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Student parents are often invisible on college campuses, but a statewide initiative in California to engage parenting college students encourages the campus community to support these learners.
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Each April, businesses host a Bring Your Kid to Work Day. Many universities participate, showing the children of practitioners around campus and introducing them to the world of higher education.
This year, two universities in California broadened their focus, encouraging the children of students to visit campus and learn more about their parents’ lives at school.
Sponsored by the California Alliance for Student Parents, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, hosted Bring Your Kids to College Days on April 25 to bring awareness to the lives of student parents and encourage policy conversations.
The background: Around one in five students in higher education have dependents, according to national estimates, but about half of parenting students stop out within six years of enrolling.
Student parents can be pulled in many directions as they focus on their academics while providing for their households, making them less engaged on campus or less likely to use resources. A fall 2021 study from Trellis Strategies found 52 percent of parenting students spend over 20 hours per week caring for their children, and 78 percent of parenting students had never visited a food pantry on or off campus.
Across California, public institutions are looking to better serve students with dependents, and a 2022 state bill requires institutions to identify and support this group with priority registration and other academic supports. State data estimates around 400,000 college students are parents or guardians.
The California Alliance for Student Parents is co-led by California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy and EdTrust West to unify parenting students, education leaders and advocates and promote student success, explains Su Jin Jez, CEO of California Competes.
Bring Your Kids to College Day is just one of the initiatives the alliance has sponsored to promote visibility of student parents and their experiences.
Parents in the spotlight: “Student parents are a unique population, different from other equity populations, because they’re not visible on campus—you can’t look at someone and tell—and they’re a population that people don’t believe are on campus,” Jez says.
On campus, it can be difficult for parenting students to feel a sense of belonging due to direct and indirect signals that the campus is not friendly toward children. Jez gave the example of a financial aid office with a sign that reads “no children,” or more subtle signals like unexcused absences for caring for a sick child.
“You feel like you shouldn’t have a child, and you shouldn’t talk about how your needs are different because you have a child,” Jez shares.
Bring Your Kids to College Day flips this narrative and instead invites all parents and their dependents to participate in the campus world. It also promotes a sense of pride among students and introduces their children to the world of higher education, encouraging them to aspire toward postsecondary education.
Class in session: UCSC invited parents to bring their “junior banana slugs” to class on April 25. To prepare for the day, university leaders asked students with dependents to reach out to their professors and alert them that they’d be bringing a little one (to ensure class content was suitable for children), and those without children were encouraged to smile and say hello to the young slugs.
Throughout the day, staff offered special education on campus, including workshops, a résumé and cover letter session, and kid-friendly activities. The California Alliance for Student Parents provided snacks, coloring books and more.
Cal Poly’s celebration took place at the Plant Conservatory on campus. The all-day event had food, drinks, photo opportunities and activities such as chalk, bubbles and parachutes for individuals to drop in between classes and stay as long as they’d like. Around 20 people were in attendance (Cal Poly has around 100 students with dependents who have self-identified), according to the Cal Poly student paper, Mustang News.
Alliance leaders hope to see Bring Your Kids to College Day grow nationally across colleges and are considering setting a day in September to celebrate National Student Parent Month as well.
On-going connections: Both campuses have dedicated student parent offices that provide regular events and resources to help student parents retain and complete at their institution.
Cal Poly’s Students with Dependents program helps provide financial resources, parking permit help, childcare enrollment and priority registration for courses (a new state requirement as of 2023). In May, Cal Poly was awarded $60,000 to participate in a data-to-action campaign for parenting students, organized by the Urban Institute, which will help measure and understand the parenting student experience in higher education.
UCSC’s parenting student resources are housed in the STARRS (Services for Transfer Re-entry and Resilient Scholars) office, which provides a quarterly meal plan for student parents and their dependents, scholarships, internship opportunities, and priority registration.
Students can also participate in the Student Parent Organization, which connects learners and those passionate about supporting student parents to build connections and highlight issues relevant to this group. The group highlights academic achievements through graduation stoles and diploma frames, as well as guidance on being a successful student through the Student Parents Resource Guide.
The alliance continues to advocate for policy that expands resources and institutional supports for parenting students through inclusive practices, infrastructure and engagement opportunities.
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