#RealCollegeTX Kickoff - Basic Needs

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FOR BASIC NEEDS SECURITY ECOSYSTEMS

TEXAS, 2021-22

The COVID-19 pandemic brought new and heightened challenges when it comes to students’ basic needs, and especially their need for support with emergency aid and related services. These services will address basic needs insecurity, particularly food and housing insecurity and homelessness, among undergraduates.  Basic needs insecurity is a key equity challenge reducing the odds of completion, with disproportionate impacts on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and low-income students.  Institutions seek to address basic needs insecurity in order to promote equity, maintain enrollment, and promote college attainment.  We will support building capacity in the areas of advising, emergency aid, institutional research, institutional policy, and state policy to advance an ecosystem of support for students’ basic needs.

KEY OBJECTIVES

To address students’ basic needs institutions must develop an ecosystem of support for those needs. The Hope Center outlines a theory of change leading to such an ecosystem here. As part of this initiative, institutions will build capacity in five areas:

  1. Institutions will learn how to assess students’ basic needs.
  2. Institutions will learn how to analyze basic needs data in ways that connect the dots to students’ academic performance.
  3. Institutions will understand basic needs security as integral to the institution’s financial support and advising work with all students, and know how to implement key practices equitably. This also includes informing decisions about how federal stimulus funds for student support services, including emergency aid, will be deployed. Those practices include:
    1. Financial aid (Title IV)
    2. Emergency aid (non-Title IV)
    3. Public benefits access
  4. Institutions will map the student experience of accessing basic needs support services, and how they can assess the extent to which their internal communications/processes support inter-departmental collaboration and alignment in racially equitable ways to meet students’ basic needs.
  5. Institutions will understand their role in advocating for improved state and federal policies to support students’ basic needs security.