Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry (nytimes.com) 526
In the coming weeks, thousands of college students will walk across a stage and proudly accept their diplomas. Many of them will be hungry. From a report: A senior at Lehman College in the Bronx dreams of starting her day with breakfast. An undergraduate at New York University said he has been so delirious from hunger, he's caught himself walking down the street not realizing where he's going. A health sciences student at Stony Brook University on Long Island describes "poverty naps," where she decides to go to sleep rather than deal with her hunger pangs. These are all examples of food insecurity, the state of having limited or uncertain access to food.
Stories about college hunger have been largely anecdotal, cemented by ramen and macaroni and cheese jokes. But recent data indicate the problem is more serious and widespread, affecting almost half of the student population at community and public colleges. A survey released this week by Temple University's Hope Center for College, Community and Justice indicated that 45 percent [PDF] of student respondents from over 100 institutions said they had been food insecure in the past 30 days. In New York, the nonprofit found that among City University of New York (CUNY) students, 48 percent had been food insecure in the past 30 days.
Stories about college hunger have been largely anecdotal, cemented by ramen and macaroni and cheese jokes. But recent data indicate the problem is more serious and widespread, affecting almost half of the student population at community and public colleges. A survey released this week by Temple University's Hope Center for College, Community and Justice indicated that 45 percent [PDF] of student respondents from over 100 institutions said they had been food insecure in the past 30 days. In New York, the nonprofit found that among City University of New York (CUNY) students, 48 percent had been food insecure in the past 30 days.
Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet here is the opposite report:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/04/11/obesity-not-starvation-real-problem-universities-column/500855002/
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the problem up there?
Re: Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:2)
The problem is viral: clickbait.
Re: Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can get a 1lb bag of red beans (or other dry beans) on sale for $1.
You can buy an onion and optionally a bell pepper and celery and a piece of smoked sausage for not much more and make red beans. If you really want to splurge get a cheap bag of rice.
You can get a LOT of meals out of this one trip to the grocery store.
Maybe get a carton of eggs, and you now have breakfast, lunch and dinner for a good part of a week or more.
If you shop sales, use a little imagination, buy what is on SALE each week in the grocery store, you can eat healthy for a reasonable cost.
I know, I did it as a "starving college student".
I was working during grad school, so I had a little extra money, but not much.
But I remember one night, a friend came over to study. He brought a pizza for a snack. I was eating veal chops with a champagne cream sauce as my dinner/snack.
I figured it out, I spend less on my meal than he did on his pizza. I bought the veal on sale from the mark down meat section...bought a small thing of cream, and I had the old bottle of champagne from who knows when.....
The point is, if you use your noggin' and think, you can figure out how to eat well if you'll cook and shop and eat based on whats on sale.
Hell, I make a VERY comfortable living now, and I still scan the grocery store ads each week and base my menus off that. Not only do I save money, but it keeps me out of the rut of eating the same old thing, as that I have to come up with something to fix each week with what happens to be on sale.
If they were smart enough to make it into college, it seems they'd be smart enough to figure this out.....as other generations before them have done.
It isn't rocket surgery.
Re: Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Alternatively, students could choose to attend a more affordable school and a major with a good job outlook. The total cost of schooling should include a look at not only tuition, but also room and board, and consider how to cover all costs. My daughter chose a public university (in our home state) with a decent tuition and room/board cost. The overall cost isn't overwhelming. That affordability, coupled with the fact that my wife and I saved for 30 years for our kid's college education, means that she won't graduate with unbearable debt. The fact that she chose a major with a high potential of good future earnings means that she will be starting off on the right foot.
Having said that, I grew up poor with no family money for college. I got grants, worked summers and during the semesters, as well as took out student loans to make it through my state's public university. As soon as I could opt out of the school meal plan, I did so, and lived on such nutritious fare as peanut butter/jelly sandwiches and english muffin pizza (english muffin, spaghetti sauce, and mozzarella cheese cooked in a toaster oven). College is a series of trade-offs and choices with consequences. It is not forever, and the temporary deprecations (like me living in my car for several weeks at the start of each school year before I found affordable housing for the year) are by and large survivable as long as one doesn't make too many bad choices.
