Finding Solutions: Meeting Essential Needs to Overcome Health and Educational Inequities Among College Students

Many economic, academic, and social factors influence college completion, and scholars have documented that a significant cause of students leaving school before graduation is that many do not have their basic needs for food, housing, and health care met. These barriers undermine their academic success by forcing students to reduce the time spent on their studies, work more hours, or stop out of school to support themselves or their families. Unmet essential needs jeopardize academic and life success for students in higher education across the United States and widen racial/ethnic and class inequities in college completion and health. Our review is based on a synthesis and summary of the recent multidisciplinary literature on this topic and our own 15 years of experience planning, implementing, and evaluating essential needs initiatives at two large university systems. This report summarizes evidence on the prevalence and the health- and academic-related consequences of these unmet needs and reviews their proximate and fundamental causes. We assess common approaches that universities, governments, and other institutions use to reduce unmet needs, and suggest policies and programs that can contribute to more equitable educational and health outcomes for college students by meeting their basic needs.