Work

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

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Social Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/socsci14110654

Authors: Nicholas Freudenberg, Rashida Crutchfield

Institutions: City University of New York, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, California State University, Long Beach

Language: English

Topic: Higher Education Research Studies

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Quality education, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,172