When College Students Need Food Pantries More Than Textbooks - Emily Deruy, the Atlantic

Universities are discovering that keeping low-income students in school takes more than financial aid. As a more racially and socioeconomically diverse body of students pursues college in the United States, schools find themselves responding to more requests to stock food pantries and hand out vouchers for supplies at campus bookstores. Universities have different reasons for offering students emergency help when things go wrong unexpectedly. Some of them are humanitarian. But, as a new report from NASPA: Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education points out, many colleges are creating emergency-aid programs in part to increase graduation rates, particularly among first-generation, low-income students, and students of color, who make up a growing number of college goers but often drop out at higher rates than their white and affluent peers. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/when-college-students-need-food-pantries-more-than-textbooks/490607/