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.