to help bridge that gap by elevating relevant research we all could be using in our daily lives in a short and conversational format.
Welcome to Scholarship to Practice.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
I’m Dr. Derrick Tillman-Kelly with the University Innovation Alliance, and I’m delighted to co-host this episode of Scholarship to Practice. Today we’re joined by Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University and the president and founder of the Hope Center for College Community and Justice in Philadelphia. Thanks for joining us, Sara.
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Thanks for having me.
Bridget Burns:
We’re very excited to have you. And I know this is a particularly timely conversation for a lot of administrators who are trying to figure out what are we going to do to stick to landing this last term, how are we going to try and address and triage more of the challenges that we’re seeing daily. And you are regularly asked, as an expert, to give them what are the – what do I actually do, what can I do? And so hopefully, folks at home, this will give you a sense of the things that you can tangibly do to support more students on your campus.
So let’s first start. For folks who don’t know, if you don’t know who Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab is, how do you introduce yourself to a person in the elevator or a family member so they can understand what you do?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
[Laugh] Yeah, it’s a good question because I do wear a lot of hats. I guess what I’d say is I’m a scientist who works on problems of why so many people start college but don’t finish. And I have a particular focus on what happens when people are challenged with paying for school and what that actually does to them, and most importantly, what we can do to actually make it easier. And I’m not just interested in things like tuition, I’m also really interested in their basic needs for things like food and housing and childcare and mental health support, transportation. The kinds of things that really trip them up on the way to the degree. And I believe that there is a lot that we can actually do to help them finish.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
That’s super helpful. So I know as a part of your work, you tend to think about the notion of hunger on college campuses. Can you talk to us about what’s most misunderstood about hunger on college campuses?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Well, I think that there are a number of things and actually, let’s just start with that word hunger because, in some sense, it’s the right word. It’s what we all think about when you don’t have enough food to eat. You think people feel hungry, but I also want to note that there is a broader concept called food insecurity. And what it means is that somebody does not have stable, regular access to enough food to eat on a regular basis. And the fact is when that happens to a person, to a student, for example, they might not say any more, "I’m hungry." They might honestly be getting used to it or trying to ignore it or honestly trying not to mention it because it’s embarrassing. So food insecurity, however, is a very serious issue. It’s an issue for populations all over the world, for people of all ages. And one of the reasons it’s so serious is that it affects your cognitive functioning. It also affects things like your energy and your ability to kind of get through the day and do the tests and other things that students have to do to be in school.
One of the other big misconceptions, sort of besides the word itself, is why students would be experiencing food insecurity? There are some people who seem to think that the main reason students experience food insecurity in college is that they simply can’t manage their money, that if only they were willing to spend less and save more, they’d be OK. And what these folks don’t seem to realize is just how legitimately tight students’ budgets have gotten. They also seem to think sometimes this is a matter of preference. So I heard one college president say, “I really don’t buy it that they can’t afford food. It’s just that they want to eat sushi and all they can afford is pizza.” We really don’t have much evidence that that is in fact the case. We’re talking about students who are cutting the size of their meals, skipping meals and sometimes even going without meals for as long as a day or more at a time because they simply don’t have money.
Bridget Burns:
So can you go a little further in terms of – you just clarified around food insecurity versus hunger. Is there a different term we should use for students who are house insecure or homeless, and can you share a little bit about what’s misunderstood about students experiencing houselessness or homelessness, or whatever terminology you think we should be using?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Yeah. I’ve just got to say. Higher ed is not the only one struggling with this issue. This country cannot seem to agree on what constitutes being housing secure, and we also disagree on what constitutes homelessness. Some people only think you’re homeless if they see you living on the street. But we know that that’s not the only form of homelessness and certainly not the only form that matters.
So our students fall into two buckets. One group has a place to live, but they’re having trouble holding onto that place. So for example, they might be late on their rent regularly, they might have difficulty paying their utility bills, it might be that their electricity is cut off, or their gas or their water or something like that. Most folks don’t seem to realize this but one of the leading indicators that someone is going to become homeless is that their utilities are being cut off.
