Research by the California Alliance for Student Parent Success used state data to help understand how higher education institutions can better serve parenting students and the benefits such support could have for the institution’s academic program as a whole.
Among other benefits, the data suggests that support for student parents can benefit a university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program. A majority of parenting students are Black, Latino/a, Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American (72 percent), and many student parents live in inland or rural areas with greater distances to colleges and universities. Using targeted data can help identify the specific needs of student parents and focus resources in areas that yield the greatest impacts on the students and, ultimately, the next generation.
“Supporting student parents isn’t just about improving outcomes, it’s about addressing systems that disproportionately affect communities of color,” said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. “When you support student parents, you are supporting racial equity goals.”
