. The nonprofit advocacy group looked at the expenses low-income student parents face in all 50 states. Nationwide, more than two-thirds of student parents live at or near the poverty line and 52% are grant recipients.
This was the case for Isabel Torres, who began taking classes at Austin Community College after having her daughter. Assistance from the Texas Workforce Commission helped her cover the cost of school, books and even gas, but child care was another story.Isabel Torres said it was hard to find affordable child care for her daughter, Jupiter, while attending Austin Community College.
“Just looking into day cares, most of them were about $100 a day without any sort of assistance,” she said. “And it was very difficult. I knew I needed to have a career that had more opportunities if [my daughter and I] were going to be able to survive.” The Education Trust estimated how many hours a student parent would need to work in each state to afford two different types of child care, in addition to college expenses. On average in the U.S., a student parent would need to work 53 hours a week to cover the cost of an in-home day care and their education. In Texas, where the hourly minimum wage is $7.25, a student parent would need to work 64 hours a week to cover those costs.
“It truly felt like I had won the lottery,” Torres said. “She actually had an education and started learning and talking more and could write her name.” The Education Trust has a variety of recommendations for how to increase access to higher education for student parents, such as increasing the federal minimum wage to $20, increasing funding for early childhood education, and doubling the Pell Grant. Higher Education Senior Policy Analyst Brittani Williams said colleges also need to collect better data about students who are parents and increase access to child care.
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