Helping Student Parents Thrive in an Era of Unpredictable Federal Aid

Kela King had two children by the time she was 17 years old. She dropped out of high school, received her GED, and for 13 years has struggled to complete her college degree as a single working mother.

When King, now 35 and a mother of three, failed two classes last year because she was focused on her children’s needs, she wondered if she was ever going to graduate. But with the support of the student parent success program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — which helped her navigate her studies while working as a certified nursing assistant — she hopes to walk across the stage in December 2026.

“I’m building this legacy,” King said. “Even if I don’t get to where I want to be, you’ll be able to see the legacy just in the building.”

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For King and many other student parents, attending college can be a very tough road. Obstacles like financial stress, balancing coursework with family responsibilities and finding affordable, quality child care make it difficult for students raising children. 

Parents make up about 18% of undergraduate students and 28% of graduate students according to SPARK Collaborative, which provides research and resources for pregnant and parenting students. They represent a diverse population, including a significant share of single mothers, first generation college students, and individuals from low-income households. Student parents face especially steep challenges and are more likely than those without children to leave college before completing their degrees.

These students have unique needs, and a growing body of research points to actions that colleges and universities can take to help them flourish and graduate. Successful practices include: Offering child care on or near campus with financial assistance to cover or subsidize the cost; providing access to food and other basic necessities; building a student parent support center; and creating opportunities for peer community building. 

There’s a key federal program — Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) — that helps colleges and universities support students like King by subsidizing child care and funding support services for student parents. But the program has come under threat recently. Last year, the federal government abruptly cut off CCAMPIS grants for about a dozen colleges that depend on the funding. 

The future of the program’s funding has been precarious for some time, but in February, after facing potential elimination under the Trump administration for months, Congress approved the final 2026 federal budget, maintaining CCAMPIS funding at $75 million, the same as it was in 2025. This brought relief to some higher education institutions, but not for the colleges that saw their grants terminated.

Financial cuts to programs that support student parents will certainly hamper efforts to serve these students — especially through child care — but advocates say there are actions campus leaders can do to help them persist and thrive.

“Child care is huge, but it’s not the only thing that’s necessary for parenting students to be successful,” said Nicole Lynn Lewis, executive director of Generation Hope, a nonprofit that supports student parents in college. “We also want to see, across the institution, real intentionality around supporting these students. And sometimes that’s low hanging fruit at no cost or low cost.” 

For example, if a higher education institution simply shows student parents in its marketing material, it would send a message “that I belong here,” she said.

While more research on outcomes is needed, said Theresa Anderson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, some small studies of individual institutions have shown that initiatives such as a student parent resource coordinator, regular peer meetings and monthly stipends help by increasing graduation rates and offering a return on investment for taxpayers. Anderson has also found in her research that parents who receive a college degree typically earn more than those of similar socioeconomic status without a degree, which suggests the importance of bolstering support for student parents. 

The question for colleges and universities is how to translate research on what helps student parents thrive into reality — and in ways that suit their specific type of institution. About half of student parents attend community colleges, while 20% attend private, for-profit institutions and a combined 29% attend public or private nonprofit institutions, according to an analysis by the SPARK Collaborative. They tend to have as high or higher grade point averages than their non-parent peers, but they are also half as likely to graduate from college within six years than those peers. 

Changing that dropout rate is one of the goals of Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. Over the past four years, it has stepped up its services for student parents. The institution’s progress includes big-ticket items such as reopening its child care facility — which closed during COVID — and starting a Parent Scholars Program that offers scholarships and wraparound services, including case management and academic coaching. Howard has also offered changes resulting in smaller, but still significant benefits, such as priority class registration.

For its efforts, the college last year was awarded a FamilyU Seal by Generation Hope. The seal, which the organization has given to 22 higher education institutions and nonprofits, recognizes “exemplary, measurable efforts in supporting parenting students.”

Celeste Ampaah, 23, and the mother of a 5-year old, said she first felt unseen on the Howard college campus. “I didn’t even know that there were any other parents on campus, especially people that were my age,” she said. And she wasn’t aware of the resources the college offered. 

She was leery about letting her professors know she had a child, afraid it would seem like she was asking for special privileges or making excuses.

“I just stopped going to class if I had a hardship,” she said. 

But that changed once she connected with Howard’s resources for student parents and became a parent scholar. Now she proudly carries the backpack that proclaims “Student Parent” below the Howard logo and reaches out to other parents. 

