About NCCSen
The National Coalition for College Student Essential Needs (NCCSEN) is a national coordinated effort, centering students' essential needs, that is changing cultures, narratives, policies, and systems. We advance research, policy, advocacy, narrative change, and student engagement to address basic needs insecurity, food and housing insecurity, expand access to resources, public benefits and financial aid, and build a higher education system where every student can thrive.
Our Story
Originally convened by a group of advocates after the 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health as a strategy group to coordinate across several federal policy areas related to student basic needs, NCCSEN has grown into a wide-ranging and diverse coalition that serves as the primary forum to collaborate on policies, practices, and strategies to improve student hunger and other forms of basic needs insecurity, expand and simplify access to public and tax benefits, invest in financial and emergency aid, and enact policies to address the full cost of higher education, especially non-tuition burdens that often cause students to drop out or take on unmanageable student loan debt.
The coalition provides regular policy updates, recommendations & coalition letters, and guidance across a range of areas.
Since its inception,NCCSEN has expanded to include several subcommittees designed to expand the movement to address students’ essential needs and well-being. NCCSEN members meet regularly across a number of areas, including:
Policy & Advocacy
Research, Evaluation & Knowledge Sharing
Narrative Change & Strategy
Student Outreach & Engagement
Throughout the next year, NCCSEN will continue to build tools for policymakers, movement partners, students, and institutional leaders and others with a stake in addressing student basic needs, and continue to grow the movement toward a system in which all students have the financial and other basic resources to access and persist through higher education. Key areas for the coalition in the coming years will include igniting and engaging student movements on campus, expanding the research and data on what works to address student food, housing, and other forms of basic needs insecurity, and building a communication and narrative strategy designed to inspire action at the federal, state, and institutional level.