Dive Brief:
- Hillary Clinton is advocating a nationwide scholarship program for single parents called SPARK, which would provide up to $1,500 per year per student to help offset expenses like child care and transportation.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that Student Parents in America Raising Kids is a massive scaling up of an Arkansas program Clinton helped launch as the state’s first lady — that program has awarded 40,000 scholarships, and, in 2014, 86% of recipients either graduated or persisted.
- One challenge of the program is that it is easier to conduct outreach with current students, limiting the program’s impact on single parents who would like to go to school but don’t think they have the resources to make it work.
Dive Insight:
One key criticism about current financial aid models is that they do not take into account the extent of post-secondary expenses beyond tuition and fees. Recent research from the Wisconsin HOPE lab found that institutions routinely underestimate living expenses, and as students progress through their academic careers, they have less access to financial aid dollars. Underestimating the real cost of college limits the amount students can access in federal financial aid, increasing their burden during their years in school.
As nontraditional student populations become an even larger portion of college cohorts, colleges will have to figure out new ways to serve them, possibly through new scholarship programs, on-campus childcare or other supports.