November 10, 2025

Funded by the National Science Foundation, this report shares survey findings from 90 community colleges across 17 states that participated in the INTuitN S-STEM Research Hub or Hope Impact Partnerships (HIP) and fielded The Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey between Spring 2023 and Spring 2025 to illustrate the challenges faced by parenting students.

Community colleges play a vital role in helping parenting students to achieve their academic goals, because they serve a higher proportion of parenting students than four-year institutions. However, the chronic underfunding of these institutions means that most lack sufficient infrastructure, facilities, and staffing to properly support parenting students and meet their unique needs and situations—from on-campus and drop-in childcare options and family-friendly spaces on campus to flexible course scheduling and attendance policies designed around childcare availability. Because of this, community college parenting students hold higher amounts of student debt while also completing their education at lower rates than their non-parenting peers.

Reversing these trends will require institutions, states, and the federal government to dedicate increased attention—and investment—to aligning resources, policies, and practices with the complex lives and needs of parenting students. This report includes best practices that community colleges can implement to better support their students with caregiving responsibilities, as well as state and federal policy recommendations.