The Student Parent Equity Imperative: Guidance for the Biden-Harris Administration

As the Biden-Harris administration seeks to hasten the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, reforming the U.S. higher education system to ensure equitable access and attainment for all adults is more important than ever. The administration's recently released FY2022 discretionary budget request takes important steps in this direction, such as through enhanced investment in HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions and in child care and early learning programs, but it must continue to ensure that parents, especially mothers, have sufficient support to earn new skills and credentials that will enable them to secure living-wage employment.



The pandemic has disproportionately increased the caregiving, financial, and emotional burdens on student parents and their families—most of whom are mothers, students of color, adult and working learners, students with low incomes, and first-generation students—characteristics which can overlap to create steep obstacles in their efforts to achieve success. Robust investments in accessible degree and credential pathways that lead to family-sustaining jobs are required for the country to successfully and equitably “build back better.”

“The Student Parent Equity Imperative: Guidance for the Biden-Harris Administration” serves as a call to the Biden-Harris administration to prioritize parenting students and their families in its policymaking efforts tied to postsecondary education, early care and education access, and social welfare. The recommendations span four areas: supporting student parents’ college access and success, building affordable pathways to college for student parents, expanding caregiving support and child care access for student parents, and increasing basic needs security for student parent families. This memorandum was developed with support from The Kresge Foundation.



Recommendations include:

Increase investment in institutions that student parents are known to attend, such as community colleges and minority-serving institutions, as well as in student support services, and collect data to understand student parent demographics and outcomes.
Make college more affordable for students with children through increasing access to adequate financial aid, establishing tuition-free college programs, and significantly reducing student parents’ educational debt burden.
Improve the availability of affordable and high-quality early care and learning for the children of student parents, through increased investment in Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools (CCAMPIS), removing barriers to and encouraging partnerships with existing early childhood education systems, and renewing investments in programs designed to facilitate child care and education for low-income parents.
Support student parents’ basic needs security, through streamlined and enhanced access to public assistance, emergency aid, housing and nutrition assistance, and mental health services.



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About the Student Parent Success initiative

The Student Parent Success Initiative (SPSI), a project of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, conducts research and analysis to improve supports and services for student parents and promote their success in postsecondary education. SPSI serves to initiate new research, raise awareness on the need for student parent supports, and foster communication and collaboration among advocates, policymakers, educators, and practitioners. Contact us at [email protected].

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Institute for Women's Policy Research
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Washington, DC 20036
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