Whether you have children and where you live affect a person’s access to economic opportunities, including education and employment, and these factors also determine a person’s access to different resources through their communities.

The Mississippi Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (MIBEST) program is a workforce and economic development effort that operated across Mississippi’s 15 community colleges (and currently continues in at least three colleges). MIBEST assists residents in overcoming barriers to education and job opportunities. The program targets adults without a high school credential or with low basic skill scores and concurrently offers short-term workforce training and career and technical education along with adult education, supporting students with navigators and other services to help them upskill and secure jobs with family-sustaining wages.

In this brief, we expand upon Urban’s evaluation of MIBEST by exploring how the characteristics and outcomes of MIBEST students differed based on their parenting status and geographic region.

What We Found

MIBEST improved education and earnings outcomes for parenting and nonparenting students alike and across all regions where the program operated, though variations in characteristics and outcomes existed among the groups.

• Parenting students—who make up about one-third of MIBEST students—had different characteristics from students without children. They were more likely to be Black, female, and married; slightly older when they entered MIBEST; and had higher earnings before enrollment.
• Parenting students had comparable education outcomes to nonparenting students. They earned a similar number of credits (16.2 versus 17.4) and achieved comparable rates of postsecondary credential attainment (43 versus 46 percent), suggesting MIBEST helped parenting students perform as well as their nonparenting peers. This differs from the national pattern of parenting students, who tend to perform similarly in coursework to nonparents but have lower rates of persistence and credential completion.
• Parenting students earned about as much after the program as nonparents, even though they may have faced additional labor market considerations and barriers.
• The demographic characteristics of MIBEST students varied considerably across the four workforce regions of Mississippi. Regional factors likely influenced the barriers students faced, the resources they had access to, and the employment opportunities that were available to them.
• Education outcomes differed across the four MIBEST regions. Compared with students in other regions, students in the Southcentral Mississippi Works region (southwest Mississippi) earned substantially more credits, and those in the Mississippi Partnership region (northeast Mississippi) were more likely to attain a credential. Students in the Delta region (northwest Mississippi) earned similar numbers of credits to those in the Mississippi Partnership region and Twin Districts region (southeast Mississippi), but they earned fewer credentials, on average.
• Students’ average quarterly earnings grew in each region after enrollment. Nine quarters after enrollment, MIBEST students in the Southcentral Mississippi Works region had the highest quarterly earnings at $3,136, up from $1,594 at enrollment. Those in the Delta region had the lowest earnings at $2,497, up from $1,249 at enrollment.
• Within three of the four MIBEST regions, Black students experienced similar gains to students of other races and ethnicities. Black students in the Mississippi Partnership, Southcentral Mississippi Works, and Twin Districts regions had similar earnings trajectories to students of other races or ethnicities. However, Black students in the Delta region earned substantially less at enrollment and continued to earn less after MIBEST, suggesting that racial inequities vary by region and are larger in the Delta region.

Why This Matters

Obtaining a postsecondary degree or credential can open doors to better job prospects and higher incomes, but many Mississippians face barriers to attending and completing school, especially if they are living in economically disadvantaged regions or are parents.

Understanding how aparenting status and geographic location influence MIBEST students’ education and earnings outcomes helps inform policymakers and advocates seeking to bring integrated basic education and skills training to more higher education institutions. In particular, this research can inform targeted investments in specific areas of the South, such as the Delta region. And it can help advance equitable outcomes for student parents, a group often overlooked in programmatic outcome research because of incomplete data.