Re: (Score:2)
The specific examples were NY, probably because it is the worst. The main study was of a 100 institutions.
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the examples were from NY because its the New York Times. I also noted that the examples were from "community colleges", so probably the less well-to-do. This doesn't make it false, but the starving and the obese are probably separate populations. (Of course, if you're living on Ramen and macaroni it's possible to do both at the same time.)
Re: (Score:2)
It's hard to assess what this study is talking about, unless you understand what they mean by "food insecure" - which casts a much wider net than "hungry".
All you have to do to be considered "food insecure" is if you can't afford healthy food, think you might run out of food (you don't have to actually run out of food, you just need to worry you might), etc.
Re: (Score:2)
If one doesn't specifically shop the weekly sales and instead just buys what they usually buy, most of the grocery stores and supermarkets are actually more expensive than Whole Foods, strange as it may seem.
A friend in graduate school used to only buy the nearly rotten fruit that was marked down at the local Sloan's supermarket.
Re:Obviously NYC either needs more restaurants (Score:5, Insightful)
They are most likely hungry by choice (which is NOT to say they prefer to be hungry, but that their choices have made them hungry).
First off, "food insecure" does not mean they are starving, it means that in the previous 30 days you "worried" about access to sufficient amounts of healthy foods (my wording). The study used this description:
Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to acquire such food in a socially acceptable manner.
They based their study on the USDA's 18 item screening list - available here [usda.gov] - that describes many scenarios other than "I was hungry and had no food".
Next, these students are borrowing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend classes, did they choose to attend school away from home, choose a school without a meal plan, choose not to enroll in the school meal plan, etc.
Students receiving student loans can borrow additional money to meet their basic needs while attending school (dorm room, school supplies, and FOOD. [ed.gov]
Truly hungry students with limited or no resources can collect SNAP benefits, if they meet certain criteria. [clasp.org]
So I say again, choosing to move out of your parents house, choosing a school with no meal plan, choosing not to participate in the school meal program your school offers, choosing to not borrow money to pay for food, and choosing to not apply for SNAP benefits may cause a student to be considered "food insecure" in the past 30 days. Students are choosing to be "food insecure" for various reasons, but ultimately it is a choice they made.
College is not compulsory, you are choosing to attend college.
I never even mentioned the option of getting a part-time job at a restaurant, where not only is money earned to buy food, but free meals are often included. Jobs in the school cafeteria are ideal, as they are on-campus, accommodating of student schedules, and unlike an off-campus employer, you can waive all income tax deductions on your wages if they are under a certain cap. [jhu.edu]
Re: Obviously NYC either needs more restaurants (Score:4, Funny)
TIL I've been food insecure. I mean I really wanted a salad last night but fuck going to the grocery store at 2 am, so I just ate ice cream.
Re:Obviously NYC either needs more restaurants (Score:4, Insightful)
What sane person chooses to attend school in MANHATTAN (one of the most expensive places to live on Earth) without any income?
Take a year off and earn some money. Pick a school next to your parents and sponge off from them.
Re: (Score:3)
"did they choose to attend school away from home"
That doesn't become a valid consideration until which school you attend stops being a factor for future success. There is no room in a merit based society for failing to support measures which enable those with merit the freedom to use that merit to secure superior choices relative to those with equal or less merit but more starting funds.
My wife was accepted into both Harvard and Yale but her family had spent everything they had just getting her through the
Re: (Score:3)
Your menu is a recipe for beriberi.
"beriberi" you refer to is B1 deficiency, while the parent specifically mentioned dried beans,
and beans are one of the richest sources of B1.
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently in SOME cities it is, but there are a ton more cities in the US, where cost of living is much more reasonable.
Re: (Score:3)
And yet here is the opposite report:
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
I'm sure there are some University students that have hunger problems. I couldn't get the link in the header to load, but I wonder how the data was collected. If the data were self-reported then I would suspect that the issue at hand is that University students make notoriously bad survey takers and are very likely to select the checkbox that they find most amusing.
