We’re excited to bring you Crystal Clear: A Vision for the Future of California Higher Ed, a Degrees of Change podcast season marking our organization’s 15th anniversary—our crystal anniversary.
This season celebrates that milestone by bringing together diverse voices to reflect on where we’ve been, where we are now, and, most importantly, what’s needed for California’s next chapter.
In this episode, we’re bringing clarity to basic needs, an issue at the very foundation of student success. When students lack stable housing, consistent access to food, or affordable child care, academic success becomes exponentially harder.
To dig into what the research tells us, we’re joined by Dr. Rashida Crutchfield, professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach, and executive director of the Center for Equitable Higher Education. Dr. Crutchfield’s research has helped launch a basic needs movement in higher education, shaping policy at the state and national level.
She also serves on the advisory board for the California Alliance for Streamlining Public Investments and Resources for Every Student (California ASPIRES), a coalition California Competes recently launched to streamline public benefits for student success.
This conversation builds on our previous episode, Aligning Education and Workforce with Paul Fain, which touched on growing momentum to support students’ basic needs.
The following includes excerpts from a conversation on March 26, 2026. For the full conversation, listen to the podcast on your preferred platform.
Su Jin: Your work on this issue began long before the headlines about student basic needs insecurity. What drew you to this issue, and what feels most different today compared to where we were five or ten years ago?
Dr. Crutchfield: This work started when I was working at Covenant House California, a national organization that serves youth experiencing homelessness. I was working in Hollywood with young people living in the shelter and transitional housing, and some of our residents were going to college. Occasionally, they would encounter difficulties in the college environment. Not because they were homeless, but because those institutions weren’t prepared for them.
We had a resident who had gone to register for classes and was stopped in the financial aid office. They needed her parents’ tax information. When she explained that she was experiencing homelessness, the person she spoke with said, “You don’t look homeless. You’re probably just fighting with your parents. Get those tax forms and come back next semester.” She came back to the shelter distraught.
There was a nun [at Covenant House] who went to the school and advocated for that student. That experience made me think: what happens for people who don’t have someone like that in their corner? I became deeply interested in the experience of navigating college while experiencing homelessness, and ultimately wrote my dissertation interviewing students who were doing both.
What’s changed since then is significant. At the time, the students in my research had no policy protecting them at either the state or federal level. When I was presenting my work at conferences, people told me, “This isn’t a higher education issue. We don’t have homelessness on our campuses.” They were picturing a stereotype, and they couldn’t see our students at all.
Nearly twenty years later, we know that students experience homelessness. We’ve moved away from the “starving student” narrative that normalizes struggle as part of the college experience. The landscape [and] the narrative are very different and the policies that go with that narrative are emerging. We still have a long way to go, but the fact that we can identify the issue and see students as whole people—that’s a huge difference.
“We still have a long way to go, but the fact that we can identify the issue and see students as whole people—that’s a huge difference.”
Su Jin: How do you respond to people who still see college students’ basic needs insecurity as normal? What’s at stake when we treat meeting those needs as optional rather than essential?
Dr. Crutchfield: I hear that quite a lot, and I try to approach it with kindness. Many people who say this are my age or older and lived a different experience. I worked during college and ate my fair share of instant noodles or rice. But there’s a meaningful misconception about who today’s college student actually is.
Our students are often not coming straight from high school with family financial support. And even for those who are, the economics are fundamentally different. In previous generations, you could work part-time, go to school full-time, and still manage, especially with a small cushion or parents who could help in a pinch. But in California today, the real costs of housing, food, and childcare have exploded. Meeting those needs while going to college is a completely different experience. Working a part-time job doesn’t close that gap the way it once might have.
Su Jin: And even when money isn’t the only issue, the nature of shift work has changed so much that scheduling around a class schedule has become its own challenge.
Dr. Crutchfield: I was once in a conversation with someone who said, “Kids these days feel too good to work at McDonald’s.” And I said, “Who do you think is working at McDonald’s right now?” It’s largely adults trying to make a living. The competitive reality of the job market is different than it was before.
