Student parents (also known as parenting students) make up nearly one in five undergraduates in the United States. While they earn similar grades as students without children, student parents graduate at much lower rates—even when comparing students with similar backgrounds attending similar types of colleges. To address this gap, states are increasingly requiring colleges to track students’ parenting status. This data collection aims to improve understanding of student parent outcomes and to design policies and practices that promote their success. This brief compiles insights from the Data-to-Action (D2A) Campaign for Parenting Students and provides recommendations on how to ask about parenting status, how to collect data, key considerations and challenges, and real examples of how colleges are gathering and using this information.

What We Found

• We recommend defining parenting students as follows: “A parenting student is someone who is enrolled in any level of education or training and is concurrently responsible for (or imminently will be responsible for) providing for a child of any age. They may be a biological parent, stepparent or unmarried coparent, adoptive parent, foster parent, guardian, grandparent, extended family member, or sibling caregiver.”
• We present a two-question and a one-question approach to asking students about their parenting status, with an optional supplemental question to identify single parents.
• We recommend that colleges begin by collecting students’ parenting status at initial application or enrollment.
• Colleges should update data from application or enrollment at least annually at universal student touchpoints, such as at course registration intake or through an enrollment form.
• Although surveys have some appealing benefits, we do not recommend that colleges use surveys as the primary method of collecting student parenting status.
• We do not recommend relying on external financial aid data.
• We also recommend avoiding manual data entry where possible.
• Colleges should also consider how to store data, minimize threats to students, engage students, inform students, reach out to faculty, and protect sensitive information.
• We summarize known challenges and present illustrative real-world examples of how colleges have approached data collection on students’ parenting status.

How We Did It

The Data-to-Action (D2A) Campaign for Parenting Students is an effort in California, Illinois, and Oregon that aims to inform high-quality data collection on college students’ parenting status and to use the data to improve opportunities for student parents to meet their education, career, and life goals. Through coaching, technical assistance, and peer learning, the D2A Campaign supports a college community of practice comprising higher education institutions in California, Illinois, and Oregon. In 2022 and 2023, these states took the lead in passing legislation to collect college students’ parenting status at the student-record level, with the goal of improving higher education outcomes. The Urban Institute worked with institutions to support their implementation of those policies, and the recommendations in this brief are formulated from lessons learned during the D2A process.