New design insights from Education Design Lab’s Student Parent Success community show why belonging, visible support, childcare, and co-design must be central to student-parent success.
Nearly one in five college students is raising children or serving as a primary caregiver while pursuing a credential or degree. Yet higher education systems, policies, and supports are too often designed without student parents at the table — leaving many to navigate college, work, caregiving, and basic needs largely on their own.
Co-Designing With Student Parents: Actionable Insights for Systemic Change shares what emerged when Education Design Lab’s Student Parent Success community brought parenting learners together with college educators and ecosystem partners to redesign the student-parent experience.
The report centers a simple premise: student parents should not be treated only as recipients of support. They should be active partners in identifying barriers, shaping ideas, and informing the solutions intended to serve them.
Across learner stories, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and design sessions, three themes stand out:
Belonging matters. A flexible professor, a visible family-friendly space, or a peer community can make the difference between stopping out and persisting.
Support must be visible and connected. Childcare, mental health, transportation, basic needs, and career support often exist across disconnected systems. Student parents need clear, coordinated pathways to the resources that can help them succeed.
Student parent voice must drive change. When institutions design with parenting learners — not simply for them — they gain clearer insight into what families need and build more relevant, responsive solutions for all students.
The report offers stakeholder-specific insights and calls to action for:
Faculty and staff seeking practical ways to create more flexible, affirming learning environments.
College leaders working to make student parents a priority in planning, basic-needs strategy, and campus culture.
Ecosystem partners building coordinated connections across education, workforce, housing, childcare, transportation, and family supports.
Employers looking to recognize the durable skills student parents build through caregiving, work, and persistence.
Policymakers advancing childcare access and family-centered infrastructure that makes postsecondary completion possible.
The report also highlights examples of action already underway — from a faculty-and-staff learning experience co-designed with student parents, to campus communities that foster belonging, to the CUNY Fatherhood Academy, skills-validation work with 150 student parents, and family-centered childcare models such as Study N Play.
When student parents thrive, their children thrive, too. They build generational opportunity for their families, communities, and the future workforce.
Download the full report to explore the learner stories, design insights, examples, and practical starting points for building higher education systems where student parents can belong, persist, and succeed.
This report was written by Breanna Shaw, an assistant education designer at Education Design Lab who was a student parent during her own higher education journey. The research included in this publication was made possible through the generous support of ECMC Foundation.
