Supporting Students Who are Parents

In Washington state, one in three college students are parents. More than half of the community and technical college students in Washington are persons of color. One national study found that two thirds of student parents are mothers and most of them are single. Yet, amazingly, student parents maintain higher GPAs than non-parent students. 

Factors that drive parents to succeed in college:

• Wanting to set an example for their children.
• Qualifying to earning scholarships for academic excellence, thereby reducing debt.
• A primal, parental drive to secure a better future for their offspring.

Behind the statistics are individual stories and unique struggles. By supporting student parents, community and technical colleges can improve economic conditions for families and break poverty cycles. Where parent students are seen, understood, and supported, they can thrive, graduate, and give back to the community. 

The cybersecurity field can benefit from the cautious and careful mindsets of mothers. They are constantly looking out for dangers, checking for and instituting safety measures, teaching others to be cautions, and always on the lookout for what might fall apart next. These natural traits are well suited to cybersecurity. Furthermore, if a working single mom manages to graduate college, you know she is an effective time manager!

However, higher education was not designed for parents. Therefore, some retrofitting is necessary. The Aspen Institute published a Playbook to help colleges create support structures for student parents from enrollment to graduation. [Tapping the Talent of Student Parents – A Playbook for Postsecondary Leaders.] 

The five support pillars, or “Promising Practices” are: 

1. Identify, collect, and analyze data on student parents to understand who they are and what would support their success.
2. Recognize student parent expertise as an essential part of co-creating solutions and strengthening connections on campus.
3. Refine messaging and communications to be inclusive of and welcoming to student parents.
4. Identify or create family-friendly spaces on campus where student parents can be both students and parents.
5. Provide new, expanded, or targeted supports, services, and facilities for student parents on and off campus to increase their academic success.

This playbook helps colleges analyze if they’re doing enough to support student parents. Read the examples of other institutions to see how they’ve developed and implemented the five strategies. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, rather, it’s an ecosystem of solutions to fit the needs of individual student bodies. 

See also, the assessment toolkit at https://familyfriendlycampus.org/ 

Additional statistics: 

2022-2021 – Students in the lowest income bracket (less than $30,000) pay about a third of their family’s income toward the cost of an in-state public education. [encoura.org] 

2019 – The out-of-pocket cost of attending a public college is 2 to 5 times higher for student parents than for their other low-income peers without children. [edtrust.org] 

2019 – A student parent would need to work 52 hours per week, on average, to cover childcare and tuition costs at a four-year public college in the US. [edtrust.org] 

2023-2024 – In WA, 51% of community and technical college students are students of color. [sbctc.edu] 

2023-2024 – In WA, 29% of students are parents or care for dependents. [sbctc.edu]