When Care Isn’t Enough - Scaling Emergency Aid During the Pandemic - Sara Goldrick-Rab et al. - October 2021

Oct 15, 2026

Emergency aid during the COVID-19 pandemic became a critical mechanism for colleges and universities as students faced urgent hardship while institutional funds rapidly depleted. The report examines why the federal financial aid system often leaves students with unmet need, highlighting structural design flaws that worsen inequality. It details how institutions responded at scale through flexible emergency funding streams, triage-style processes, and improved access and timing, using survey and focus-group input to inform future student support.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages27

Reading Time1 h 8 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Why Students Need Emergency Aid

Connecting Students to Emergency Aid

When Care Isn’t Enough: Scaling Emergency Aid During the Pandemic Sara Goldrick-Rab, Nicole L. Hacker, Gregory Kienzl, Derek V. Price, & Drew Curtis October 2021 INTRODUCTION 1 Your phone rings. It’s an emergency affecting someone you care about, maybe even someone you love. What do you do? In our hyperconnected society, words can be deployed glibly or disingenuously in an instant, but the word emergency is one we still take seriously. It conveys immediacy and a need for action. It compels us to act rapidly, whether we have the necessary resources or a comprehensive plan, simply to signal that help is on the way. As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged communities, cities, and countries in 2020, colleges and universities faced a unique emergency. Millions of students were struggling to meet their basic needs, and institutional emergency aid funds were rapidly running out. For the first time in history, Congress responded by authorizing billions of dollars in emergency aid to try and quickly alleviate hardships. Legislators created a separate funding stream, distinct from standard financial aid programs that required extensive means-testing and other red tape. Their goal was to act decisively and to allow flexibility, responses consistent with the urgent demands of an emergency. Colleges and universities shared that desire, but their challenges were unprecedented, in both scope and scale. Effective emergency response requires agility, capacity, and speed. No institution had ever developed a plan for anything of the magnitude of the crisis confronting them. Addressing a few emergencies a week might have been possible with pre-pandemic approaches, but addressing hundreds a day was not. “We were running a triage operation 24 hours a day. We had to assess, determine, distribute emergency aid based on a student’s needs and timetables. Sometimes emergencies came up at night or on a Saturday, and we had to adjust to meet those needs. This is what we signed up for and this is who we serve.” This report shows how colleges and universities met the challenge, drawing on a year of surveys and focus groups, fielded and conducted by The Hope Center and DVP-Praxis, that reflect the views of institutional leaders and students from coast to coast. The results offer valuable insights that should shape the future of emergency aid and student support. While the onset of the pandemic was unprecedented, its ongoing health concerns and the looming consequences of climate change ensure that knowing how to deliver emergency aid at scale will be essential to the well-being of future students. With these lessons in mind, we can all be better prepared and ready to respond. “I don’t think emergency aid will be going away. Students will continue to have these problems.” Why Students Need Emergency Aid The federal financial aid system’s many shortcomings have long frustrated—and often failed—both students and colleges. Structural flaws pervade the design of the system, the allocation of need, and the delivery of funds, all of which exacerbate inequality. As a result, nearly three in four students have unmet need.1 This group includes community college students, where the average price after grants now exceeds $8,000 a year.2 Even Pell Grant recipients—who are supposed to have all their needs met through federal aid—often don’t have enough to pay for food and housing.3 2 These systemic inequities weigh most heavily on structurally minoritized students who already experience the highest rates of basic needs insecurity and carry the largest amount of student debt.4 The problems include: • Cost of living: The true cost of living during college, even when determined by net price calculators, is often just plain wrong. For example, students who live at home, around one-quarter of all students, are assumed to have few, if any, expenses.5 • Needs assessment: The Expected Family Contribution (EFC) often overestimates students’ resources, a

FAQs

Why was emergency aid necessary for students during the pandemic?

Millions of students struggled to meet basic needs in 2020 while institutional emergency aid funds were running out. The federal aid system also had shortcomings that left many students with unmet need.

What shortcomings affected students’ access to federal financial aid?

The report describes structural flaws in how need is allocated and funds are delivered, including issues with cost-of-living estimates, the Expected Family Contribution, and administrative burdens tied to FAFSA completion, verification, and conditional eligibility.

How did colleges and universities scale emergency aid during the crisis?

Institutions used flexible emergency funding streams and built rapid response processes, including assessing and distributing aid based on students’ needs and timetables. The report draws on surveys and focus groups to capture institutional and student perspectives across the country.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Sophia Brooks