Parenting students are neither a small fraction of California’s undergraduates nor a niche, special interest group—and that’s very much true at California State University. Given that the majority of this population consists of students of color, women, and/or first-generation college students, it is both an equity imperative and a necessity to ensure that parenting students receive the support they need to complete their degrees, particularly if the state aims to develop the skilled workforce required to foster a thriving economy.
Yet too often, parenting students are rendered nearly invisible because neither individual colleges nor the systems as a whole systematically collect data on parenting student demographics, experiences, and outcomes. This report from The California Alliance for Student Parent Success suggests that across several CSU campuses, leadership and staff have begun taking important steps toward collecting and leveraging data to better support parenting students. But the findings also indicate that much more needs to be done. The recommendations point toward actions that individual campuses and the CSU system can take to do this work in a more comprehensive and robust way with a consistent eye on closing racial and income-based equity gaps.