Another really important issue is that we have students who will live with people with whom they’re not safe just because they have nowhere else to go. So for example, I have a team member who speaks publicly about the fact that she chose abuse over homelessness. Choosing to stay in a home where she was physically not safe because she didn’t want to be on the street. So that broad category of things is considered housing insecurity, and it is very widespread among today’s college students.
The other significant challenge, of course, is homelessness, and we strongly recommend that educators include what we call both housed or sheltered and unsheltered homelessness both. So that includes stuff like you do sleep on the street, you sleep in a tent, you sleep in your car, you stay at a homeless shelter, but it also includes couch surfing. And I think that one of the reasons that sometimes administrators struggle with couch surfing being homelessness is that there is something that sounds normative about that. For a college student, if you picture them as somebody doing a lot of socializing, we’re not talking about somebody who one Saturday night stays with one group of friends, and another Saturday night stays with another group of friends because they’re hanging out in the city. OK.
We’re talking about somebody who finds that they can’t pay their rent at their apartment. They go and live with a cousin for a period of time who then says, "You know what, we can’t have you here any more, there’s not enough space," and now they’re on to go live at a friend's or go live at a classmate's, and they’re moving around, which is incredibly stressful and often means that they don’t have access to the full resources of the household. All of these forms of homelessness, by the way, are associated with negative academic outcomes in college.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
Or not. You probably didn’t hear any of that, Sara. So thinking about that work and when we see you in social spaces, we often see the term #RealCollege, but folks may not fully understand what you mean. Can you share what Real College students are and what that includes?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Happy to. It’s actually one of my favorite topics. So if you go back and when we were doing research on this about 10 years ago, we were just starting to be able to go out there and share some data on food insecurity and such, and we did face some resistance from people who said, "That’s not happening, these are college students, they’re having fun and they’re academically adrift if anything. They just don’t know what they want to study." And one night I was sitting there looking at all this data and reading these emails from students and from student affairs professionals and others who were telling me this is actually happening. And I said to myself, sort of in the words of MTVs Real World, "We gotta stop being polite, start getting real here." You know, enough already. Let’s stop pretending like this isn’t happening and let’s level with ourselves and address it. So I’m showing my age here, I suppose. I was a fan of The Real World and I just thought, let’s borrow that.
So I started in with #RealCollege. And it quickly kind caught on in part because we created an annual conference where we’ve been coming together every year, and actually December 4th is going to be our fifth anniversary of the inception of that movement. And there’s going to be a Real College book eventually, when I finish writing it, and we’re actually also making another set of announcements soon about all different ways that people can get involved in the movement.
So that’s what it’s about. It’s about being honest that what college is now is really different than what you see on the television. And it’s not just different for low-income students, because the data shows 75 percent of all American families and their students who are paying for college have to pay at least 20 percent of their income in order to afford a year of school. Nobody can afford to just give up 20 percent of their income, and I’m talking after financial aid. So I’d say that Real College is happening to most people.
Bridget Burns:
OK. That’s great. And so you said 75 percent of all students are having to pay. OK.
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Yep.
Bridget Burns:
I’ll write that up for folks. So I want to dive into the research. You’re a scholar first and foremost, and I know you use Keynote, you travel around to campuses, and you conduct surveys, and you do all kinds of work. I’m just wondering, as a researcher, given what you have uncovered, what is something that you find yourself constantly repeating to clarify and explain because campus administrators and professionals are getting it wrong when it comes to hunger and homelessness?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Food pantries will not solve the problem. That’s the number one thing I want everybody to know. I noticed that when we started to talk more and more about these issues, people started to tell me, "Aha, I know about that and we need a campus food pantry." And look, that’s great. I am so glad. It is the start of a response. It is not, however, an actual response. OK. One of the most challenging things that is a lesson for research – not just in higher ed but more broadly on issues of poverty – is that sometimes the best thing you can do for somebody who needs food is not give them food, it’s to actually address their need for more income. It’s to address their need for money. What they need is the dignity of being able to afford to purchase the food that they need and want to eat.
