The US Department of Education COVID-19 Handbook: Strategies for Safe Operation and Addressing the Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education Students, Faculty, and Staff
This COVID-19 handbook provides guidance to higher education institutions on how to safely operate and address the impact of COVID-19. This includes a dedicated section on student caregivers and recommendations for how schools can better support this population (see page 38). | June 2021
New Student Parent Podcast "1 in 5"
Ascend at the Aspen Institute has released a new podcast sharing in-depth conversations with student parents, Ascend Postsecondary Success for Parents Parent Advisors, Ascend National Network Partners, and advocates from education, philanthropy, non-profit, and research fields. You can listen to all 15 episodes here and access more Parent Voice materials here.
Improving Mental Health of Student Parents: A Framework For Higher Education
Ascend at the Aspen Institute and the JED Foundation released a framework and recommendations for administrators, faculty, and staff at institutions of higher learning to better serve the mental health needs of student parents. The report found that more than 43% of student parents experience extreme stress that affects their mental health and educational success, and 38% saying they considered dropping out in the last 30 days. | May 2021
Community College Women Succeed: Research Agenda
Achieving the Dream released a research agenda designed to better understand community college women and mothers and inform efforts to promote their success. The research agenda highlights areas of needed research, such as improved data collection and analysis on student parents’ demographic characteristics and educational outcomes and identifying recruitment practices and student success strategies that promote their college access and attainment. | May 2021
Obstacles to Opportunity: Increasing College Success by Understanding & Addressing Older Students’ Costs Beyond Tuition
This report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality describes the costs of attendance beyond tuition for older students between the ages of 25-45. The report shows that the real cost of college for older students is higher than commonly understood, especially for older students with dependents, whose costs are, on average, nearly $6,000 higher than for their counterparts without dependents. | April 2021
COVID-19 Has Disrupted College Plans for Students in Households with Children
This report from Child Trends looks at caregiving student enrollment during the pandemic using the Census PULSE data. This latest report using Census Pulse Survey data from August-December 2020 investigated how the pandemic influenced college plans, comparing student caregivers to non-caregiving peers. | April 2021
A Portrait of California Community College Students with Dependent Children
UC Davis researchers published two separate briefs which present enrollment trends for student parents across California and an examination of student parents’ experiences at one community college. | March 2021
FamilyU 2021
Generation Hope launched a new Technical Assistance program to help colleges and universities better serve the needs of student parents. FamilyU is a comprehensive, customized, evidence-based, two-year capacity-building experience designed to build and refine institutional competencies to improve student parent success.