If I were in university and asked if getting enough food on a survey, I would probably have responded that I was starving too (despite the opp
Re: (Score:2)
And yet here is the opposite report: https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
I'm sure there are some University students that have hunger problems. I couldn't get the link in the header to load, but I wonder how the data was collected. If the data were self-reported then I would suspect that the issue at hand is that University students make notoriously bad survey takers and are very likely to select the checkbox that they find most amusing.
If I were in university and asked if getting enough food on a survey, I would probably have responded that I was starving too (despite the opposite being true).
It was collected via an Email that offered a chance to win $100 for answering the questions about "college life"
They only got about 6% response rate from hundreds of thousands of E-mail's spent.
IMHO, This survey is garbage based on how it was conducted and the way the questions where asked. I think the $100 lottery thing self selected the poor and unemployed with nothing better to do and the tenor and ordering of the questions drove responses towards their desired results. It's interesting data, but abo
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Interesting)
when I first left the nest, I'd spent too much at the start of the month too, then not have any cash at the end...
Sure you did, and how long did it take you to figure out how much to spend on each item of your budget? This isn't rocket science, or at least it shouldn't be for kids getting a college degree. Neither is learning how to cook a simple, nutritious meal.
Re: (Score:2)
How long did it take me to figure out how to manage my budget.... I think I've pretty much figured it out after a few decades. I'm still not really satisfied. (Should I get a new computer this year, or wait another year? What will Intel and AMD do?)
OTOH, I was always relatively conservative financially. I've got a younger brother who's already been bankrupt, lived beyond his means, and is now trying to get me to give him more money. Again. And he's spent decades, owned and lost a business, held jobs a
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time "home economics" was a class in High School, but it was before my time (and we rode dinosaurs to class). Seems like it's time for a comeback!
* How to cook basic cheap meals
* How to balance a checkbook
* How to budget for a month
These were things I never learned in school, but it would sure have been nice to!
That's not what's going on here (Score:2)
In the past they wouldn't try to go to college, but nowadays you need a 4 year degree to get a $15/hr job thanks to offshoring and H1-Bs.
Re:That's not what's going on here (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm...I think quite a lot of plumbers, electricians, and AC repair folks would beg to differ with you, no college degree and money anywhere from high 5 figures to medium 6 figures.
Fewer and fewer people these days, know how to do much of anything for themselves these days. Home repairs and the like are beyond many, who may not even own tools really.
That maintenance service industry isn't soon to be replaced with H1-B's, and doesn't require tons of debt getting a college degree that does not translate into a higher paying job at the end.
We need to stop telling all young people that if you don't have an office job, you are a loser.
Re:That's not what's going on here (Score:5, Insightful)
Home repairs and the like are beyond many, who may not even own tools really.
This nails a big thing right here. It used to be important to men specifically to collect a diverse set of tools.
But a now infamous verge pc building video begins with a swiss army knife.
For millennial, a swiss army knife is now the important diverse set of tools. Not even a couple actual screwdrivers, let alone something like a hammer, saw, file, chisel, spanners, sockets, or wrenches....
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obesity is not necessarily an indication of wealth. It is an indication of eating stuff that is high in calories, and these are not necessarily the expensive foods. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Re: (Score:3)
Obesity is not necessarily an indication of wealth. It is an indication of eating stuff that is high in calories, and these are not necessarily the expensive foods. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Obese people can still be malnourished; but, it usually means they're not in fact starving.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, maybe this is why TFS doesn't talk about starvation at all. It talks about "having limited or uncertain access to food." instead.
Re:Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, maybe this is why TFS doesn't talk about starvation at all. It talks about "having limited or uncertain access to food." instead.
Indeed. You can fast for several days and not be hungry or starving (well maybe hungry on the first day, but it passes).
Re: (Score:2)
If you fast for several days, you may not be hungry, but you will be starving. It's a process. Your body is digesting itself. (If you're lucky, it's not the muscles digesting themselves.)
That said, it has been claimed in many centuries that periodic starvation is good for you. It has often been religiously enjoined.
Re: (Score:3)
You can fast for several days and not be hungry or starving (well maybe hungry on the first day, but it passes).
