Ensuring Students’ Human Rights Requires Effective Assessment, Evaluation, and Research: A Call to Action

ABSTRACT

Students’ basic needs—including access to food, housing, healthcare, childcare, and transportation—are fundamental human rights and essential for their success in higher education. Yet, large numbers of college students experience unmet basic needs, disproportionately impacting students who have been historically and systematically marginalized and undermining educational equity. We argue that addressing students’ basic needs is not a matter of charity or institutional benevolence, but of justice. Drawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and public health frameworks, we call for a systematic and equity‐centered approach to Assessment, Evaluation, and Research (AER) in higher education basic needs initiatives and present four interconnected calls to action: (1) systematic monitoring of students’ basic needs at institutional, state, and federal levels; (2) rigorous evaluation and research of programs and policies to identify effective interventions; (3) sustained investment in AER infrastructure to institutionalize evidence‐based practice; and (4) using AER to advance equity and promote justice. Through examples from state initiatives, national research, and institutional programs, we offer a roadmap for integrating AER into basic needs strategies and advancing higher education's commitment to students’ human rights.