The entrance to the Pitt Pantry on July 8, 2025, in Oakland. (Photo by Caleb Kaufman/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
Trump-backed legislation aims to restrict nutritional aid and push costs on states, countering efforts to connect food-insecure students to benefits.
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Twice a month, Teona Hall grocery shops for her family.
Walmart is her store of choice, offering the best “bang for your buck,” she said. The mother of four receives $745 in funds through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to buy food. She sticks to what’s needed, limiting snacks and non-necessities, but still sometimes finds herself exceeding the amount given and has to pay out of pocket.
“It’s barely enough.”
Hall, 39, is a social work student at the Community College of Allegheny County. After graduating, she plans to transfer to Carlow University to get a bachelor’s degree. She’s not currently working to allow herself time to finish school while also parenting.
For now, she relies on government aid to make ends meet — something she doesn’t want to have to do for long.
“I don’t plan on being on government assistance my whole life,” Hall said. “I don’t want my children to have to rely on government assistance. That’s why I’m going to school and I’m trying to make things better.”
A reduction or elimination of SNAP benefits would make her path to self-reliance more difficult, she said.
The passage of President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” has put federal programs like Medicaid and SNAP into the spotlight, as the law brings historic cuts to each.
By the numbers
- 1.9 million Pennsylvanians are SNAP recipients
- 143,000 Pennsylvanians are expected to lose SNAP benefits
- 164,300 Allegheny County residents are SNAP recipients
- 13,500 Allegheny County residents are estimated to lose SNAP benefits
Source: Pennsylvania Department of Human Services
The bill ushers in new work requirements for non-disabled adults up to 64 and stricter exemptions. It also modifies the funding model for the program, shifting a larger portion of costs to the states — a change that would require Pennsylvania to come up with at least $320 million, which Gov. Josh Shapiro recently said the state couldn’t sustain.
“There’s a real question as to whether or not we’d even be able to operate SNAP any longer,” Shapiro said during a June 30 press conference.
Nearly 2 million people in the state use SNAP, a portion of whom are college students, like Hall. For them, keeping benefits could determine whether they make it to graduation, leaving local universities and partner organizations to figure out new ways to support them.
“I don’t plan on being on government assistance my whole life. I don’t want my children to have to rely on government assistance. That’s why I’m going to school and I’m trying to make things better.”
Teona Hall
To qualify for SNAP, college students must meet general SNAP requirements, not have a meal plan and meet at least one student exemption, such as participating in a work-study program or caring for a child up to 11 years old.
The bill didn’t address requirements specific to college students, but some higher education advocates believe the changes made will make receiving benefits harder for them. Proponents of the bill argued that the changes to the program will help reduce fraud and abuse of the benefits. The national average error rate — which counts under and overpayments — was 10.93% in 2024, which SNAP proponents say is minimal and not evidence of fraud.
“While it might not be apparent that SNAP for college students is connected to all this, it really is,” said Owen Tanner-Flomberg, of the national group Student Basic Needs Coalition.
Bridging the SNAP gap
The difference between the number of people eligible for SNAP benefits and the number who receive them is referred to as the “SNAP gap.” The national gap is around 18% — but for college students, it’s 67%, according to the Government Accountability Office [GAO].
Closing that gap has been the primary focus for the coalition. Tanner-Flomberg, its co-founder and co-executive director, said since February, the group has connected students nationwide to almost $20 million in potential SNAP benefits through their eligibility screening tool. In Pennsylvania, they’ve connected students to around $250,000.
This fiscal year, which began for the group on July 1, they intend to match students with $100 million in potential benefits. Tanner-Flomberg, though, is worried the bill’s passage will affect that goal by complicating the eligibility and application process.
“People are not just handed a check each month or money on their EBT card each month. There’s a lot of verification that gets put into the process,” Tanner-Flomberg said.
To change the process, he said, at a time of “serious seismic shifts” in the economy, with continued advancements in AI and technology disrupting the job market, would be a disinvestment in the country’s future.
“Leadership in Congress right now, while they say they may care about students from lower-income and marginalized backgrounds to get to school and through school, I think that this ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ clearly shows that they truly are not interested.”
Colleen Young, director of government affairs for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, said the organization was in regular contact with federal and state officials before the bill’s passage, asking them to “really understand the impact that these SNAP cuts would have on our neighbors.”