That was not my experience. I got hungrier, and more lethargic, every day that passed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
>Obesity is not necessarily an indication of wealth. It is an indication of eating stuff that is high in calories,
Nope. It's an indication that people are eating inflammatory foods that lead to hyperinsulemia - seed oils and sucrose mainly. The things that are hard to avoid when you are eating out. Calories in is controlled by hunger. The disregulation of hunger is what leads to excess calories being eaten and then sent to storage instead of increased energy availability.
This is the simple mistake of 195
Ramen and coke. (Score:5, Insightful)
First I suspect this can't be right. Ramen is pretty cheap. Frozen veggies are cheap. eggs are cheap. So you can get calories, protein and nutrition for cheap. You might however prefer to die or you might get a rash if that's all you eat. But as a baseline, it's there. So I find it very hard to imagine how (most) college students would be starving. Sure yes I can imagine all sorts of layers of poverty but half of college students? I need more convincing. Even if you must it prepared foods, you can find 2 pizzas (whole) for $5.
Now as for obesity. If all you eat is ramen then you are likely also to get fat. Especially if you also go for low complexity carbs like sodas.
Re: (Score:3)
For many college students they have shelter and education expenses covered and spend most of the rest of their money on insanely expensive text books. They are trying to make it through with maybe $100-$200/mo and they are kids so they have poor money management skills.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
What, colleges don't do meal plans where you come from?
And there are no used bookstores?
Seriously, if you can manage the college, you should be able to feed yourself....
And if worse comes to worst, there's always a...job. I worked my way through college. It wasn't that awful....
Re:Ramen and coke. (Score:4, Informative)
The dorms have meal plans, and are also more expensive to live in. So you don't live there.
The used bookstores don't carry the latest version of the text with the renumbered and restated problems. (Actually, I believe that these days they've gotten an even stronger lock in, something about a key to allow the homework to be submitted on-line...and the professors getting a kick-back for requiring that.)
The way college was when I went there isn't necessarily an accurate model for how it is today.
Re:Ramen and coke. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in awe of the charmed life college experiences that people on slashdot seemed to have had. When I went to college, almost everyone I knew was missing meals. If you lived on campus you were ok, because the college forced you to buy a meal plan that would cover you before you qualified for housing. It was an upfront cost, non refundable, and only worked for the cafeteria, which I would have sooner died of starvation than put that food in my body. NOBODY lived on campus though. The dorms were way more expensive and crappier than renting a house with 6 of your friends. Buddy of mine was paying basically 75 bucks a month rent because of that situation. But, there was no safety net, and nobody had money because the jobs you could hold down were paying $4.25 an hour at that time. 20 hours a month just for rent, tuition pretty much ate up the rest (state college, I want to say it was about 3g a semester for 21 hours, been a long time.) If you ate at all, you ate ramen almost exclusively, and being realistic, you drank the rest of your money away. Everybody was 18, so that was a part of life. I once had a friend who passed out in class because he didn't eat for a week just so he could take out a girl that he really liked that weekend.
Anyway, all of that is to say, yeah, if your parents paid for the dorm and the meal plan, I could see why you would be shocked by this. My limited experience decades ago, however, was MUCH different. Everyone I knew complained about not having food money at some point or another, so this doesn't surprise me at all.
Re:Ramen and coke. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's nuts, all these modpoints being spent.
A claim that college student's cant afford food consistently or in quality better than ramen is retorted with "Why don't they buy a $5,000 meal plan?"
Let them eat cake. Are there no orphanages, no workhouses? The whole damn site is a caricature of villainy today.
Re: (Score:3)
It didn't say they were starving but if you had to eat as described to get by you'd definitely count as "food insecure" and feel like you were on the teetering edge at the brink of starvation and rightfully so.
Also consider that requires some understanding of nutrition and cleverness to piece together. Consider that even if your average person can (and will) succeed in doing so that leaves at least half of them actually malnourished and/or starving and that is before you add in that these are children manag
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Poor people that can't be bothered to cook live on fake food loaded with chemicals designed to delay decay that adversely interact with human digestive system causing all kinds of problems.
And then you have sugar... everywhere, not to mention soft drinks that should be banned due to amount of sugar in them... and treated same as life threatening drugs.
Re: Starving and obese at the same time? (Score:2)
Obesity is poor peoples condition.
