Responding to the Needs of Student Parents in Maryland

* Pseudonyms are used throughout to protect the privacy of student parents and campus staff

Before most of Maryland wakes up, student parents like Sophia* are already stepping into their longest hours.

At 5:45 a.m., she is packing lunches for her 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, brushing teeth, and steering two sleepy kids into their morning outfits before dropping them off with a family friend who provides hourly care. Then, she heads to her community college for nursing classes and clinical shifts. Homework waits until her children fall asleep.

“We looked into it [day care],” she said. “That’s three-fourths of what we make. That’s not gonna happen.”

About an hour north, Danielle*, a mother of three, knows that barrier well. She left school years ago when pregnancy and long walks across campus made attending class feel out of reach. She worked full-time, took night classes, and hid her pregnancy from co-workers.

“Had I known that they [her community college] had the resources then that they do now, I wouldn’t have stopped going,” she said.

Across the United States, student parents like Sophia and Danielle face difficult choices, including how to patch together child care, manage the rising cost of groceries, and complete their courses alongside work. They are part of 4.8 million student parents nationwide, about 71 percent of whom are mothers, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Forty-three percent of student parents are single parents, and many are students of color. 

Their academic performance is on par with their peers, but they are juggling an immense amount of responsibility and pressure. They often experience financial disruptions that can contribute to higher dropout rates, health risks, and long-term income loss—increasing the possibility of worsening intergenerational inequities for parents and their children. Often, child care options are unaffordable, inconvenient, or do not line up with early morning or evening class hours, as our team heard from several student parents. 

While many campuses have programs and policies to support student parents, they face uncertain funding. And changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid eligibility rules, outlined in a recent Beeck Center report on “Implementing Benefits Eligibility + Enrollment Systems: State Responses to H.R. 1,” have left states reevaluating how to allocate resources. This November, SNAP disruptions added another layer of confusion for families already budgeting down to the dollar. 

For many student parents, one large expense can determine whether they can stay in school or drop out altogether.

Higher education staff can play an important role in helping student parents navigate these shifts.

Understanding the Needs of Student Parents

In 2025, the Family Benefits Lab at the Beeck Center partnered with Maryland’s Governor’s Office for Children and the Maryland Higher Education Commission to document promising practices that support student parents across the state and better understand how student parents enroll and participate in programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and child care subsidies.

Through 19 in-depth interviews and focus groups with student parents and college and university staff, our team identified challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for Maryland agencies and campuses to improve the experience of student parents.

• Recommendation 1: Strengthen campus culture to recognize and support student parents. Many student parents told us they feel invisible on their own campuses built around “traditional” students. Staff shared the same concern. “We’re trying to change the culture, and that has to come from the top down, right?” said Jazmine*, project coordinator for a campus federal child care grant at a Maryland community college. Colleges can change this by giving professors and academic advisors referral resources so they can quickly connect student parents to the right supports. They can also pilot a “sense of belonging” survey to understand the needs of student parents and track whether they feel seen and supported on campus over time. These steps create a family-friendly campus atmosphere that attracts and retains non-traditional students.
• Recommendation 2: Support colleges in identifying who their student parents are. There is not yet a standardized process in Maryland to collect data on student parents, so college staff struggle to know who needs help. This makes it harder to connect parents to child care scholarships, emergency aid, or benefits navigation. Helping colleges think through initial pilots of data collection or surveying of student parents, including how to set up privacy and data use preferences—and involving student parents in those decisions—creates clearer pathways to support and improves statewide visibility into their needs.
• Recommendation 3: Adapt class schedules and campus policies to the realities of student parents. Student parents described classes scheduled during school pick-up times, limited online course offerings, and child care centers that only serve certain ages. “There’s no flexibility,” Jazmine said. These conflicts can push student parents to miss class or drop out entirely. Colleges can ease those pressures by offering flexible attendance policies, priority registration for student parents, and dedicated family-friendly campus spaces. Sharing model policies could help specific programs that enroll many student parents, or programs aligned to Maryland’s workforce priorities, adopt these changes. These adjustments boost class attendance and improve retention.
• Recommendation 4: Give campus staff simple, accurate guides to talk about public benefits. Staff know the basics of Maryland public benefits resources, but many haven’t used them personally. Evelyn*, manager of student affairs said “I’ve never used some of these food banks. And so, when you get asked the question, then you’re having to research, and I realize[d] I need to pull all these together.” Advisors want to help, but struggle to give clear guidance amidst shifting benefits eligibility rules, deadlines, and program requirements. Plain-language benefits guides for both students and staff, paired with regular updates through existing campus communications, make it easier for staff to share the right information. Campus visits from state agency partners can also ensure staff have the latest details without digging through dense websites. These changes give campus staff more confidence to help student parents complete benefits applications correctly the first time.
• Recommendation 5: Streamline benefits enrollment so student parents don’t lose support while in school. Priority programs that came up frequently in our interviews included SNAP, WIC, child care scholarship, and cash assistance. Amanda*, director of college and community outreach, told us that students often miss required benefits interviews because the calls come during class time. “For our students… they gotta wait for that [SNAP interview] call to come in after 30 days, and they miss it, ’cause they’re in class,” she said. Working with colleges to understand these friction points, and using their feedback to fix recurring issues, helps families keep the support they qualify for. This strengthens trust between state agencies, campuses, and the student parents who rely on these programs. 

Although there is no national requirement for colleges to track which students are parents, a few states are starting to close that gap. In California, the GAINS Act–signed in 2024–directs colleges to standardize student parent data collection and report on student parent support across campuses.

In Maryland, House Bill 0298 (Maryland Higher Education Commission – Demographic Data Collection – Parental Status) would require every public college to collect parental-status data and publish it annually.

Mapping Innovations Across Maryland

Our research identified a range of promising practices already in place at community colleges and four-year universities across Maryland.

Staff and student parents also described support ideas that do not yet exist on their campus, but would make a meaningful difference in the experience of student parents.

Universities and public agencies that invest in upstream support to link student parents to benefits and resources—like dedicated benefits navigators staff, integrated benefit application portals, or financial and material resources designed for caregiving students—can improve student retention, strengthen the access of families to health and nutrition benefits, and support long-term stability.

Explore this chart and table to see how Maryland’s community colleges, four-year universities, and graduate schools are meeting the needs of student parents.

What’s Next?

Crystal*, a mother of a five-year-old daughter with autism, explained how the required redetermination process repeatedly threatens her family’s access to groceries.

“I try to keep at least $100 in my SNAP [EBT] account to roll over to the next month, just for emergencies,” she said. “I have had situations where I couldn’t do my redetermination because of [the] documents [that] were needed. I was even told that I wasn’t able to get the amount I was getting because I was in school… It just made me feel like, because I’m a student, I can’t eat.”

Crystal, like many of the student parents we interviewed, is working to complete her degree and build a stable career for her family. Her experience highlights how the systems meant to support families can, at times, make that path more fragile.

Our aim is to help higher education staff sustain and scale what works for student parents like Crystal, Danielle, and Sophia. In 2026, our team will continue to work with Maryland partners to translate student parent feedback into improved services for thousands of student parents across the state. 

To learn more about this work and share a promising practice from your college or university, contact fblbeeck@georgetown.edu. 

Acknowledgements

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Ballmer Group