The Taxpayer Benefits of Supporting Student Parents: An Analysis of Three Policy Options for Virginia’s Public Colleges (2024)
Nationally, approximately one in six undergraduates at public colleges are student
parents. In Virginia, the figure is one in eight. Being a student parent means pursuing a
college degree while caring for a child, and despite earning similar or better average
grades than their childless peers (Reichlin Cruse et al. 2019), student parents are about
twice as likely to leave college before graduating. Supporting this population can
promote college access, boost degree attainment, and enhance state economic
competitiveness. This brief considers three options for increasing graduation rates
among student parents in Virginia public colleges: establish a comprehensive student-parent support program on each campus, distribute grant aid, and expand on-campus
child care. This analysis suggests that all three options have a positive return on
investment to taxpayers. The creation of a comprehensive student-parent support
program has the highest return on investment: Every dollar invested in this program
would yield an estimated $5.36 in tax revenue and public-benefit savings, resulting in an
estimated $1.9 billion in public benefit net of costs by 2035. This is only based on
estimated growth in federal, state, and local tax revenue and decreases in benefit program costs; it does not include the many individual, family, and social benefits from
degree attainment, which would provide additional returns.