“I’m not ashamed anymore,” she said.

Priority class registration is one benefit Ampaah says is an enormous help. “Being able to plan my classes and work around my schedule before everyone else jumps on board feels like a luxury,” she said. 

There is room for improvement, she noted, including displaying resources for parents on the college’s website more prominently, and training faculty and staff to be more aware of student parents on campus and the difficulties they face.

Some of the obstacles that affect student parents, such as transportation costs, also impact many low-income students, so the goal is to connect those students with the services already available, said Maya Mechenbier, a fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University who co-authored a recent study of the needs of student parents in Maryland. 

In an interview for the study, Mechenbier recalled, “one mother shared that having to walk across campus or use public transportation while quite pregnant was a big barrier for her. Had she known about transportation subsidies sooner, she might have not had to drop out at that time.”

For that reason priority parking for student parents is a welcome benefit, something California Polytechnic State University (CalPoly), a four-year university that is part of the California State University system offers. 

The university has also garnered the FamilyU Seal for its parent-friendly services. Much of the institution’s progress has been led by Tina Cheuk, an associate professor of education, who was a student parent herself when in graduate school at Stanford University.

It was about a decade ago, and she felt completely isolated, Cheuk said. She recalled asking for a quiet place to breastfeed her daughter — a lactation room — and being told it simply wasn’t possible.

She threatened to file a case with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights and ultimately received the space she needed. And that started her on the road to become a student parent advocate at Stanford and later at Cal Poly.

A student parent at Cal Poly won’t run into Cheuk’s problem today, as the university now offers numerous lactation rooms on campus. There is also on-site child care and a coordinator for student parents within the student affairs office. In addition, there are community events for families — and at graduation, children receive some regalia and walk across the stage with their parents.  

Some of these supports are mandated under California state law, which requires that public colleges and universities give student parents priority registration and provide a “clearly visible” landing page on the institution’s website outlining resources available to such parents, as well as a designated support person.

The law, Cheuk said, “serves as a minimum. But if all can meet that minimum, that is a signal to potential students that there are resources.”

More states and colleges are recognizing that in order to serve student parents, it’s important to have more information about their lived experiences. But one of the sticking points around serving this population, experts say, is simply identifying who they are.

There is no federal mandate to collect such numbers and a tool that many colleges used — a question on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form that asked if students had dependents — was eliminated when the form was simplified for the 2024-25 academic year. 

While the FAFSA number wouldn’t have included international students or those who didn’t apply for financial aid, it was one data point.

“Without such data, it’s difficult to understand the characteristics of those students, which programs they’re in, and where they’re facing roadblocks and barriers,” Anderson said.

Five states — California, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas — have enacted legislation requiring student parents to be counted. The Urban Institute has awarded grants to 23 higher education institutions, including Cal Poly, through its Data-to-Action Campaign, as an effort to develop best practices for colleges to identify student parents in their data systems. 

For example, Cheuk said students could be asked if they have dependents when filling out an intake enrollment; California community colleges already do that during their application process. 

Some colleges — even ones that implement best practices — are struggling in the face of rollbacks. UW-Milwaukee has had an on-site child care facility for more than 50 years and a longstanding wraparound and scholarship program aimed at serving student parents, said Rachel Kubczak, the manager of UW-Milwaukee’s Student Parent Success Program, who has been working with student parents at the institution for the past decade. She is also King’s advisor.

The child care facility is still operating robustly, but when UW-Milwaukee unexpectedly lost its CCAMPIS funds last year, Kuczak said, many students had to scramble to cover the child-care subsidies they lost through that program or simply reduce their child-care hours, which affected their ability to work and go to classes.

In addition, the university’s wraparound program was supported through one generous grant from 2005 that ended in 2021. That left Kubczak, as the only full-time staff member, struggling to figure out how to serve these students. 

But even without the funding she needs, Kubczak offers crucial types of support — often partnering with other campus centers — such as welcome orientations, coffee and pastry mornings, parenting workshops and assistance in navigating the system.

And she can chalk up some wins, she said, such as getting diaper changing decks in most bathrooms on campus, as well as safe and comfortable lactation rooms. 

There are also success stories, like King’s, Kubczak added. King, who is majoring in social work and minoring in American Sign Language is on track to graduate this year.

“As a teen mom, I’ve been counted out by family members saying I couldn’t do it,” said King. But Kubczak “pushed me and supported me.”