Student Parents in Texas Unaware of Key Supports

For Laura Ann Castillo, juggling college with caring for her 11-year-old son, Mason, means carefully planning her class schedule around his school day.

The 39-year-old student at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio attends classes Mondays and Wednesdays before taking the bus to pick up her son after school. The trip can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, leaving Castillo with limited options for when she can take classes.

Priority registration has helped Castillo gain more control over that balancing act.

“I have used it, and it’s an amazing opportunity for parenting students to get the classes that they need,” Castillo said. “It’s something that should be talked about more, because I don’t think many students are aware of it or know how to access it.”

A disconnect: Castillo’s experience echoes a broader awareness gap among parenting students across Texas, according to new research from Trellis Strategies. The postsecondary research and consulting firm surveyed nearly 400 parenting students at 49 Texas colleges and universities from mid-June through early July to examine the implementation of two state policies designed to support this population.

One of those policies, passed in 2023, requires institutions that offer priority registration to any student group to extend the same opportunity to parenting students. While the benefit can make a difference for those who receive it, the findings suggest many students don’t know it exists.

Some 62 percent of respondents to the Trellis survey did not know whether their institution offered early or priority registration, and 79 percent were unaware that parenting students are entitled to priority registration when it is offered to other student groups.

Only 18 percent reported receiving the benefit. But among those who did, 94 percent said the process was easy, and nearly 80 percent said it helped them align their class schedules with childcare responsibilities.

Allyson Cornett, director of research at Trellis Strategies, said the goal of priority registration is to lessen some of the scheduling burden on parenting students by giving them more control over when they take classes.

“For a parenting student, the right course at the wrong time isn’t a viable course at all,” Cornett said. “It has to fit into the puzzle work of their life and their responsibilities outside of school, and by offering priority registration and letting students take advantage of that, it gives them a better chance to align what they’re doing in school to the rest of their lives outside.”

The research also examined the early implementation of another law, which requires public colleges and universities to designate a parenting student liaison to connect students with resources such as childcare, transportation assistance, public benefits, health services and academic support.

But those liaisons remain largely invisible to students. Nearly 88 percent of survey respondents were unaware that their institution is required to designate a parenting student liaison. Only 10 percent knew how to contact that person, and just 3 percent reported ever interacting with a liaison.

Among students who knew about the liaison office, 45 percent said the contact information was difficult to find or unavailable on their institution’s website. Among those who worked with a liaison, however, 61 percent found the experience helpful or extremely helpful.

“Communication is a major part of it, but I think it’s more broad of an issue than communication. It’s also a navigation issue,” Cornett said. “They need straightforward eligibility processes and easy pathways to access these benefits.”

“[Parenting students] often have additional responsibilities that nonparenting students might not have,” she added. “So if a parenting student has to search multiple web pages, contact several offices or repeatedly self-identify or share personal information about themselves and their families, that creates additional friction for someone that’s already balancing work and caregiving.”

The findings also point to broader challenges that can affect parenting students’ ability to persist and complete their degrees. About one-third of respondents said they expected it would take longer to graduate than originally anticipated, and nearly half said childcare conflicts had forced them to drop, miss or rearrange classes. Fewer than half said they felt supported by their institution.

“When parenting students, or anyone that is navigating substantial outside-of-school responsibilities, have to make these decisions, sometimes it is that choice between ‘Do I go to class or do I stay home and take care of my sick child?’” Cornett said. “When institutions don’t allow that flexibility to let a student attend online or a hybrid version for that class, that’s when we see students have to make these hard trade-offs.”

Making support visible: Cornett said Texas has established a meaningful policy framework to support parenting students, but the challenge of ensuring students know about and can access available resources extends beyond the state. Nationally, she said, colleges can face a similar gap between making supports available and ensuring students actually benefit from them.

That could mean providing information through a central web page or student portals such as Blackboard or Canvas. Colleges could also include information in orientation materials, through advising and on course syllabi, as well as incorporating available supports into registration, financial aid and faculty communications. 

Cornett said institutions should also reduce administrative friction by clarifying eligibility and automating access where possible, with the goal of requiring parenting students to disclose their status only once.

“What institutions can do is just make the support part of the normal student experience, rather than another system that these student parents must independently discover,” Cornett said. “That will also help these resources and support feel open, accessible and destigmatized.”

Get more content like this directly to your inbox. Subscribe here.