So sometimes it’s not that we should provide emergency food assistance that will feed a person a can or a chicken at a time, but rather to be able to make sure that they have access to things, whether it’s the SNAP program, which is what we used to call food stamps, or whether it’s an affordable dining program where they can actually eat everyday on campus, or whether it’s some sort of grocery scholarship. We have to make sure that they can actually afford to get what they need.
I think sometimes what’s hard about this is that the charitable response, the thing where we just do a little philanthropy and we feel really good about it, it has a seductive power, and there’s a wonderful book called, Sweet Charity? by Janet Poppendieck that really describes how that seductive power of charity can deter us and dissuade us from the really hard work of policy change that we need so that no student goes hungry when they’re trying to get a college degree.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
That’s super helpful. And hearing you talk about the food pantries and the notion of charity, those things often feel easily done, make you feel good, but they are the tangible responses. Can we talk a little bit about what would be real substantive work that people should be doing? If I’m an administrator who wants to do the right thing, what should I focus on first? And then how might I continue to build that out?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
I’m going to put this in terms of the pandemic, frankly, because look, that’s where we’re at right now. Speaking directly to colleges across the country at this point, you have a major problem on your hands. Whether or not you have the data yet to show it. I don’t have any doubt, zero, that there are far more people on your campus affected by food and housing insecurity than you know. You need to get a couple of things in place immediately.
The first thing is an effective emergency aid program. And when I say effective, I don’t just mean that there are some dollars available if a student in great distress somehow finds a staff member and explains their story and finally gets some help. I’m talking about a well-advertised, constantly advertised, emergency aid program that students can actually apply to online from the privacy of their own space – whether that’s a car or whether that’s their home, wherever they are – 24/7, because emergencies happen around the clock. They don’t just happen during business hours. They need to be able to apply quickly, and they should be asked questions that assess their material conditions, not their deservingness, not their value of the world, and frankly, not their grades. The issue is not their grades. The issue is whether they’re facing a challenge that could cause them to leave school, and they shouldn’t be asked to perform their poverty in order to get support.
So they shouldn’t write an essay. They shouldn’t have to explain to you how this horrible thing happened to them or how they’re going to recover from it. They just need to tell you what it is they need. And you need to find a way with whatever you have at your disposal to try to meet that need as quickly as possible. And when I say quick, I mean within 48 hours. Now, I realize there’s never enough money in the world to meet all of the need. But we cannot think of the need as only about those dollars. Part of the need is for someone from your institution to reach out to them to acknowledge their crisis and even to just point them towards community resources can be helpful. In some cases, maybe you can offer them a peer who could reach out to listen if you don’t have everything else that you need to give them at that moment. Some institutions are doing this often in fairly small settings but not yet at scale. Others are well on their way.
In some cases, technology can be helpful. I will note that the company I work with called Edquity is using my research in order to deploy emergency assistance very rapidly to students online all over the country, including in challenging settings like at Compton College, at Western Governors University and others. So I’d say emergency aid is a critical starting point. And beyond that, you need to connect them to government public benefit programs. So we know that when the pandemic unemployment insurance was available, it was grossly underutilized by our students. That was money left on the table. SNAP is available to many students who aren’t using it. And we should expect in 2021 that I think we’ll see progress in terms of opening up that program to more college students. But they won’t get access to it if you don’t tell them about it. So every time you think about telling a student about the facts, please ask yourself, "Have I also told them about every other income support program that’s available?"
Bridget Burns:
This is super helpful. So I am also – I know that campuses are often wrestling with where do I sit? It’s self-assessment, everyone could be, well, I have an emergency program but they don’t know the questions that you ask to determine whether or not it’s actually a good program or it’s working for students. So I’m just wondering when you come in, if I were to hire you and I had all this money, and I have you come in and you’re gonna spend time assessing the climate on my campus for students and understanding, what are the first three things that you look for that are kind of tell, that I might feel OK about what’s happening but actually it’s not delivering what students need?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Oh, that’s such a good question. And we’re not expensive, by the way. Technical assistance from the Hope Center is not gobs of money, but I take your point. Look. I would look at a couple of things. Let’s say you said to me, "We have this amazing resource center for students, right. And there are students there every day who come and they get food, and they get clothes, and they talk to people," and I would say, "Great. OK. First, tell me about how many unique individuals you’re seeing each week?" And you would probably tell me you’re seeing like 25 or 30 students a week. Maybe 50 a week on the higher end or so forth, and you’d say that’s a lot of people. Well, first of all compared to the fraction of your students that are likely affected by these issues, it’s actually not that many people. You have to begin to ask, “Where is everybody else?”