The food bank distributed 50 million meals — including to colleges and universities in the region — during the fiscal year ending June 30. Young said the food bank wouldn’t be able to make up the difference left by cuts to SNAP, given the “very significant increase” in food insecurity they’re expecting.
‘If people are hungry, they’re not learning’
“What people don’t know is that students actually have a much higher food insecurity rate than the surrounding community does … I think we just sort of forget about them,” said Heather Starr Fiedler, a community engagement director and professor at Point Park University.
The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University found that 41% of students across 91 institutions experienced food insecurity during the 2023-24 school year.
In the last decade, the conversation around food insecurity among students has emerged as an important issue on campuses, Starr Fiedler said.
“We’re educating people, and if people are hungry, they’re not learning.”
Eight colleges and universities in the Pittsburgh area partner with the food bank to offer free on-campus food pantries for students to utilize, including Point Park, the Community College of Allegheny County [CCAC] and the University of Pittsburgh.
Starr Fiedler said use of Point Park’s pantry has “probably quadrupled” in the last year because of a change from an order-only to a walk-in format. However, she isn’t sure if the increasing demand is because more students are food insecure or more students are comfortable taking advantage of the resources available to them.
Megumi Barclay, a student coordinator at the Pitt Pantry, said there’s a stigma associated with going to the pantry. Though her parents help financially, Barclay found herself living alone for the first time last summer while working an unpaid internship. To save money, she would stop by the pantry before going to the grocery store.
After her experience using the pantry, she began promoting it to other students. A friend once told her the pantry was for “people with food insecurity,” to which she replied, “Well, I mean, we are students with no formal income and we’re paying tuition out of pocket — we also do qualify under that.”
In April, a group of Pitt students conducted a small survey on campus around SNAP benefits awareness and barriers to access. They found many of the respondents were deterred from looking into the program for themselves, out of the assumption that they wouldn’t qualify.
Of the 52 respondents, 49 felt there wasn’t enough information about SNAP around campus. This is something Sarah Ramaley, Pitt’s assistant director of basic needs, has been working on for the last two years.
“We’ve had a conscious effort of tabling more, posting flyers, putting [things] on our pantry Instagram, as well as partnering with different departments on campus,” she said.
Students can either be referred to Pitt’s care and resource support office by a faculty member or refer themselves to see if they’re eligible for SNAP benefits. If they are, Ramaley said she or another staff member will walk through the application with them.
If SNAP is cut, she said the university’s plan is to build out a “diverse network of resources,” so students never feel “they only have one option.”
A ‘trickle-down effect’
With more stress on the food banks that provide for campuses, colleges may have to alter their methods of direct support for students experiencing food insecurity.
Starr Fiedler mentioned that cuts would have a “trickle-down effect” and impact universities’ ability to educate students about SNAP eligibility.
Point Park has previously held workshops for students about receiving benefits and would like to continue doing so, she said. But with the state shouldering more of the costs for the program, she warned that application processing time could increase.
“We’re definitely going to need to be nimble about what that looks like for us in the fall,” Starr Fiedler said.
At CCAC, 30% to 40% of students experience some form of basic needs insecurity during enrollment. To address this, the college provides programs like Keystone Education Yields Success [KEYS], which was developed by the state Department of Human Services.
The program assists some SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] recipients attending community colleges with anything from purchasing books to transportation costs.
Hall, who is a part of the program, called it a “safe place.”
“To have someone who actually cares when you’re a caregiver and you’re giving yourself daily … is such a blessing,” she said.
There are 80 students involved in the program, according to Dorothy Collins, the college’s vice president of enrollment services and student affairs. This is double the number involved last year, something she said the college worked hard to accomplish.
SNAP cuts could potentially affect the number of students who can participate in KEYS, or lead to a shuttering of KEYS entirely. Collins said cuts would be problematic for the college, but she’s hopeful that the college could meet students’ needs regardless.
“We’re going to be out there fighting to save SNAP as much as we can … and then we’re going to look at where we can expand more to be able to help and serve those people,” she said. “They made this their endeavor, and we want them to be able to reach that endeavor.”
Hall recently received notice that she’s reached the halfway mark in earning her associate’s degree. Though she’s looking forward to finishing, she tries not to think about the end. After all, things could change at a moment’s notice, so for now, she’s taking things day by day.
“I just keep going.”
Maddy Franklin reports on higher ed for Pittsburgh’s Public Source, in partnership with Open Campus, and can be reached at madison@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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