Last Updated on October 20, 2023 by Lori Pace
Having a higher education is becoming a necessity for the achievement of economic security. This is especially true for families. If you are a single mother, earning post-secondary credentials can come with significant benefits.
This includes increased employment rates and lifetime earnings. These then lead to better health outcomes for yourself and your children. But single mothers like you who enter college often encounter obstacles. It complicates your ability to complete your education. What you need are more programs that will provide them with the right kind of support.
Higher Education Programs that provide guidance and support
There should be institutions that offer support to single mother students. They must provide career guidance and address basic needs. This will ensure holistic support for such students.
These institutions should establish and encourage campus communities. It will inclusively enhance support for single mothers. This community-building must also include anti-biased and anti-racist actions by institutions. It is important since people of all ages and races can be single mothers.
Access to child care
Based on a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, over 4 million parents who attend college, more than half of them drop out of college before earning a degree. The same report stated that one of the main factors to the high dropout rates is the lack of affordable child care for single mothers in college.
To address the issue, the U.S. Department for Education created the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program. It’s designed to provide colleges with funding for child care services on campus to help students with low or no incomes. Universities and colleges can avail of this grant. Then the funding will go to students enrolled in these institutions. Eligible students who take part in the program will receive financial aid. Federal students aid can also help pay for child care.
Reading essays as a key for a success
Single mothers like you deserve to finish education while dealing with your other responsibilities. Reading and writing are essential parts of your studies. And sometimes, you have to complete an essay, research paper, or any other written work on time. There are good essay topics and samples provided by Edubirdie and that makes your work easy. There are plenty of support programs by the government for working mothers. Besides those, it’s highly useful to have resources that can help you instantly. This is where EduBirdie samples are of great assistance to working mothers.
Provide financial aid for Higher education for Single Moms
Universities and colleges can also take steps to start understanding the living costs of single mothers. It may include transportation, child care, and housing expenses. Then they should make sure to consider these in their decisions about financial aid. Some single mothers have described how they have secured enough grant and scholarship money. They use it to pay part of their educational expenses. Despite this, they still amassed huge student loan debts to pay for child care.
For many of these working single mother students, living expenses are far greater compared to the costs of their tuition. Many colleges in the US have taken steps to help single mother students cover some of these expenses.
For instance, some colleges offer scholarships specifically to help student mothers pay for expenses like child care. Other colleges provide single mother students with free children’s literature, clothing, and diapers. They also provide spaces for their children to play and study. Perhaps the biggest sacrifice that single mothers make is to postpone their college degrees. They do so to afford to pay for the daily needs of their children, including food, clothes, diapers, medication, and above all, child care.
More flexibility and focus
Another thing that educational institutions can do to awaken a sense of urgency for single mothers is to offer more flexible learning models. But these models should also know about the structural barriers that single mothers face.
These barriers can include poverty, time, scheduling issues, and demands from family, work, and studies. To accommodate this, institutions could build data infrastructures that can collect and maintain accurate data about single mother students on their campuses.
They can also use these infrastructures to monitor the trajectories of single mother students throughout their education. Doing this will allow universities and colleges to make decisions that are more data-informed. This will enable them to develop support programs for single mother students.
Conclusion about Higher education Supporting Programs for Single Mothers
Even if you have to care for your children alone as a single mother and a student, you still deserve to have an equal footing on your quest to get a degree. Try to learn more about the programs offered in your local universities. It will help you further your education without delay.
