Emergency Aid, Enduring Impact: Strengthening Families, Communities and the Economy through Support for Student Parents
To help address the unique financial challenges faced by student parents, HCM Strategists has launched a new policy brief series in support of Scholarship America’s National Emergency Scholarship Fund for Student Parents. This series, Emergency Aid, Enduring Impact, delivers insights and expertise from partners with diverse perspectives on the importance of emergency aid and targeted supports for student parents.
Across the United States, millions of students striving for a college degree are derailed not by academic challenges, but by unexpected financial emergencies and the overwhelming costs of balancing education with basic needs—especially student parents.
More than one in five undergraduates are student parents, with single mothers representing 43% of this population alone. All too often, however, financial struggles get in the way of student completion—a recent student financial wellness survey reports that more than half of respondents (58%) experienced basic needs insecurity, including difficulties accessing food, housing, or other fundamental resources essential for academic success.
This series of briefs combines research and students’ lived experience to make a compelling case: emergency aid programs and targeted supports for student parents are not just lifelines for individuals—they are critical investments in America’s economic future.
Read our Executive Summary
By Julie Ajinkya and Brenae Smith, HCM Strategists
A Call to Action: Help Student Parents Complete College
The national conversation on higher education must shift from celebrating access to ensuring completion. Emergency aid, flexible financial supports, and institutional reforms aren’t just important and compassionate policies that help institutions better serve today’s students—they are smart economic strategies for society at large.
States and institutions should implement flexible emergency programs, integrate supports for student parents at the institutional and state levels, prioritize data collection on student parents in order to connect students more intentionally with supports, and build bipartisan momentum to support student parents.
Without intervention, financial emergencies will continue to derail students who are close to the finish line, perpetuating cycles of poverty and debt. With thoughtful investment, however, we can dramatically raise graduation rates, strengthen the workforce, and create generational change—particularly for student parents, their families, and the communities they belong to. Investing in students’ success today ensures a stronger, more prosperous America tomorrow.
Emergency Aid, Enduring Impact: Strengthening Families, Communities, and the Economy through Support for Student Parents provides a roadmap for institutions and policymakers to better support student parents—ensuring they stay enrolled, complete their education, and strengthen their families, communities, and our nation’s workforce.
Explore the Full Series
Brief 1
“The Economic Case for Emergency Student Aid” by Beth Akers, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), lays out the case for expanding access to emergency financial support for students and demonstrates the potential impact of greater access to emergency aid: a financial lifeline that can help students avoid the consequences of stopping out without a degree.
Brief 2
“Investing in Students Parents, Building Stronger Futures” by Nicole Lynn Lewis, Founder and CEO of Generation Hope, presents compelling policy and personal testimonies for integrating financial support and wraparound services into higher education systems—drawing on the lived experiences of three student parents to demonstrate that targeted investments in this population generate significant returns for families, communities, and the broader economy.
Brief 3
“Emergency Aid at Scale: State Efforts to Support Student Parents” by Rob Anderson, President of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), describes how several states are supporting student parents and leading efforts to embed emergency aid within broader postsecondary policy frameworks, highlighting these models as strategic investments that strengthen student outcomes and support long-term economic growth.