The other thing that I would have you do, and it’s such an easy question to just ask is, let’s take a look at those 50 people. Are they overwhelmingly women? Are they overwhelmingly – well, you might say to me, here’s one, a lot of people say to me, "Well, you know, they’re overwhelmingly students of color. We’re really getting a lot of interest there." Well, you’re right. They are going to be disproportionately students of color because they are more likely to be affected by basic needs insecurities, but conditional on that greater need, students of color are less likely to actually come and access these supports. So you have to look, you have to disaggregate the data and ask yourself for example, "Where are my Latin [unintelligible 00:19:24] men? OK. Where are for example, my African American women?" Why aren’t they here? Why are we seeing disproportionate fewer students in some of the more marginalized categories in terms of accessing these critical supports? That would be sort of stage one, is to just look at the human part of who is utilizing these issues.
The other thing I would ask a lot about is timeline. How long does it take for someone to actually get support? If it’s an emergency aid program, tell me from the moment a student puts their hand up for the need to the time they actually have the money, how much time has elapsed? And I ask that because we know that timing matters. It doesn’t just matter by the way for emergency aid. It matters for financial aid, and we can look simply to the major issues we’re all having with verification and the consequences of that to see that play out.
Derrick Tillman-Kelly:
And Sara, that’s helpful. As you were talking, part of me thought a lot of what you mentioned in the assessment certainly can be done by many people in the institution, but a lot of the switches might be about senior leaders making pivots of the work that they’re doing and how they deploy resources. If I’m a frontline staff member, what is it I should be doing to better serve students and/or to advocate up the channel to ensure that the senior leaders are hearing what the structural challenges are to better serve students?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Well, the first thing – let me take the second part of the question first. Right. On the advocacy side, one of the most important things that that person can do is collect some data. Right. So do keep track, notice who is coming in, notice what their stories are like, and share that data with the people who supervise you, with the administrators, etcetera. They need to not only hear there is a lot of need, but they need to hear some numbers, and they need to hear some very concrete and specific stories. Right. It can really help. If you say something like, you know, "Financial aid was really unfair to this one student, and so she lost her housing," it’s so much more helpful if you say, you know, "We had a student who came out to her parents and as a result of that, her parents cut her off. And we set her to the financial aid office, and she wasn’t able to establish herself as an independent student. And so she’s not getting additional financial aid, and so she can’t pay her rent anymore." OK. Now we now where the problem is. We’ve also helped our supervisor or our administrator understand why it is that so many LGBTQ students are deeply affected by basic needs insecurities. OK. So that’s one big thing.
Another thing that we can all do together is to convey care. We talk a lot in the Real College movement about the belief that students are humans first. And we can advocate in lots of ways, and including in our own practice, for their basic humanity. It is so worth stopping and asking a student how they are before you ask them whether they’ve chosen their courses. OK.
You will hear, in that moment, the issues that they’re actually facing. Why choosing their courses might not be the first thing on their minds. If you’re going to sit there and talk to a student about how they need to take five courses next semester in order to finish fast, it might help to first know whether their basic needs are being met, because if they’re not and they’re pushed to take five courses, guess what? They’re not going to succeed in five courses.
Bridget Burns:
That’s super helpful. I’m mindful of the time, and I know before I wrap, I was going to send folks to figure out where – ask you where they can connect with you, but before that, if you had a magic wand and you could change any perspective or mindset, what I heard from you earlier is the idea that food pantries are our best solution, and that what they’re doing is enough, and a different way to think about their emergency. Are there any other things that you would say you really wish you could fix that would help students so that we can understand what administrators need to know?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Yes. Our Title IV financial aid system is a mess, and it has run its course. It is time to sunset the entire Title IV financial aid system and start from scratch. We need to finance college differently. I’m a big supporter of the movement to make tuition free, to simply take that off the agenda of students' worries and to instead address their needs for living expenses through targeted supplemental programs. We do this with high school. You do not have very many students around this country dropping out of high school because they can’t afford the tuition.
