Malia Capers-Cristabol had taken classes at Austin Community College (ACC) — one at a time, over a number of years — but stopped out to care for her ailing father. After she had her first child two years later, she made a promise — that she would go back to school to provide a better life for her daughter.
“Having a child,” she says, “changed everything.”
Stories like hers are familiar ones on community college campuses. Nearly half (42%) of all student parents attend community college. Seven in 10 parenting students at community colleges — and one-third of all women attending community college — are mothers. Sixty percent of those mothers are also single parents, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and nearly nine in 10 of them live in or near poverty.
Without adequate support, including childcare, financial aid and schedules that accommodate their other responsibilities, many never graduate from college. In fact, student parents at community colleges are only half as likely to graduate as non-parents, according to the Institute.
Supports to succeed
Institutions must think deeply and act to support the holistic needs of our students, in relation to their individual needs, as they work hard on their journey to degree completion. A parenting student’s ability to complete opens opportunity for their earning potential and economic mobility.
Capers-Cristabol was able to receive the support she needs. Now graduated from ACC’s accelerated nursing program and working as an operating room nurse, as a student she received funding from the college that cut the cost of childcare at the college’s on-campus lab school from $1,100 to $80 a month.
“That allowed me to pay my bills on time, fill my fridge and get gas weekly,” she says. “I needed that quarter tank of gas to get to class.”
Addressing those needs
At Achieving the Dream (ATD), we have focused on helping colleges in our network support student mothers like Capers-Cristabol as part of our mission to advance community colleges as catalysts for equitable, antiracist and economically vibrant communities. Since launching the Community College Women Succeed initiative in 2019, we have worked with institutions across the country to better understand and address their needs. As part of our efforts to promote holistic student support for all students, we’re pleased to see student parents — and mothers, in particular — becoming a greater focus across the community college sector.
“We think this kind of programming is rising to the top in the community college space, and we feel we have the wind to our back,” says Steven Christopher, ACC’s associate vice chancellor of student accessibility and social support resources.
Lessons learned
Here’s what we’ve learned is working from ACC:
Understanding who your student parents are — and what they need. One of the biggest challenges at many institutions has been identifying how many students are student parents and what they need. Many community colleges do not — or just recently began to add — questions about parenting to their general applications and admissions forms.
Others are gathering information from student surveys or FAFSA and Perkins data. ATD’s Parenting Student Equity Assessment helps colleges understand opportunities to support their student-parent population more holistically and equitably. Led by ATD coaches and developed with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the assessments support participating colleges as they collect data, gather input from key stakeholders, learn about best practices on other campuses, and identify next steps that meet the needs of their own institutions and the students they serve.
An institutional commitment to serving student parents. ACC has focused on supporting student parents since it opened what it originally called a Women’s Center in 1992. Given the costs associated with supporting the needs of student parents, college leaders must commit to providing meaningful support.
“It’s not a light lift,” says Christopher, noting that ACC spends more than $500,000 a year on just the student parents with the lowest incomes.
Providing personalized support. ACC and other institutions have adopted case-management models to support student parents and connect them to resources on and off campus.
“Having someone who can talk about SNAP benefit applications and knows about resources in the community, and who can be there as a person to go to, is very important,” says ACC student advocate Amber Huffman.
Capers-Cristabol agrees. “I consider it more like a partnership because I feel she does so much,” she says of her advocate.
Visibility of support services. ACC allocated space for a Student Advocacy Center on each of its 11 campuses. Such centers need to be “public, visible and welcoming for student parents and other students in need,” Christopher says.
Dedicated childcare options and partnerships. Childcare is one of student parents’ greatest needs. ACC operates a lab school staffed by faculty, staff and students and aims to provide additional childcare options through community partnerships. It also provides students with information about licensed childcare providers and Head Start/pre-K programs, additional funding sources and programs for children with special needs.
Identifying local resources. Student advocates must identify resources close to each campus — and help students find ways to access them.
“We’ll drive to these places to find out how someone gets in,” says Allegra Harris, ACC special supports and grants coordinator.
Integrate supports across multiple student populations. ACC’s advocates also support young adults who have aged out of the foster care system and low-income students supported through other community-based programs.
Seek help from partners. Colleges don’t have to do this work alone.
Go big
Finally, colleges should think big — and out of the box — as they explore new ways to support student parents and others. To that end, ACC is piloting a guaranteed student income program, which provides a $500 monthly stipend for all eligible student parents enrolled in at least nine credit hours, to reduce students’ reliance on second or third jobs.
For Capers-Cristabol, this novel strategy changed her life — and the lives of her family. The guaranteed income program allowed her to stop juggling her studies and a full-time job to focus on — and complete — her accelerated nursing program at ACC.
“I’ve been working since I was 14. I’ve never not had a job and not been able to support myself,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to do that without my advocate.”
To read more about ACC’s work with student parents, visit ATD’s case study here.
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Meredith Archer Hatch (left) is director of network relations for Achieving the Dream.
Dr. Melinda Anderson is executive director for network engagement at Achieving the Dream.