If that's actually true it's an amazing commentary on how far we have come as a species. It used to be that those who did not work would literally starve to death, those who worked the hardest were still scrawny and malnourished, and those who ruled were on the plump side. Now food is so plentiful that - according to you - those who do not work are the fattest, while the rest get progressively less fat as we work our way to the top. Literally no one is at risk of starvation. How amazing is that?
Why is this a contradiction? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The stories I looked at don't say which figure they are using for unemployment numbers, so I'm going to assume they aren't counting people who have been unemployed for over 3 months, or who have never yet landed a job.
Generally I always assume that the unemployment figures are "convenient statistical fabrications", which only escape being lies by carefully defining exactly in what sense the mean the words they use. And the popular reports leave out all those details. At https://www.bls.gov/news.relea... [bls.gov] lo
Re: (Score:3)
Food insecurity? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't have money food because you went drinking last weekend and have a packed bong at home, that doesn't count as food insecurity.
This sounds like leading questions were asked in a survey.
Re:Food insecurity? (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the Temple University PDF (the second link), a few things became clear:
1. The survey was sent out, but relied on self-reporting (self-returning?) by the students, so that could have a selection bias. I'd be willing to wager that students who were experiencing the issues asked about were more likely to return the survey than those that were not experiencing them.
2. The answers were interpreted in a vacuum - no context. There was no apparent attempt to fit the answers into a larger context, so it's impossible to even begin to determine the cause.
Without any larger context, it's just data, without any attempt at finding the cause. Could it be that the respondents budgeted poorly, and with proper budgeting, they could have avoided the insecurities asked about in the survey? Yes, surely possible. Is it also possible that respondents genuinely were experiencing these insecurities in circumstances beyond their control. But, based on the lack of other data in the survey itself, it's impossible to tell how much of which is true.
Re: (Score:3)
I worried whether my food would run out before I got money to buy more
The survey didn't ask whether they had enough money for food at the beginning of the week, month or semester, only whether the money was gone (for whatever reason) sooner than planned.
Money management is a useful skill, some people get it right away, some never do.
Re: (Score:3)
Money management is a useful skill, some people get it right away, some never do.
There's a current TV ad for one of the, well, I don't know what to call them. A company that will accept electronic deposits from employers and let people access the money via plastic. A woman complains that she used to run out of money two days before payday, but now she's getting paid two days earlier due to direct deposit and everything's great!
There's no mention of any change in spending habits necessary to make the money extend for 30 days instead of 28 (or whatever the specific lengths for her are),
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I allowed that. A survey was sent to me, asking "Should education become more expensive", and I checked the "yes" box.
Curse me for my sick fuckery!
Jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they should just get jobs instead.
Re:Jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you *can* work during college doesn't mean that it's optimal. I chose debt. Surrounded with like-minded people, I actually spent so-called free time working on self-guided projects and actually practicing what I was learning. Between that and class time, I'd have to actually eliminate some sleep (and therefore knowledge retention) by taking on a job. It's true that I ran a part-time computer repair business, but that was only a few hours a week at most.
There will never be a time in your life like college to get fully immersed in knowledge and have the resources to go as deep as you want to go.
Re: (Score:2)
So...you worked. I also had a business in college (web design and professor home computer repair) that covered a couple of grand each semester. It was under-the-table cash but I sure treated it as a serious job.
>> There will never be a time in your life like college to get fully immersed in knowledge and have the resources to go as deep as
Re:Jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
When I went to this college, less than 15 years ago, I worked full time on the night shift at the local Walmart, then did a full course load during the day. Sure, I didn't have much free time, but I always had plenty of food & graduated with minimal student loan debt.
The number of schools where you can keep up with tuition working night shift at Walmart is small and growing smaller.
If you have a part time job the college tells you (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If she's premed and doesn't have a 4.0 she's being badly served, has no chance of getting into an American med school.
That's just reality. Her advisor should be setting her up for a soft landing.
My dad taught premed students chem. He ended many a medical career by giving them a B.
MD is called the 'memorized degree' for a reason. They all just 'pound books' 100 hours/week. Some can only memorize, my dad considered it his job to kick those to the curb. Premed is not typical of most BA programs.
