After paid work, childcare and other responsibilities, a college student with preschool-aged children has, on average, about 10 hours left per day to sleep, eat, relax and complete schoolwork, leaving the student parent less likely to complete their degree, according to a study examining the impact of student parenting status on college degree completion.
In “No Time for College? An Investigation of Time Poverty and Parenthood,” the study’s researchers noted that gaps in completion outcomes for student parents largely stemmed from the significant amount of time they spend on childcare, while also working to support their families.
“There’s a need for additional childcare, but this is partially a financial issue, too,” said Dr. Claire Wladis, professor of mathematics at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) and an education researcher. “Many students would work fewer hours if they could, but they don’t receive enough financial aid to be able to reduce the hours that they’re working in order to pay for the costs of things their family needs like food and housing because financial aid only covers, in theory, the cost of the students themselves and not their families.”
As lead author of the report, Wladis worked with Dr. Alyse Hachey, associate professor of early childhood education at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Dr. Katherine Conway, professor of business management at BMCC, to analyze survey and transcript data from 15,385 students at two- and four-year colleges in the City University of New York system.
Findings from the semester-long study revealed that college students with young children were twice as likely to drop out of college than childless peers. If these students did persist, they accumulated fewer course credits each semester than non-parent peers, the report found.
Where student parents only had 10 hours remaining each day for themselves, childless college students had approximately 21 hours available for sleeping, eating, leisure and homework, the study indicated.
Previous research has shown the educational and economic benefits of college-completion for student parents. However, time and finances continue to be barriers for student parents such as the ones surveyed in Wladis and her colleagues’ study.
