California Community College campuses are struggling to enroll Latinx students. As identified through the literature, most Latinx students navigate the college enrollment process with little to no guidance and seek support in navigating it. Using Yosso's (2005) community cultural wealth framework, I investigate how Rose Grace College's Familias…

Latinx students are pursuing college at historically high rates; however, completion rates for this population are not keeping pace. With these students disproportionately attending community colleges, 2-year college leaders are striving to break down barriers and identify support systems that increase Latinx student success. Two factors found to…

Primary research questions: What stories do student parents at Maryland Community College (MCC) tell about their intersecting identities? How do student parents speak about the institutional context of MCC in these stories? What are the implications of these stories in supporting student parents at MCC? Nearly 3.8 million student parents are…

A growing subset of the United States community college student population are students who are parents. Parenting students contend with dividing their time and attention between the demands of parenting responsibilities, other life tasks, while being a student -- forming an intricate web of external factors that create barriers to their…

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students' experiences meeting their…

Recent research indicated that academic advisors across the nation are encountering parents accompanying their students to college academic advising meetings with greater frequency than in years past; which, as a consequence, has led to frustration and confusion among academic advisors, and advising directors as to what the proper role of parents…

Twenty-two percent of United States undergraduate students are parents (Cruse, et al., 2020). Referred to as student-parents, they are most likely to have low-incomes and attend community colleges (Cruse, et al., 2019; Gault et al., 2014). They tend to reduce their course loads and drop out of college due to work-life balance challenges even…

Can information close socioeconomic gaps in parents' postsecondary aspirations for their children? We administer a survey experiment to a nationally representative sample of U.S. parents, who are also asked whether their child is academically prepared for college. We inquire whether parents prefer their child to pursue a four-year degree, two-year…

The challenges facing higher education institutions across this country continue to increase, becoming more and more complex with each passing semester. Higher education administrators and those who aspire to be such must constantly stay abreast of all potential adverse issues, but especially those that affect the educational success of our…

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students participating in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research about parenting students' experiences navigating…

Community colleges serve as the primary entry point for many nontraditional student populations. Over 3.8 million students in higher education are student parents (e.g., college students with dependents), and 42% of student parents are enrolled in community colleges across the country. In this report, we center the voices and experiences of…

This paper seeks to take advantage of the concept of emotional capital to analyse how class is lived out through a critical educational failure by referring to the experiences of 64 community-college students in Hong Kong from a longitudinal qualitative study. Arguably an analysis of the emotions of middle-class and working-class respondents and…

Food insecurity has been a prevailing issue among college students for a number of years. Over the past decade, studies have been conducted to determine the prevalence rate of food insecurity on college campuses ((El Zein et al., 2019; Gaines et al., 2014; Goldrick-Rab et al., 2018; Patton-Lopez et al., 2014; Payne-Sturges et al., 2018; Riddle et…

Earning a college degree is a major pathway to economic mobility. Although Black women enter college at higher rates than white, Hispanic, and Black men (for example, in 2020, Black women enrolled in college at a 40% rate, compared to 37% for White men, 31% for Black men, and 30% for Hispanic men) they still face barriers to degree completion,…

This qualitative case study examined one community college's attempt to better meet the needs of the single mother student population and create a better understanding of the barriers encountered by single mothers in their access to and completion of a short-term certificate program at a community college. Through a qualitative case study of…