I graduated high-school around 220 lbs. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a bit chubby, but not super excessive, I had lots of muscle mass too.
I went back to visit at Christmas weighing in around 170ish. I was according to government charts still overweight, but according to ribs showing and eyes being a bit sunken not.
Yeah - working your way through college as a security guard will do that to you.
(fortunately I ceased being a security guard shortly before Christmas time)
I also learned how to drive my super efficient 95 1/2 Toyota Tacoma on a tank of gas for three weeks.
I learned to value a dollar, I learned to budget very well, and I learned to prioritize. I learned efficiency in all things. It was one of the best learning experiences I ever had. I'm going to argue at least a year of poverty during the "venture out" years is not such a bad thing. The school of hard knocks gives an excellent, valuable education.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
220lb is obese. Even 170lbs is pushing it. Americans don't know what hunger is, and are completely out of touch with reality. And yes, I am American.
Re: (Score:2)
220lb is obese. Even 170lbs is pushing it. Americans don't know what hunger is, and are completely out of touch with reality. And yes, I am American.
Whether or not some number is too much varies wildly by individual and how athletic they are. When I was in college I was lifting weights five days a week and was 200+ lbs with six pack abs (10% body fat). I'm only 5' 10''.
Statistics like BMI are pretty much useless when applied to individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm with you. BMX was my primary mode of transportation, even after getting the truck. My legs were so big around from muscle I couldn't even wear relaxed fit jeans my senior year of high school. I had to where full-on over-sized gangster jeans. Even with a little spare-tire, which I don't deny, my pants were too loose at the waste and bunched up under my belt. At 170 lbs with the muscle-mass I still had I was probably deficient in body fat, or right where I needed to be. I didn't lose the "base" of m
Re: (Score:3)
TIL muscles weigh nothing, and we must be devoted to the holy BMI.
(Please ignore that the people who live longest are mildly obese according to the chart.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At that time, I was chubby, but not obese, and I'll argue that for all time. I have pictures of me from that era I show off to people now and tell them "I was over 200 lbs when that picture was taken" and they don't believe me. Even now people under-guess my weight based on appearance. In fact an MRI operator looked at my height and weight and said I wouldn't fit in the machine, then he looked at me, asked me of the weight on the chart was right, because it had to be wrong. I said yes, he said "let's tr
Re: (Score:2)
Just because you are a weak shit doesn't mean nobody else can lift weights. As you obviously have no experience with a healthy muscle mass: muscles weight a lot.
My kid learned all those things (Score:5, Insightful)
My kid just got into her 300 level courses. There were 400+ qualified applicants and 200 slots. "Qualified" here means GPA 3.8 or higher. Most were 4.0 because if they got a 'B' in a course they retook it over summer to get an A, knowing that they'd have trouble competing if their GPA dropped. Even so my kid was interviewed in person for the "position" of getting into her "college", e.g. her 300 level courses. They asked her about how she was supported and if she had a car. The fact that she could answer her parents gave her money and yes, she had a new(ish) car factored heavily into their decisions to admit her.
If you're over 40 you experienced none of this. A GPA of 3.8 got you into your 300 levels and a 3.0 kept you there and graduated you. And no, this isn't because we started giving out loans, see here [fivethirtyeight.com]. We slashed education funding to make way for tax cuts because the H1-B Visa program means that the mega corps don't need to pay for home grown talent anymore.
Another way you know this is true is that tuition prices aren't even higher. If the colleges were just soaking up loan money then with 200 slots and 400 applicants they can and would just raise their prices. That's how capitalism works. Schools don't work that way because we fund them publicly and because teachers like to teach. So we have a situation where they interview kids to honestly determine which are the most likely to make it through the program, and that means poor kids need not apply.
Re: (Score:3)
You are repeating yourself. Your kid is premed. It's not remotely typical.
No kid should be allowed to stay in premed without a 4.0, as they have no chance of getting into medical school. They should not be allowed to declare the major without a 4.0.
IIRC there are about 8 qualified (4.0 GPA plus volunteering etc) premeds graduating for every medical school seat.
It's a scandal that so many resources and years are wasted.
