Beyond adhering to the legal requirements of Title IX, URI is committed to fostering a family friendly environment in which students can balance learning and parenting responsibilities while successfully pursuing their academic goals.  Respecting and responding to the rights of pregnant and parenting students in all aspects of life at URI will benefit the community by ensuring that students who become parents are also able to become educated workers and citizens.  Ensuring these rights will improve the quality of life within an increasingly diverse University community.

Partners of pregnant students are also covered by this policy.  It is well documented that partners’ involvement in pregnancy and childbirth, as well as partners’ continuous and significant involvement in childcare, are critically necessary cultural transformations.  Universities must lead this cultural change by accommodating all student parents and their partners.

Nationally, nearly 25 percent of college students (see Figure 1; IWPR, 2009), one-third of graduate students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010) and more than one-third of low-income students, first generation students, and students of color (IWPR, 2013) have dependent children.  Of these 3.9 million undergraduate student parents, 2.2 million (57 percent) are low-income; one third of low-income students also are parents.  Half of student parents are unmarried.  Twelve percent of all undergraduate students (1.9 million) are single parents, of whom 78 percent (1.5 million) are low-income (U.S. Department of Education 2009a).

Being a parent increases the likelihood of leaving college with no degree, and increases the “time famine” of having too little time for caregiving, work, and parenting.   The emphasis on inclusivity in higher education requires us to thoughtfully consider how structural constraints inherent in academic practices may contribute to these social ills, and to work with good will towards removing these constraints.

In Rhode Island, the success of economic development strategies depends in large part on providing full access to education and training in order to meet the demand for a skilled workforce.   Persistently challenged by holding the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Rhode Island cannot afford to leave any student behind.  The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR)’s Briefing Paper #C404 succinctly summarizes the national urgency of recognizing the needs of student-parents:

“Unless the caregiving responsibilities of low-income adults are actively acknowledged and addressed, efforts to improve postsecondary access and completion for low-income adults, . . . are likely to fall short of their full potential for change.”

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy offers a report on how to address this issue: Briefly, Unplanned Pregnancy Among College Students and Strategies to Address It.

References

Institute for Women’s Policy Research. 2009. Analysis of 2008 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data.  Washington, DC.

_________________.  March 2011.  Calculations, 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey.  Washington, DC.

____________. March 2013  Briefing Paper #C404, College Students with Children are Common and Face Many Challenges in Completing Higher Education.  Washington, DC.

Masateru Matsushita, Hiroyoshi Adachi, Mikako Arakida, Ikuro Namura, Yuko Takahashi, Masakazu Miyata, Takayuki Kumano-go, Schuhei Yamamura, Yoshihisa Shigedo, Nakamori Suganuma, Akira Mikami, Toshiki Moriyama, Yoshiro Sugita.  (2011).  Presenteeism in college students: reliability and validity of the Presenteeism Scale for Students.  Quality of Life Research 20:439 – 446.

National Women’s Law Center (2013).  Toolkit: Pregnancy discrimination is sex discrimination.  Retrieved from: http://www.nwlc.org/resource/supporting-pregnant-parenting-students-training-new-guidance-department-education

U.S. Department of Education, October 2010.  Web Tables: Profile of Graduate and First-Professional Students:  Trends from Selected Years, 1995 – 96 to 2007 – 08.  http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011219.pdf