More than Money: Barriers to Food Security on a College Campus

Studies have shown that many college students are experiencing food insecurity and that the reasons for this are multifactorial. Students are unable to acquire adequate food to meet their needs because of limited money, time, transportation, and other factors. However, food insecurity rates are almost always assessed by using the USDA’s food security survey module, which frames the barriers to food access as purely financial by relying entirely on items that explicitly ask about a financial barrier to food security, rather than any other possible barriers. Using survey and interview data collected in collaboration with our campus food pantry and undergraduate student researchers from 2015 to 2019, we show that student food insecurity is a result of complex factors that go beyond financial limitations. We argue that the USDA measure is insufficient for fully assessing the prevalence of college student food insecurity because it presupposes a financial cause for food insecurity and then undercounts those who are food insecure for other reasons.