• New project to connect Henry Ford College and Wayne State students to resources to address basic needs
  • The effort is among many to keep students on their path to earn a credential
  • It is among other efforts statewide working to address basic needs as many college students navigate them

Kijuan Dent got hit with an unexpected $1,000 tuition bill while a sophomore at Michigan State University, days before the 2023 fatal mass shooting on campus.

He could have checked with the financial aid office or worked more hours since his family couldn’t help. But he turned to an emergency fund designedto help Detroit college students cover food, housing and tuition costs to keep them on track with their studies. 

Without that help, “I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t think I would have left college but it would have delayed me,” said Dent, who graduated from MSU in 2025 and is now working as a student success coach for the Detroit Regional Chamber. 

Meeting college students’ emergency needs is the focus of Open Door, a pilot project launching this fall at Henry Ford College and Wayne State University to help with issues such as food, housing, transportation and more. 

In Michigan, 20% of college students have experienced food insecurity, 44% have grappled with housing insecurity and 47% have had unmet financial needs even after financial aid, according to a report released last year by the state’s Student Basic Needs Task Force.

The task forcemade numerous recommendations and highlighted initiatives across the state working to help students stay in college, such as Muskegon Community College’s Jayhawk Resource Hub and Grand Rapids Community College’s partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to place a caseworker on campus.

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Those projects come as Michigan is working to reach its goal of 60% of residents with a postsecondary credential by 2030. The state reached 51.6% in 2024.

“Michigan has made historic investments to eliminate financial barriers for thousands of Michiganders pursuing postsecondary education,” Beverly Walker-Griffea, director of the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential, wrote in the task force report. 

“Even with increased financial aid, barriers like food insecurity, housing instability, and limited access to mental health services make the postsecondary journey far more challenging than it should be for too many students across Michigan.”

MiLEAP is hosting a Braiding Community Support for College Student Basic Needs event on Sept. 9 to continue the task force’s work, “by bringing communities together to strengthen the network of support surrounding Michigan’s college students,” said MiLEAP spokesperson Aundreana Jones-Poole. 

“By working across higher education, government and community organizations, we can better connect students with the resources they need to stay enrolled, complete their education and achieve their goals,” Jones-Poole said.

The Open Doorproject is another tool to address issues that derail students on their journey to earn a credential. It will feature a United Way for Southeastern Michigan staff member embedded on campus to direct students to resources on and off campus.

“Colleges for many years have worked really hard to provide wrap-around services for students, whether it’s a food pantry or clothing closet or providing mentors to help students through crisis situations,” said Meghan Schmidbauer, senior director of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Detroit Drives Degrees, a partner in the project.

Students are not always aware of opportunities to help them and colleges don’t always have the capacity to direct students to resources. That’s where the expertise of United Way will come into play, Schmidbauer said.

“Bringing the basic needs services that exist within the community to the students, and making sure that they are aware of what exists on campus, that’s what we are hoping to do,” said Schmidbauer.

The Open Door project will be focused on students enrolled in the Detroit Promise, Detroit Reconnect, and Michigan Reconnect programs. But organizers say no one will be turned away.

It comes three years after Rocket Community Fund launched an initiative with the Detroit Chamber known as the Detroit Area Talent Fund to provide emergency financial support to college students so they are not derailed on their path to graduation. 

Students indicated on the Talent Fund application what they needed the money for and the majority of them cited housing, food, transportation, child care and educational expenses, according to Schmidbauer. Within six months, the fund distributed $1 million that was supposed to last over three years.

“We knew immediately that putting dollars into the hands of students may be a Band-Aid, but is not sustainable and doesn’t potentially solve that crisis or emergency from popping up again,” said Schmidbauer.

Darienne Hudson, United Way for Southeastern Michigan president and CEO, added: “Every day, we see people working to build a better future who are forced to make impossible choices between paying rent, buying groceries, finding reliable transportation, or staying in school. Those challenges don’t disappear just because someone steps onto a college campus.”

“Through Open Door and in partnership with the Chamber, Wayne State University, and Henry Ford College, we are bringing support directly to students, helping to remove the barriers on their pathway to prosperity,” Hudson said.

The Kresge Foundation has provided a $300,000 grant for the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab, in partnership with WSU’s Detroit PEER, to evaluate the project through 2028 and potentially scale it up.

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