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The Hechinger Report
Biden administration may help keep student parents in college
By Liz Willen
January 28, 2021
For student parents, the road to a college degree has always been
fraught with obstacles, from hunger and homelessness to lack of child
care. Many student parents are also working while attending community
colleges. Unsurprisingly, they are 10 times less likely to complete a
bachelor’s degree within five years than students who are not parents.
But as the new Biden administration takes hold, policymakers and
advocates – for the first time in a long while – are optimistic that
policy changes favorable to student parents are on the way. It’s a
potential bright spot at a time when community colleges in particular
have seen first-time enrollment dips of 21 percent, while fall 2020
enrollment went down 10 percent compared with a year earlier.
“I have been very hopeful since Jan. 20,” Nicole Lynn Lewis, a mother
of four and the founder of the nonprofit Generation Hope, told me.
Lewis had a chance to advocate for student parents and their needs –
including reforming federal financial aid policies, expanding Pell
grants and improving child care access – in a call with officials of
the new Biden-Harris administration earlier this year before the new
president and vice-president took office.
Lewis is also among the advocates who are excited by having Jill Biden,
a community college professor, as First Lady in the White House, along
with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is inspiring pride in HBCUs.
“They represent more than the Ivy League, and they know that student
parents are more likely to be Black and attend community colleges,”
Lewis said.
Biden’s proposal for $40 billion to directly support child care providers and systems is also being seen as a hopeful sign.
The struggling, but ultimately successful, student parents I’ve spoken
with in recent months credited their own persistence to support from
within the colleges they attended. I’m thinking of Annisha Thomas, a
single mother of two who works at a Waffle House while attending
Nashville State Community College in Tennessee, and against all odds
managed to stay in school after the pandemic hit.
“If it wasn’t for the goodness of my teachers, I would be failing right now,” Thomas told me.
I was also heartened by the help given to Marleny Hernandez, a mother
of four who is on her way to becoming a nurse, but almost dropped out
of Borough of Manhattan Community College several times along the way.
In addition to on-campus child care, Hernandez credits a call from the
school’s vice-president urging her to stick with the program, even
after being told by professors that she might not make it. (She did.)
“You just have to keep going, no matter what others say about you,”
Hernandez told me. “Just keeping pushing and never give up.”
It takes a lot more than supportive professors and family members to
make it, though. “I think the pandemic has really made it clear that
there are certain populations and groups really hit hard, and the
pandemic exacerbated these challenges,” Lewis told me. Generation Hope
now offers a tool kit aimed at helping student parents.
I also spoke with Carrie Welton, director of policy and advocacy at the
Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University,
which focuses on students with lower incomes, students of color,
immigrants and first-generation students, along with parents who have
long struggled to finish their college educations. Some of the
challenges Welton hopes the new administration will address include
high college costs, state and federal disinvestment in higher education
and the need for child care subsidies like TANF and food stamps.
“We are handicapping our economy by leaving these barriers in place,”
Welton told me. “The time is right for change. These are really
bipartisan issues.”
Hope for more parent-friendly policies comes amid calls for better and
more structured supports for student parents. Recent research from
Child Trends found higher education institutions too often are not
meeting the needs of student parents. Only 15 percent offer on-campus
child care, while just 47 percent offer weekend and weeknight classes
that make it easier for working parents to attend.
The Hunt Institute held a webinar discussion last week on the need to
support adult learners, with much agreement that it is time to do more.
Ben Cannon, the executive director of the Oregon Higher Education
Coordinating Commission, said colleges can do a better job of reaching
out to student parents in advance, as well as providing more
accessible, affordable day care.
The stresses that are causing students to delay their college
educations are expected to grow: Some 20 percent of community college
students are likely to or will delay their graduation because of the
pandemic; some 64 percent cited stress and anxiety while 51 percent
cited cost concerns, according to new findings from a Strada-Gallup
Education Consumer poll and national survey of community college
students released last week.
Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the nonprofit Complete College
America, said the discussion on students being ready for college needs
to shift so that colleges are ready for students – particularly older
ones. “We can’t meet the goals we have for college completion
without adult learners,” she noted.
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