You know the job you had (Score:3)
The previous admin declared war on schools that gave bogus degrees where they placed people in $10/hr jobs with no advancement opportunities. That's nothing like your school. Your school doesn't exist anymore. It went away when the jobs were automated and/or offshored. Obama tied attacked schools that were lying about their employment rates. That's who he declared war on. Scams. Nasty ones. Trump, otoh, brought all that back. He
Anecdotal Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
No meal plan? (Score:3)
Maybe I'm missing something (it happens once in a while), but when I went for my last two years of schooling there was a meal plan. Three meals every day, as much as you wanted to eat.
Anything else was on me which I took care of by working on weekends and when I went home. Even if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have starved since I had the meal plan.
Re: (Score:2)
I knew people who would get these meal plans but then didn't want the cafeteria foods. People who would let someone use their card for the food in exchange for like $5 because they wanted to go to Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, or McDonald's.
Well... that, and go buy alcohol instead.
Which makes me wonder how many students in this report that talk about studying are also spending money on fast food instead of cheaper stuff at the grocery store? How many spent it buying alcohol? How many spent it on drugs?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I'm missing something (it happens once in a while), but when I went for my last two years of schooling there was a meal plan. Three meals every day, as much as you wanted to eat.
If they're going to a community college (largely commuters), there is no meal plan for those students. Having formerly taught at a community college, I know a lot of the students were lower income.
Re: (Score:2)
True, and I went to community college my first two years before moving on. I worked a full-time job and paid my own way. Also, there was still a cafeteria on-site.
Yes, I was living with my parents, so that helped, but all the costs were borne by me.
I'm not saying there aren't those who do need help, I'm only saying something is missing from this story.
Re: (Score:2)
I always found that meal plan to be ridiculous on the opposite end; I took the cheapest option available, which was something like two buffet meals a day and 5k in campus spending.
At the end of my first term, I brought home 4k worth of aluminum foil because it was one of the few things that was being sold at an acceptable markup.
Nothing new... (Score:2)
"Food insecurity"? (Score:3, Insightful)
These are all examples of food insecurity, the state of having limited or uncertain access to food.
What's with these inane euphemisms? Uncertain access to food? What, did the shop run out or close early? No, people in drought-stricken regions with failing harvests and an economy that has crapped out, those people have "uncertain access to food". What you have in NY is 100% guaranteed 24/7 access to food... though you may not be able to afford any. Call it that, then: you're poor, hard up for cash, or whatever. But you don't have "food insecurity"
Everyone's a victim .... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but this just reads like another in a LONG stream of "Woe is me!" stories of late, about all the people suffering because the current state of our economy makes their survival SO difficult.
Here's the thing: I have a friend in the health insurance business who regularly visits area food pantries, trying to catch people who just reached the age where they can sign up for Medicare. The one thing she consistently talks about is how much donated food goes to waste because they receive more than they can give away.
If you're really a starving college student with low income so you can't afford meals? You certainly qualify to pick up free groceries from practically any area food bank or pantry. Lots of area churches have these, and won't even ask many questions. You say you need it, and it's yours! And this stuff isn't just the stereotypical "canned lima beans" that people rejected while cleaning out their kitchen pantries at home! A lot of food is nice, even high end stuff, from area grocery stores who love giving away surpluses so they can get full tax write-offs on it. At least one place my friend visits has a big selection of fresh fruits and vegetables that looks like a farmer's market, because those are the people dropping it off for them!
I really think a lot of this is like others are saying here, though: Poor financial planning and no self-control on spending/saving.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you're really a starving college student with low income so you can't afford meals? You certainly qualify to pick up free groceries from practically any area food bank or pantry.
True, but if you are a middle class kid living on your own for the first time in your life, that is probably not something your parents have taught you or is in your mind. Even if it was, there are pride issues and some people won't. Just living on your own with a budget for food is probably not something that has been worked out for most people to the point of being good at it. I certainly had a time in college where there was lots of ramen all the time. Luckily, it was more of ramen plus whatever was in t
Re: (Score:3)
By this logic there is nobody hungry in the world. There is food going to waste, so how could anyone being hungry? The problem is the same old one: the food being wasted is not in front of the hungry people. A lot of things that are simple for you are harder for poor people; they can't drive across town to go to the food pantry, they may not have time between jobs.