We do have students who still struggle to cover their living expenses because there are holes in the social safety net, but we don’t have that problem in nearly the way that we would had we not made these big strides in making public high school free. So I believe that we need to first wake up to the idea that we’re not going to sort of tweak our way to a more perfect FAFSA or that we’re going to just find our way towards fixing verification, and then everything will be OK. Our system is judgmental of 75 percent of American families, which means it’s not the system.
Bridget Burns:
That’s super helpful. Perfect. So this is exactly why we invited you on. We knew that you’d be able to give us the hard truths that folks need to hear, but also because we know that folks right now are just getting a sense of how we managed to survive this term, what students are going through and we’re getting a different level of where the pandemic is showing up.
So for folks who are at home on a college campus and are just starting, this is their first introduction to you, and they’re starting to see things that need to change, how can they follow up with you? I realize your inbox is overwhelming, and you have a lot on your plate. What are some resources that they should pursue right now that would actually give them the next step so they can start making moves that will help their students?
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
Sure. We have a wealth of resources to support anyone on a college campus. If you just go to Hope4College with the number four, Hope4college.com, you will find research, you will find resources. There are a number of COVID-specific guides. There are guides for administrators and staff. There is information for faculty, there are guides for students including those translated into Spanish. You can find information about our annual survey and how you can participate, and we offer a range of technical assistance supports as well as guidance for policymakers. So I urge you to go there. You’ll see my team. There are lots of us there who are ready and willing to help.
Bridget Burns:
Well, that is perfect, and we are so appreciative for you taking the time. We know that you are incredibly busy, but we also recognize that this is exactly the kind of value folks need, especially in this moment. So thank you so much, Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab. And for folks who are looking for a way to follow up: Hope4College.com. She’s also going to be linked in the Periscope links on Twitter and on Facebook. So please follow up, and we hope that you will be able to make some changes to inform how your students are experiencing your campus, and hopefully be able to support them better in this difficult time. So thank you and Derrick, as always, thank you –
Sara Goldrick-Rab:
[Unintelligible 00:27:07] both of you.
Bios of Guest Luminary and Co-Hosts
Guest Luminary: Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Temple University
Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab has served as a professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University since 2016. Previously, she was a professor of educational policy studies and sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also president and founder of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit driving the #RealCollege movement and legislation to address food and housing insecurity. Additionally, Dr. Goldrick-Rab holds the position of Chief Strategy Officer for Emergency Aid at Edquity, a student financial success and emergency aid company; and she founded Believe in Students, a nonprofit that distributes emergency aid. Her innovative research on college students’ basic needs led to her ranking in Education Week's Top 10 among education scholars and POLITICO magazine's top 50 people shaping American politics in 2016. Dr. Goldrick-Rab’s book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, was featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and awarded the $100,000 Grawemeyer prize, which she donated to student emergency aid.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
Co-Host: Derrick Tillman-Kelly, Director, University Innovation Alliance Fellows Program and Network Engagement
Dr. Derrick L. Tillman-Kelly serves as the Director of the UIA Fellows Program and Network Engagement for the University Innovation Alliance. He previously served in multiple roles at The Ohio State University, including as the inaugural UIA Fellow and special assistant to the director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise. Dr. Tillman-Kelly earned his Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership with a specialization in higher education and student affairs from Ohio State; a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs from Indiana University; and a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University.
About Scholarship to Practice
Scholarship to Practice is an event series that happens live on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. We interview higher education scholars, researchers, and academics that distill how a practitioner or administrator could apply learning in real-time to improve student success. At the UIA, we know that we need to bridge that gap between scholarship and practice if we’re going to stand a chance of improving student success. We all need to work together leveraging research in the field and identifying where we need more research to support greater innovation in higher ed. With its short and conversational format, this show is designed to help bridge that gap by elevating the relevant research we all could be using in our daily lives.
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