Christopher Kohler, Joshua Hine, & Luke Haumesser

This study explores the ways in which neoliberal processes affect how student-parents who are food insecure experience higher education. We use neoliberalism as a frame to examine a move towards “carelessness” in explicit and implicit institutional policy, creating a culture that marginalizes students deemed as out of the mainstream, such as student-parents experiencing food insecurity. This paper not only centers how food insecure student-parents experience one institution’s culture, but brings together two theoretical lenses–neoliberalism and carelessness–to help explain how social systems and structures continue to neglect those at the margins. Despite the “nontraditional” student becoming the norm as massification of higher education takes hold, the neoliberal university is designed to develop rational, autonomous actors unencumbered by responsibilities apart from their identities as students.

Zoom Link: https://buffalo.zoom.us/j/3557919913?pwd=aEs2U3V4bHdNWWJqOVVYSDdXaTNVQT09