The Six Core Features of Student Basic Needs Support in Community Colleges

Many community college students are constrained by limited financial resources and are unable to meet basic food, housing, and transportation needs. As of 2020, approximately 23 percent of college students faced food insecurity, and 8 percent were homeless. To support student well-being and increase the likelihood that students succeed, community colleges across the United States are scaling up basic needs supports. Federal funding provided during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic helped provide additional resources for basic needs. States and systems are also making investments to support local efforts at community colleges.

In this research brief, RAND researchers describe six core features of promising student basic needs support approaches. The goal is to provide actionable guidance for community college staff and leadership who are building and improving their supports for students. Table 1 provides an overview of the six core features of promising basic needs support approaches, and a more detailed description of these core features follows. Figure 1 provides an overview of the approach RAND researchers used in the study to identify these core features and build evidence on how colleges are implementing them on the ground.

Comprehensive Basic Needs Support

Students have a wide variety of potential needs, and leading community colleges typically offer a variety of supports. In interviews, staff from leading colleges said that food pantries, emergency aid, and case management support were particularly common across community colleges and central to their basic needs support efforts. All college interviewees conveyed a desire to provide the full range of supports, but some colleges had capacity and resource limitations that hindered the ability to provide more-costly, long-term supports, including housing and child care. Many of the resources were broadly available to students, but colleges also offered targeted wraparound support programs that focused on certain groups of students, such as first-generation college students and former foster youth.

Dedicated Basic Needs Staff and Partnerships

To ensure the capacity for robust basic needs support, leading colleges relied on dedicated staff with case management experience and often leveraged larger teams of full-time staff, part-time staff, and students. Case managers worked directly with students and frequently have backgrounds in social work. Basic needs staff were typically overseen by a manager who takes on a variety of responsibilities, including funding and partnership building. Federal funding helped some colleges to expand their capacity for support, and some state and system initiatives now require dedicated case managers (or basic needs navigators).

Individuals from leading community colleges also emphasized the importance of internal and external partnerships to support their work. Internal partnerships with financial aid, advising, mental health counseling, and targeted student support programs for marginalized groups of students (e.g., former foster youth, student parents) helped support outreach and supplement the supports provided by basic needs offices. External partnerships with community organizations and universities helped supplement on-campus resources and allowed college staff to make referrals to supports not offered on campus. The literature also highlights internal and external partnerships as being essential.

• RAND researchers reviewed the existing literature, including rigorous studies of the effectiveness of college basic needs programs and qualitative and guidance documents highlighting promising implementation practices.
• RAND researchers conducted interviews with 16 community colleges across five states that were identified as leaders in basic needs support, according to state and system contacts and expert advisors.
• RAND researchers received ongoing input from five experts on the research evidence around basic needs support.

Broad Outreach Efforts

To support broad awareness of basic needs supports, leading colleges leverage broad virtual and in-person outreach strategies. Proactive marketing of services to students through fliers, social media, class syllabi, emails, texts, and tabling at heavily trafficked areas and events was one critical approach that all leading colleges engaged in to build awareness. Most leading colleges also had referral services that allowed faculty and staff to flag students who might need services, and colleges had varying approaches for student self-referral. College staff reported referrals from students and trusted staff and faculty as being valuable in helping overcome stigma and facilitate greater student comfort with leveraging basic needs supports. Staff viewed peer referrals as a particularly valuable approach, and arming student food pantry staff with information on other supports was one systematic way that a few colleges promoted peer marketing. The broader literature emphasizes the importance of building trust to overcome stigma.

Streamlined Intake and Case Management

Leading community colleges focus on making supports as accessible and streamlined as possible to minimize administrative burden and other barriers to service access for students. There were a variety of ways that college staff reported making supports accessible, and colleges appreciated the autonomy to design services in ways that meet the needs of their students. Some interviewees reported that a centralized hub for services was valuable in allowing students to access multiple supports in one location, while others saw value in dispersed services across campus to serve students in places that were more heavily trafficked by students. Colleges leveraged easy sign-in processes and streamlined intake forms across basic needs supports to simplify access for students and tried to minimize eligibility criteria wherever possible. The broader basic needs literature also highlights centralized hubs, streamlined intake processes, and limited eligibility criteria as promising practices.

An Institutional Culture That Prioritizes Basic Needs

To provide robust basic needs supports, leading colleges have to leverage funding, leadership support, and broad staff buy-in. Leading colleges were investing heavily in basic needs support efforts, setting aside institutional funding, leveraging foundations, and drawing on community resources to sustain their efforts. The federal funding provided during the COVID-19 pandemic was useful in supporting the expansion of basic needs supports. After these resources were no longer available, staff at some colleges reported a need to scale back certain supports but have largely sustained the services offered. Dedicated funding in state and system budgets and foundations can also help ensure the sustainability of funding for college basic needs supports.

Leadership and staff buy-in are also critical aspects of an institutional culture that prioritizes basic needs. Leadership can emphasize that student well-being is an institutionwide priority and a core student success strategy to build broader buy-in across staff. Buy-in of staff and faculty is critical to supporting outreach and referrals, as well as establishing a collegewide culture of care for student well-being. For colleges that want to ensure strong collegewide buy-in, our interviewees and the literature suggest that informational sessions at department meetings, schoolwide trainings on student needs, and strong messaging from leadership can be valuable.

Data-Informed Practices

Data can provide value by identifying which students can benefit from basic needs supports and the types of supports needed, quantifying potential improvements to outreach and service delivery, and providing evidence on the value of these supports to college stakeholders and funders. Our leading community college interviewees and the literature often highlighted data-informed practices as an area for improvement. Although many leading colleges were collecting data on student basic needs and tracking use of services, most were not leveraging these data to assess gaps in services and effectiveness. To build additional evidence on basic needs supports, colleges could benefit from linking data on service use to student outcomes and could consider rolling out supports in a staggered way to study the effectiveness of different approaches. Engaging students in the design of supports and getting regular feedback are additional ways that institutions can assess gaps in services and perceived value.

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Topics

• California
• Colorado
• Community Organizations
• Food Insecurity
• Minority Students
• North Carolina
• Postsecondary Education
• Texas
• Virginia