In general, an apathy about higher education sometimes assumes only privileged people are in school, when that’s not the case. One of the dangers of thinking this way is that we don’t see higher education as an investment in our own communities. And it really is. When we ensure students have access to higher education, they also have access to what still is the biggest driver of economic mobility. When we don’t surround them with what they need to succeed, we stagnate them—and, in doing so, we stagnate our communities too.
“When we don’t surround [students] with what they need to succeed, we stagnate them—and, in doing so, we stagnate our communities too.”
Su Jin: You’ve seen many approaches to basic needs support across campuses—food pantries, emergency grants, housing programs. What’s working at scale, and what does it take to move from short-term interventions to sustainable, systemic solutions? And to be clear, we need short-term interventions, but we need a lot more sustainable, systemic solutions.
Dr. Crutchfield: We need a menu of options, because what works for one student won’t work for another, and the challenges exist on a spectrum. The experience of someone facing chronic homelessness is different from someone who is managing [but may be] trying to get food more than once a day.
Short-term interventions like food pantries, temporary housing, and emergency grants can be genuinely helpful. If a student is generally okay but a car breakdown creates a cascading crisis that threatens their ability to get to work and school, a one-time grant can be exactly what keeps them on track. But if a student is living in their car, a single thousand-dollar investment is not going to change their trajectory.
Addressing homelessness meaningfully requires deep, sustained, collaborative investment. One model that demonstrates this is College-Focused Rapid Rehousing, a state-funded program that distributes resources across the CSU, UC, and California Community Colleges. The model, developed by Jovenes Inc., links higher education institutions with community-based housing organizations, acknowledging two important realities: higher ed is not an expert on housing, and community-based housing services often don’t see college students as their clients. There has been this gap—this void in the middle—where students often fall.
College-Focused Rapid Rehousing bridges that gap. Colleges identify students experiencing homelessness, and then work hand-in-hand with community organizations to house those students, subsidize rent, and provide wraparound services. The Center for Equitable Higher Education led a three-year evaluation of that program, and one of the most striking findings was this: students who were housed through College-Focused Rapid Rehousing were more likely to be retained and graduate than students who had never experienced homelessness at all.
It’s an expensive model. But to address homelessness, we have to make those kinds of deep investments.
Su Jin: There’s growing recognition that student basic needs can’t be solved by higher education alone. What does a coordinated, cross-sector system that centers student needs actually look like, and who needs to be at the table?
Dr. Crutchfield: I think the California ASPIRES effort is a real model for this. When we think about how to support students, every player—higher ed institutions, advocacy organizations, community-based agencies, legislators—has to recognize that none of us can do this alone. Just as higher education had to learn to see students as whole people deserving of wraparound supports, community organizations need that same shift in perspective.
That kind of coordination requires genuine relationship-building with counties, with state agencies, with service providers. Those collaborations don’t happen passively. They take time and intentional investment. But when they work, the results matter. When we can make applying for CalFresh straightforward and accessible, it benefits the student, the institution, and the broader community. When legislators, practitioners, and students themselves are at the table, we can begin to connect services in ways that actually function.
“When we think about how to support students, every player—higher ed institutions, advocacy organizations, community-based agencies, legislators—has to recognize that none of us can do this alone.”
Su Jin: I want to zoom back in on housing for a moment. You’re working with California Competes on our Higher Ed Research Informing Solutions for Excellence (Higher Ed RISE) initiative to research perceptions of college affordability and housing, and how those perceptions influence the decision to enroll. Why is understanding those perceptions so important, and what are they telling us about barriers to college today?
Dr. Crutchfield: Many higher education institutions are seeing enrollment challenges across the country. I think there are many reasons for that, but among them is the cost-benefit analysis students make when considering higher education.
I believe student basic needs are student human rights. Students shouldn’t have to sacrifice their housing and well-being in order to make themselves marketable or participate in the kind of learning and community that college offers. But when students are deciding whether they can afford to enroll, they have to think about the full picture for themselves and for their families.
The Center for Equitable Higher Education did research with three public higher education student government organizations to examine how students actually think about affordable housing. What we found was this: students are not looking for plush apartments. Students really want to be housed. They want a safe place to stay. And if they can’t afford their housing, then they can’t afford college.
Institutions establish a cost of attendance that’s meant to tell students what it will cost to attend. But those figures often don’t reflect what it actually costs to rent an apartment, even with several roommates, in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or San Diego. Housing is wildly expensive. Making sure that how we list the cost of attendance actually allows students to get the financial aid they need to attend school is so important.
