The California State Assembly just declared September Student Parent Month. This aligns with a 2021 federal resolution and elevates the fact that nearly one in five college students are also raising children. That’s more than 3 million undergraduates.
Student parents face unique challenges navigating overlapping policy systems, including financial aid, early childhood education and care, and workforce and training. This means they have unique needs. When their needs are met, not only can they thrive, but their children can also thrive, colleges can achieve their institutional goals, and local, state, and national economies can grow.
Though the new Student Parent Month designation offers important visibility, key to meeting student parents’ needs is better data. Without it, they remain invisible in the educational systems meant to serve them. California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI), a college awarded as part of the Urban Institute’s Data-to-Action Campaign, has been collecting local college data on student parent enrollment, characteristics, services used and remaining needs, and academic outcomes. Their approach offers a model for how other higher education institutions can better meet the needs of student parents.
Combining data sources can help colleges capture student parent needs
A team at CSUCI has been meticulously improving their student parent data collection as part of the Data-to-Action Campaign for Parenting Students. CSUCI’s Data-to-Action team members have become master weavers, braiding together multiple data sources—including CSU’s application, priority registration, and financial aid records—to build a more accurate, detailed understanding of their parenting student population.
This weaving approach protects against variation in data collection that local colleges cannot control. For example, bringing together multiple sources of data was particularly important following the 2023 change to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), as information about dependents was only collected for a small subsample of students. Further, some colleges use external data—such as the Common Application, Cal State Apply, and CCCApply—to track students’ parenting status, so any changes recorded in these systems would cascade down to colleges.
In 2022, California mandated that all CSU institutions and community colleges give priority registration to student parents. To set up priority registration for student parents on CSU campuses, the California State University Office of the Chancellor collaborated with individual campus information technology teams to develop a system module to collect students’ parent status in fall 2023. Students already identified as having dependents based on their college application receive pop-ups each fall in their online student portal prompting them to self-register for priority registration.
Each student record in the CSUCI student record system flags whether they have a dependent. It is informed by their application (Cal State Apply), FAFSA, and information disclosed by students to access priority registration. Once any source identifies a student as having dependents, they remain flagged in subsequent terms.
After the 2023 change in the FAFSA, this data weaving approach helped CSUCI avoid miscounting student parents. If CSUCI had been reliant upon FAFSA, as they once were, the change would have drastically reduced their count. Instead, other data sources filled the gap.
Student parent insights also enhance college data collection
Beyond building the technical infrastructure to capture student parent data, CSUCI also recognized the importance of engaging student parents directly in shaping how data would be collected and used. Braiding data sources alone provides a more accurate count, but understanding the lived realities behind the numbers requires student expertise and leadership.
CSUCI student parent Rebecca Seuferer Tamplin codesigned a mixed-methods study on parenting student needs with the CSUCI director of basic needs. Drawing on her lived expertise and peer outreach, Seuferer Tamplin helped interpret survey and focus group findings that revealed service gaps and highlighted the need for dedicated parenting student programs on campus. These data showed that such a program—or an identified staff point person—would likely help support sense of belonging, access, and retention. This led Seuferer Tamplin and other students to reestablish the Dolphins with Dependents student organization and helped motivate other resources on campus for parents, such as child items in the campus pantry.
Why data are key to ensuring student parent and college success
Data are not just numbers; they highlight where student parents are thriving and where barriers persist. CSUCI’s efforts to improve data accuracy and detail revealed many insights, including that student parents were stopping out or dropping out at higher rates than their peers and were less likely to use on-campus resources, like the recreation center, despite paying for them through student fees. Insights like these help colleges identify opportunities to target resources, address persistence gaps, and ensure student parents get an equal opportunity to be successful college students.
By linking data collection to programming and policy decisions, CSUCI demonstrates how accurately identifying parenting students can drive meaningful institutional change. This dual strategy—braiding data sources and engaging student parents directly—ensures parenting students are not only counted but also heard, seen, and supported. Lessons from colleges such as CSUCI can inform system-level strategies and priorities, state policymaking, and emerging best practices.
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