Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits are back up after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, but one demographic is still projected to seek continuous assistance for putting food on the table — University of Iowa graduate students. 

According to the UI Food Pantry’s new fiscal year 2025 report, 61 percent of the over 6,500 food pantry visits in spring 2025 were graduate and professional students. 

Stephanie Beecher, basic needs coordinator at the UI Food Pantry, said since the pantry began collecting demographic data in 2016, graduate student usage has always been higher than undergraduates.

Beecher said the discrepancy between graduate and undergraduate students using the pantry likely comes from a variety of factors, such as the more demanding nature of graduate student coursework, barriers in transportation, feeding children as well as themselves, health care responsibilities,student loans, and inflation. 

“But the gap between where they’re separating from undergrads, that seems to be widening, and it seems to be rising at a higher rate,” she said. 

In spring 2023, there were 1,439 graduate student visits to the pantry. This number climbed to 4,031 in spring 2025.

Beecher said many international and first generation graduate students rely on the pantry. According to fiscal year 2025 swipe demographics of clients using the pantry, 42 percent of those who visited the pantry were first generation students and 40 percent were international students. 

Beecher said many graduate students also go to the pantry for their families, encouraging the pantry to stock up on baby products like diapers. 

“We want things to not keep trending this way,” Beecher said.  “I would love to see things plateau and eventually decline.”

Beecher estimates that graduate students’ need for food assistance will only continue to increase under President Donald Trump’s administration, especially as federal research cuts continue. 

She said she spoke with a few students whose research assistantships were dropped under federal research cuts, resulting in them going from working 20 hours a week to 10, a large gap in work hours to make up.

“If those research jobs are not reinstated, and departments are losing funding, I think that’s going to really impact [graduates],” she said. “We need SNAP benefits for grads, they were hit hard by those [cuts].”

Beecher said graduate students are also relying on other resources in the UI’s Basic Needs Department, like coat drives and meal voucher programs.

Beecher oversees UI’s own meal voucher program, Hawkeye Meal Share, which allows students to donate their guest swipes for those at the university who are facing food insecurity.

“We’re seeing more grads applying for that,” she said. “They’re on campus pretty much their whole day, so getting a hot meal, that’s been a lifesaver for a lot of them. With research getting cut, that was the dagger.”

According to the assessment report, 66 percent of Hawkeye Meal Share users were enrolled in a graduate program. Beecher said in spite of their financial troubles, she hopes graduate students feel welcome when they enter the pantry.

“We want your human dignity to be maintained,” she said. “If the need is rising, we’re going to keep fighting to meet that need. We’ll never stop on our end. But we’re also a supplemented food pantry, it’s a Band Aid, in a sense.”

Anne Moore, the press and publicity chair of the graduate student union Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS, said the food pantry demographics stem from graduate students not being paid a living wage. 

She said that the minimum stipend for a 20 hour appointment, or an appointment for graduates to work 20 hours a week through teaching and research assistantships, was $22,628, or about $2,000 a month after taxes, according to the 2025 agreement between the Iowa Board of Regents and COGS. 

She then cited The MIT living wage calculator, which  states that the estimated cost of living for a single adult in Iowa City without children is $43,614. 

She said wages have decreased in the past five years accounting for inflation. She said in fall 2020, the minimum stipend for an
academic year 20 hour work week appointment was $20,041. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2020 stipend is now worth $25,008. 

Moore said the UI has one of the lowest paid populations of graduate workers in the Big Ten. Although the university calculates graduate’s pay based on the cost of living in the Midwest region, Moore said Iowa City is much more expensive. 

“As you can see, graduate worker pay is not keeping up with either inflation or the rising costs of living,” Moore said. “It’s no surprise that grad students are increasingly struggling to have their basic needs met.”

Moore said national trends like research cuts are another cause for worry for graduate students. 

“We’ve not been able to get a clear answer from [the UI] about what happens to graduate students when their funding is cut — do they continue to have their tuition covered?” she asked. “They haven’t really been able to answer that.”

Moore said COGS has asked the university to find other ways to fund graduate students if they lose federally funded research positions. Moore said the university should guarantee graduate students receving funding, even if federal grants are lost.  

“There’s no reason that graduate students at the University of Iowa should be needing to use a food bank,” Moore said. 

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Charlie Aicher, a graduate assistant who works at the UI food pantry, said she was surprised to see the disparity between graduates and undergraduates in the pantry’s assessment report, but she understood where it came from. 

“From my own perspective of being a graduate student, I can definitely see why those numbers are increasing,” she said. “Grad students have an incredible amount of responsibilities within their academics. A lot of them have families and other dependents they have to take care of.”

Aicher said she predicts graduate students with family members will still be constantly using the food pantry even as SNAP benefits are reinstated.

“[Graduates students with families] are definitely wanting more fresh produce, and they definitely come more often, around every week,” she said. “You get to know them quite a bit because they come pretty consistently.”

Moore said the best way to fight the climbing graduate food pantry visit statistic would be for the university to raise the current $22,628 annual pay for graduate students.

She also said the university should completely cover academic fees which pay for student health services and campus transportation. Currently, the university pays for half of the academic fees for COGS.

Moore said these points will be bargained for in spring 2027 when COGS next presents its grievances to the Iowa Board of Regents. Moore said she hopes their requests are met and policies like the unexpected extra $1,500 in tuition bills this fall are fought in order to prevent graduate students from relying on basic needs services like the UI pantry.

“There are definitely groups of students who use it more than others,” she said. “But you never know, it’s likely your TA has used the food bank before because we’re all getting paid so little.”