“Students really want to be housed. They want a safe place to stay. And if they can’t afford their housing, then they can’t afford college.”
Su Jin: We named this season Crystal Clear because we’re trying to cut through complexity to reveal what’s really needed to strengthen California’s future. When it comes to basic needs in higher education, what’s the biggest misconception or myth you’d like to clear up? What do people just get wrong?
Dr. Crutchfield: The one I hear most often is: “These students just need to get a job.” The assumption is that if students would simply work, they’d be fine.
I want people to understand that I’ve spoken with literally thousands of students and almost all of them have at least one job. Many have two. Some are working three jobs while enrolled. Our students are hustling to make this work.
We also have to stop requiring students to prove their poverty in order to access support. There’s a reflex in these conversations to assume that people are gaming the system, but what I actually see is the opposite. Students consistently tell me they’re not accessing services because they feel someone else might need them more. I’ve had students tell me they eat once a day and sleep in their car, and in the same breath say, “Well, I have a car, and someone else might not have a car.” When I reflect that back to students and ask what they would tell a friend in the same situation, they immediately list every resource they should access. And then I ask: so how does that work for you?
Our students are suffering in silence. They don’t feel seen. They’re doing everything they know how to get to graduation. Our students are ourselves. I think if we can understand that better at the root, then we can understand our roles inside and outside of education to support their basic needs.
“Our students are ourselves. I think if we can understand that better at the root, then we can understand our roles inside and outside of education to support their basic needs.”
Su Jin: Looking ahead, what’s your vision for how colleges and the broader system should support students’ basic needs? And what’s most critical for making that vision a reality in California?
Dr. Crutchfield: One of the things that I really enjoy when I get to talk to you is that you have this optimism that I so appreciate, because sometimes I get deep in the weeds and think, “Oh, we’ve got so much work to do.” And we do, but I can still have that optimism that I get from you.
Right now, many of us, broadly speaking, are in a scarcity mindset. And when we fear scarcity, we tend to hoard, close ranks, and sometimes compete with each other for resources. I think that’s a mistake. I actually see this moment as an opportunity to affirm what we’ve built and to hold onto it: the recognition that basic needs are an essential part of the higher education experience.
For too long, some people have operated from the belief that college is what happens inside the classroom. But nothing that happens inside the classroom is isolated from what’s happening in students’ lives. When we—academically and legislatively—draw those worlds together, students get what they need.
The scarcity mindset also pushes us toward width over depth in how we measure impact. We risk choosing many small grants over deeper investments, because we can report having reached more people. But if that approach isn’t garnering the outcomes we need, then that’s not effective.
My vision is that students have streamlined, barrier-free access to the full range of services that support their stability and success. That higher education functions as an ecosystem connected to counties, community organizations, and the state legislature where each player understands their role in supporting students as whole beings.
“Nothing that happens inside the classroom is isolated from what’s happening in students’ lives.”
Su Jin: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you think people need to understand about student basic needs?
Dr. Crutchfield: We’ve had significant investment in basic needs from the state, private foundations, and institutions themselves. That direct support to students is critical. But the less glamorous investment, evaluation and research, is essential. We might build programs because they feel or seem right. But if we don’t measure whether they’re working, we have no idea whether they’re actually doing what we intend.
And when we build programs that don’t serve what students actually need, they stop coming. Then the narrative becomes: “Well, we tried,” without asking whether the program fit what students needed in the first place. When you teach people that your services won’t meet their needs, you lose their trust—and that trust is very hard to rebuild.
A strong example of evaluation done well is the HOPE Scholars program at Rio Hondo College. They worked with Whittier College to house students in available campus beds, and built a deep web of connections across student services to ensure warm handoffs for students. Instead of “go check out EOPS,” someone in student services might say, “I’m going to introduce you to Aaron in EOPS and she’s expecting you right now.” The assessment we did with them surfaced what was working so they could lean into it and deepen their investment in the right places.
“That direct support to students is critical. But the less glamorous investment, evaluation and research, is essential.”
Su Jin: Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your work and your leadership. and making non higher ed communities aware that the folks that they’re serving are also college students.