As for the students' bad financial planning and no self-control, it's not really a negatable proposition if you're arguing from anecdotal evid
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Question Methodology... (Score:2)
I always have to question how this research is performed; when I was in elementary school, I was flagged low income and questioned by whatever child protection services was called at the time because how I answered questions as they were asked:
Do I know where my next meal is coming from? No, but it's probably from either the pantry or the fridge. Maybe from the garden.
Did I eat breakfast today? No, but I also wake up like five minutes before I need to be out the door.
Do I often wonder what my next meal is?
the student loans can take on an unlimited meal pl (Score:2)
the student loans can take on an unlimited meal plan to fix this.
From the 'Could-Have-Seen-This-Coming' Department (Score:3)
An undergraduate at New York University said he has been so delirious from hunger, he's caught himself walking down the street not realizing where he's going.
...where you signed up for a $50k+ annual tuition. Seriously, why are you going to this school if you know you can't afford it? The current tuition at the university I graduated from? $7k. And this is in California, not a low-cost area of the US.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Foods" like that is the reason students are sometimes diagnosed with scurvy and similar...
Re:Food insecure... (Score:5, Insightful)
College is not the right thing for everybody. Everyone should weigh their options individually and decide what works for them. Financial means is absolutely one component of what works.
So... you're saying that college and higher education -- that most-reliable leg up in the modern world, the key to getting ahead -- should be reserved for the wealthy? It sounds like you're saying, "If you're poor, you deserve to stay poor regardless of your actual potential?"
No thanks. I do not wish to subscribe to your newsletter or world-view.
We should look at this problem differently: how can we make sure people have the opportunity to rise to their potential, including finding ways to re-measure their potential over time so we don't let people fall off the wagon and leave them in the gutter, so to speak. People change, make mistakes, or get missed by the system, but those should never be reasons to write them off completely, either.
Making public colleges and universities tuition-free and housing-free for demonstrably good performance is a key component in that.
The world is facing some huge problems, larger than we've ever faced before. We don't have time to play games with racism, nationalism, or wealthism. We need to get the smartest and most capable people working on our shared, global problems now, regardless of where they come from.
Re: (Score:3)
Making public colleges and universities tuition-free and housing-free for demonstrably good performance is a key component in that.
Except that isn't what actually happens when utopians gain control.
That's how programs are sold, but if it were really based on "demonstrably good performance" then it wouldn't result in the desired demographics.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you really feel those who can't budget for food come anywhere near the smartest and most capable?
Why do you assume that this is a budgeting problem? Not having enough food is generally a cash flow problem, not a budgeting problem. Organisms, human and otherwise, don't willingly forgo food without a damn good reason. Nearly everything else becomes secondary to satisfying hunger because your continued survival depends on it. It's not on the same level as a new X-Box.
College is expensive, and yet people are making a decision that education is as important as food, if not more so. Given the differen
Re: (Score:2)
Explain Bill Gates or Sam Walton
Easy. Both were wealthy before they built their respective empires. Gates' family were already millionaires, and he dropped out of Harvard, not some community college, to start Microsoft. Walton's father worked for a bank, foreclosing on farms during the Great Depression.
I don't deny that they were both driven, highly-effective individuals that created fantastically lucrative companies with a bevy of like-minded, and similarly-driven, people. However, neither started from rock-bottom poverty. They bot
Re: (Score:3)
Old phones are really cheap.
Prepaid wireless plans can be cheap.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Ironically, they are called ObamaPhones, and Obama gets credit..... For a program that was started under Reagan, ramped up under Bush, and extended to cell phones by Clinton.....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Obama removed all oversight and it became a big old scam. Poor people would throw away old 'Obama phones' with six free months left and just get another.
The scammers where hanging around discount stores offering free phones on the spot for anybody attached to any sort of government tit. Because they were earning a decent commish handing out free phones and nobody was checking.
Re: (Score:3)
And you think that means they have MORE money? That is why they are going hungry.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can afford $54k in tuition you can afford food. Ridiculous.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)