Cal State program to go beyond the basic, providing holistic support for students

Ten years ago, the California State University system launched a program to address food insecurity and provide housing support after research found around 1 in 4 students was going hungry.

Since its inception, through the Basic Needs Initiative, food pantries have served more than 77,000 students annually and referred over 5,000 students for housing resources. However, gaps have widened and student needs have expanded.

In the next 10 years, Dilcie Perez, vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management and student success at California State University, said the focus of the Basic Needs Initiative is “getting beyond basic.”

“ What that says to me is holistic support to students where we are sharing the responsibility of understanding what might be a barrier or hindrance to students and proactively putting those in place,” she said.

10 years of the Basic Needs Initiative

 Rashida Crutchfield, a professor and executive director at the Center for Equitable Higher Education at Cal State Long Beach, led the research in 2016. The study found that 24% of the CSU system’s 460,000 students could be going hungry. The report also found that as many as 12% of students suffer “housing displacement,” such as homelessness.

Crutchfield said having quantifiable data helped shift the narrative from a part-time job being the solution to fix the “starving student” perception to showing the problem was much bigger. And it “ generated evidence that helped policymakers and higher ed administrators act and invest,” Crutchfield said.

The research, Crutchfield said, showed that  the cost of higher education includes higher costs for food and housing, as well as things like childcare, transportation and computer services.

Following the research, CSU launched the Basic Needs Initiative and went from 11 campuses having programs for food insecure students to all campuses now having Basic Needs staff.

But the needs of students keep rising, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating their plight: In 2019, food pantries were serving more than 35,000 students annually. In the last year, that number was around 77,000. In 2019, CSU campuses assisted around 3,400 students with CalFresh applications; in the last academic year, campuses assisted around 16,000 students, according to data shared with LAist from CSU.

Gap widens and needs persist 

Speaking to a network of coordinators from CSU’s network of schools, Perez said the Basic Needs Initiative needs to go beyond being reactive to more proactive.

The CSU system, she said, is losing  between 25,000 to 29,000 students a year in their second or third year, with a significant number of them identifying as Latino.

“ Friends, we have a leak in the system that we have to close because we are doing a social injustice to our students,” she said. “When we invite you in, say we want you here, we believe in you, and then all of a sudden they go away without any acknowledgement, no one contacts them, no one comes with a plan to bring them back.”

The institutions, she said, were not set up to serve students who benefit from Basic Needs programs. For example, students are being withdrawn, dropped or failed from a class because they have a financial hold on their account — even though some of them rely on financial aid.

In its next iteration, Perez said the Basic Needs Initiative will go beyond just strengthening student support services to address what is happening in the classroom, bringing together other university departments and community organizations.

“Many of the answers lie in our local communities,” she said. “And so it's making those intentional connections for transportation, childcare, housing.”