ABOUT THE PROJECT
The population of college students who are also parents (parenting students) is quickly growing across U.S. campuses, yet little is known about their experiences of balancing educational demands with the demands of parenting. Understanding the challenges and barriers that parenting students face is important to ensuring their ability to enroll in, persist at, and graduate with their degree.
More than one-quarter of all college students are parenting students.
Only 33% of parenting students complete a degree or certificate within six years; for single mothers, the six-year completion rate is only 28%.
One significant challenge is child care, with access and affordability as notable needs. To this end, The Ohio State University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) ACCESS Collaborative was awarded a Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create an Ohio State CCAMPIS program. The program assists parenting students from low-income households by providing funds for high-quality, accredited child care services.
The Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy partners with ODI and ACCESS Collaborative in an ongoing research project geared toward understanding the experiences and challenges of parenting students and identifying their needs as students navigating universities.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
– 1 –
Identify and recruit potentially eligible parenting students by employing aggressive outreach and marketing strategies.
– 2 –
Understand the specific child care, financial, academic and holistic needs of Ohio State parenting students and their families by conducting a needs assessment.
– 3 –
Provide child care services to parenting students with the greatest need by contracting child care services and providing referrals and cost of care subsidies to child care partners in the community.
– 4 –
Provide a continuum of services, programming and links to economic, community and health services to promote the persistence and graduation of parenting students.
MEET THE PROJECT TEAM
Kelly Purtell, PhD
Principal Investigator
Dr. Purtell’s research aims to understand barriers to preschool participation among families from low-income households.
Read more about Dr. Purtell here.
Sunny Munn, PhD
Evaluation Staff
Dr. Munn is Crane’s Director of Evaluation and Innovation; in this role, she leads internal and external evaluation activities, identifies new funding opportunities, and pursues innovative partnerships and collaborations.
Learn more about Dr. Munn here.
READ ON
Learn more about or apply to Ohio State’s CCAMPIS program on their site.
Former program assistant DeVaughn Croxton, a child of a parenting students himself, shares his story along with insights into how to advocate for parenting students in this blog. He also shared his advocacy insights in this short video.
Watch CCAMPIS alum Robert Landers, father of two and recent graduate, who was featured on NBC4 as he eyed the NFL draft.
Read the Crane Center’s white paper highlighting the research findings of the first two years of the CCAMPIS program. You can also watch the Crane Research Forum where these findings were presented.