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The #RealCollegeTexas initiative is a long-standing range of partnerships between The Hope Center and Texas institutions to identify solutions that better meet the needs of students. This includes ensuring they can afford groceries and housing and reducing barriers they face accessing transportation, child care, medical, and mental health care.
Each fall, more than 1.5 million students flock to Texas’s colleges and universities to seek the degrees that will unlock their future. But many will have a hard time concentrating on their studies. Basic needs insecurity is prevalent among Texas college students, worsened by the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying recession.
A survey by The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice of 13,000 college students at 14 Texas colleges and universities found that almost two-thirds of Texas students experienced basic needs insecurity in the fall 2020 semester. The survey found widespread lack of access to food, housing, medical care, and other basic needs.
Getting students the basic needs security that ensures they can focus on their studies is a massive challenge. But Texans have taken on tough challenges before – and achieved them. The #RealCollegeTexas partnerships strive for systemic reforms across the Lone Star State, advancing policies that reduce basic needs insecurity, close equity gaps, and promote economic mobility.
The Hope Impact Partnerships
All Texas Success Center members have a spot reserved to participate in Hope Impact Partnerships in 2022-2023 thanks to the generosity of the Prentice & Alline Brown Foundation. To indicate your interest and commitment to participating, and which level of Hope Impact Partnership you feel is the right fit for your institution, please submit the following intake form.
2021-2022 #RealCollegeTexas Coalition Members
The Hope Center has partnered with the Texas Success Center and 17 institutions to scale best practices in addressing student basic needs insecurity. Over the last year, the colleges have worked collaboratively to build capacity in the areas of advising, emergency aid, institutional research, institutional policy, and state policy to advance an ecosystem of support for students’ basic needs.
This work has been supported by the Prentice & Alline Brown Foundation.
Additional Resources and Past Projects with #RealCollege Texas Partners
Policy and Advocacy
Guided by on-the-ground leaders in higher education and basic needs security, the RealCollege Texas Policy Initiative seeks to make concrete and durable changes in the college experience of Texas residents who aspire to a better life through higher education.
Research
The Hope Center has conducted scientifically rigorous and practice-informed action research with more than a dozen Texas colleges to explore problems affecting #RealCollege students and the efficacy of interventions to support them.
Webinars and Media Coverage