Graduating from college is supposed to open doors to good jobs and living wages. But for many California State University students, a diploma means mountains of debt, not from tuition but from food, housing and other basic needs.

And students whose families most need the leg up are the ones who find themselves buried in loans, according to a new report by The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) and the Cal State Student Association.

Nearly 80 percent of the 2015-16 CSU graduates who borrowed money had annual family incomes of no more than $54,000, the report found. Two-thirds had family incomes lower than $27,000. And while just 45 percent of Asian and 47 percent of white graduates left school in the red, 76 percent of black and 57 percent of Latino graduates took on debt.

But these graduates didn’t borrow to cover tuition. In fact, most CSU students don’t pay tuition at all; they rely on grants to cover that particular bill. Instead, students are borrowing to survive, using loans to buy dinner and pay rent. A 2015 CSU survey found that nearly a quarter of the system’s students are food insecure.

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That may be partially because the cost of living has gone up in places like the Bay Area and Los Angeles in recent years. But it’s also because state policy and school grants haven’t kept pace with need; grants help low-income students pay tuition and fees but rarely also cover living expenses.

“When it comes to financial aid, schools are often focused on covering tuition because that helps students enroll and keeps buildings open and the faculty paid,” Debbie Cochrane, vice president of The Institute for College Access and Success, said during a phone interview. “But we can’t forget the importance of financial aid for the other costs if we’re looking at affordability and financial aid from a student perspective.”

Sure, many students get jobs. But working to avoid debt isn’t a feasible option. According to the report, low-income students would have to work an average of nearly 30 hours a week to cover the cost of college after grants. But research shows working more than 20 hours decreases the likelihood that students will graduate on time.

Maggie White, president of the Cal State Student Association, attends CSU Stanislaus. Even in what is a relatively affordable part of the state, students on her campus need to work about 24 hours a week to make ends meet.

There’s a public perception, White said during a phone interview, that low-income students in California go to college for free, “but that’s just not true.”

Students shouldn’t have to work full time and go to school full time to get through college, White said.

“We need to have a conversation around ‘What do we consider acceptable?'” she said.

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Fewer students attending California community colleges, early fall numbers show In the short term, students are struggling to buy food and pay for books and school supplies, White said. Some drop out altogether and aren’t even captured in these figures because they don’t graduate.

But there are long-term consequences, too, Cochrane said. Being saddled with debt can influence the jobs graduates choose and affects their ability to buy cars and houses and even to save for college for their own children, she said.

Higher-ed and state leaders should direct more funding toward covering the cost of going to college beyond strictly tuition, Cochrane said. “I would hope that and think that CSU and the Legislature should take these findings seriously.”

In the last few years, state officials have made it easier for students to apply for food stamps and allocated several million dollars each for CSU, the University of California and the community college system to bolster their resources for hungry students. Colleges have stocked food pantries on campus.

And relative to other states, California does offer generous grants. But as the cost of living has increased in the Golden State in recent years, the grants haven’t kept pace and even students considered middle class have found themselves struggling. Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled to release a 2018-19 budget in January, but there’s little chance it will include a major expansion of such grants.

“Given the increasing number of college students who face food insecurity the state needs to take into account how to cover the legitimate costs of attending college,” William Tierney, a professor at the University of Southern California and director of the school’s Pullias Center for Higher Education, wrote in an email. “I have not heard of a push to increase grants to students, however, specifically for food/housing. It’s an issue that the state might think about, but given tight budgets I’m not sure it will become a priority.”