By Orrin Konheim
From shepherding kids to and from soccer practice to picking up the week’s groceries to balancing their checkbooks, there’s a lot for parents to juggle. But add in work and continuing education, and the juggle becomes even greater.
As parents prepare kids to go back to school this fall, what happens when parents, too, are heading back to school?
According to a 2021 Institute of Women’s Policy Report, 1 in 5 college students are student parents. Of that subset, 53% are raising a child under the age of 6. As more parents return to the classroom for graduate degrees or other credentials, how does parenting fit in?
Kathy Sullivan, a leadership coach with TalentPrinciples, has undergone the process of getting professional certifications as a mother, has taken on parents as clients furthering their education and has taught college courses.
On a micro-level, Sullivan uses the term “non-negotiables” as the building block for how to organize what you can take off your plate. For example, if a parent has to pick up their child every day at 5 p.m. or their spouse can’t watch the child in the evening, that’s what they would arrange their schedule around.
As the nature of the family dynamics will inevitably shift, Sullivan believes a key quality in the successful parent student is “the capacity to be flexible.” In her own case, Sullivan restructured family time so that she and her children had a shared time of the day to study, even if on different assignments.
Sullivan recommends not just talking to your spouse but “sharing with your kids what you’re doing and why you’re doing it so they know what to expect.”
Another student mother of two, Irina Stobetskaya, had little support from her school when she returned after a 10-year gap. She credits her success to her husband taking on more household responsibilities and doing his work more remotely.
Yet, there are ways parents can turn to their schools for support as well—from flexible scheduling to financial assistance to help manage extra costs as a family.
Despite the number of hybrid models since the pandemic, and an increase in graduate programs offering night schools, parent college students are often less likely to finish school and face hard financial stresses.
The Report for Education Trust released a 2022 study calculating the average in the national student parent affordability gap to be $19,298. In the organization’s corresponding survey, 36% of respondents described their finances as stressful and 74% have student debt.
Only 45% of survey respondents reported being hopeful that they would finish
their degree.
This is unfortunate because parents have so much to offer. One college official, Kimberly Macombe, who administers grants for student parents, notes, “Statistically, student parents are some of the highest achieving on campus in terms of GPA, but we were seeing that there was a discrepancy between that and finishing school graduating.”
Some universities, such as Bowie State University, offer a wide variety of resources ranging from child care to access to peer networks and nursing spaces, family counseling, book loans and counseling for further resources.
However, not all universities offer this degree of specialized support for this
specific demographic.
Len Jessup was president of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and recently retired after a six-year stint as president of Claremont Graduate University in California. Under his new tenure, the school designed 11 new PhD programs with the adult learner in mind. Still, Jessup says that students need to be proactive—particularly with monetary need.
“Claremont, like most universities, finds a way to bring in scholarship dollars—the candidate just needs to find out how to ask,” he says.
In cases where programs aren’t easy to find, parents without a large time budget might need help being directed to those resources in a more efficient fashion.
Sarah Wood at the U.S. News and World Report recommends “disclosing your status as a student parent to faculty members or advisors, if you’re comfortable doing so, to better understand available resources on campus.”
Some universities, including Bowie State, partner with the U.S. Department of Education’s Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, which provides childcare subsidies, textbook loans, enhanced advising support and parent workshops for parents on campus.
The program only came about because student surveys showed that parents had a big achievement gap, and therefore needed the biggest support.
“The biggest thing I can tell parenting students is to be an advocate. I don’t think we could say that we established this program without saying there’s a need,” notes grant administrator Mocombe.
Here are some tips for parents pursuing higher education:
1. You Need a Budget: College students get this app free for 12 months, which is especially helpful for young parents making decisions.
2. Look for Local Resources on Each Campus: Universities like College of St. Mary, in Nebraska, offer centralized services through an organization or web page.
3. Sallie Mae Scholarship Search: Sallie Mae has a database of scholarships.
4. Join a Network: Facebook Groups are a good place to start, but the web is vast and there are also groups on Discord or through specialized sites like NewMoms.com.
