It was bad when I was in college in 2012. Me and a roommate had to steal near the end of the semester because we couldn’t afford food. Both hovering around lower mid to middle class so it’s not like we were constantly living in poverty. Plus being students limited our access to certain government assistance (also lack of knowledge of them) and finding work in a college town is next to impossible when you’ve got 25 to 30000 grad and post grad students to compete with even for a McDonald’s job.