They go unnoticed and do not receive support: why many parents who study drop out of university

By Lilah Burke,

While his wife gave birth to their third child in the hospital, Joshua Castillo waited in the waiting room finishing a final computer exam and two other pending tests. 

By then, Castillo was used to balancing the demands of fatherhood with the inflexible deadlines and other expectations of college.

He was studying computers while keeping a full-time job, while helping to raise his children: a responsibility for which the faculty did not show much consideration.

“Most of the teachers I've come across have the mindset that this is my full-time job and the only thing I need to worry about right now,” he says. 

Castillo is just one of 3.8 million students raising children while attending college.

More than half of those students – about 70% – are women, according to Department of Education data analyzed by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR).

Estimates indicate that just over a million are parents, who feel ignored and face obstacles in graduating.

“If the mothers and fathers who study are an invisible population,

, says Autumn Green who investigates the fathers who study at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

A photo of Benítez with his son Mason Benítez at his work desk. YUNUEN BONAPARTE / The Hechinger Report

At least 61% of student fathers leave university without having obtained a degree, compared to 48% of student mothers, according to IWPR data.

Among single, Latino, and black parents, the dropout rate was 70%.  

Little attention has been paid to the low graduation rate among fathers who study, despite warning signs about the huge drop in the overall number of men attending and graduating from college. 

Enrollments have fallen nearly twice as much for men than for women since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, with women now outnumbering women in higher education by 59% to 41%. 

“More research is needed to pin down why” so many men with children drop out of school, said Chaunté White, an IWPR researcher.

“The university is aimed at the traditional student”

Castillo had her first child when she was 16 years old.

He has had a difficult life ever since.

After changing high schools, being expelled, and dropping out, he earned a general equivalency diploma.

He took some college courses, had plans to join the Army, but then decided to enroll and study full time in hopes of landing a job in cyber security.

He knew that he was not advancing at the same pace as his classmates: having to take care of his children often distracted him and did not allow him to concentrate on his studies.

His mother, who helped him with the care of the children, passed away last year.

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She has received assistance in the form of scholarships, tutoring and guidance from a nonprofit organization called

that supports parents who study and that Castillo describes as "a great blessing."

But still, for him, getting access to higher education is probably the hardest thing he has ever done.

"The university is aimed at the traditional student," says Castillo.

"Not non-traditional students like me."

One of the biggest obstacles is family pressure, social pressure to be a provider.

That's where education becomes a second, third or fourth priority."

Adrián Huerta PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION USC

Contrary to the perception that colleges are filled with carefree 18-year-olds just out of high school, more than one in five college students have children.

Despite the lack of research focused on dads who study, experts say they are affected by many of the same problems that moms who study face.

 Among those problems are economic difficulties and ensuring that their children have the care they need, while leaving time to share with them, work and attend classes.

“Big cons”

Drayton Jackson made his first attempt at his bachelor's degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York decades ago.

He and his wife at the time used to meet on the subway to give her daughter to each other: while one of them took care of her, the other went to class.

"You begin to realize that you need to be there for your children," he explained when asked about the reasons that complicated his going to university.

“But I also had to be there for myself, and I knew that would eventually help my children as well.

That was the driving force for me.”

But Jackson ended up abandoning his studies because he had no one to take care of his children.

"My son's life changed."

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When he took them up again at Olympic College in Washington state in 2012, Jackson was elected president of his class and made the honor roll.

He later abandoned them again for similar reasons: he only needed three credits to complete his title.

On some campuses, situations like Jackson's are common, but administrators may not be aware of it.

Many universities and

do not collect data on how many of their students are currently parenting, nor do they offer support for those students.

 “A lot of times I just felt unnoticed,” said Brittani Williams, a former mother and student who now works as a policy analyst at the Education Trust think tank.

About half of the students are minority parents, who typically face greater barriers to graduation.

“We know that Latino and Black parents seeking higher education come at a huge disadvantage.

They often come from underresourced schools

,” said Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of Generation Hope, who was also a mother and a student.

Benítez hugs his son in Chelsea.YUNUEN BONAPARTE / The Hechinger Report

"It's not only about the experience of being a parent who studies and all the obstacles that come with it, but it's also the experience of being a black man and trying to get your education in an educational system that was not designed for you." 

In some ways, studying should be easier for dads than moms.

They are more likely to be married and have help with child care, said David Croom, deputy director of tertiary achievement at the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit organization. 

Men without college degrees have better access to jobs that only require a high school diploma and offer good financial rewards but are physically demanding, such as welding and construction.

Those jobs can keep them from going to college or, if they do, take them away from their studies and make them more likely to drop out of school.

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Experts suggest other reasons for the disparity in graduation rates between dads who study and their classmates.

There are fewer occasions when dads who study are incorporated into programs designed for parents, and they may also feel less comfortable asking for help (such as time off when the children are sick).

And if they ask for it, they are less likely to receive it.

Some experts believe the problems dads face graduating are cultural and tied to the reasons men are less likely than women to attend college. 

“Men are taught that they have to be the providers: that they have to support their partner and their family,” Castillo said.

Adrian Huerta, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, has come to a similar conclusion.

“One of the main issues is family pressure, that social pressure to be the provider,” he said.

"So education becomes second or third or fourth priority after everything else."

Huerta has researched parents attending colleges and community colleges in California, finding that several men say they haven't applied for support services because of the stigma of poverty.

"I wasn't spending time with my son"

That social pressure was one of the reasons why Jesús Benítez found it difficult to finish university.

He dropped out of high school at age 17 after becoming a father.

At 18, he was a single father.

Growing up in the Bronx, Benítez spent a lot of time taking care of her younger siblings due to how hard her mother worked.

He began to see that same dynamic with his own son.

Benítez and his son in front of Lake Hudson, after a walk in the park.YUNUEN BONAPARTE / The Hechinger Report

"I was working too much and not spending time with my son," he said.

“And I decided to go back to school.”

Benítez completed his General Equivalency Diploma (GED) through the CUNY Fatherhood Academy, a City University of New York program for Latino and Black fathers.

The program's mentors encouraged him to get his degree from LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where he started the Academy of Fatherhood.

“They encouraged me to take a broader view.

I decided that I should go to college, and it was because I had a team behind me.

Otherwise, I don't think I would have done it." 

Benítez worked full time on campus while attending LaGuardia and then City College in Manhattan.

There was a time when he took a break from school and considered dropping out.

“I grew up on the street, so when I was in college I thought: what am I doing here?

You shouldn't be in this room with all these intellectuals.

I thought I was losing money and that I should be working,” she recalls.

But those same mentors who encouraged him to seek a degree in the beginning supported him when he thought about giving up. 

“They went out looking for me and brought me back to school,” Benítez said.

"If they hadn't consistently helped me when they could, I don't think I would have finished."

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The Parenting Academy is one of the few programs in the country geared towards parents who study.

Prepares men with children for high school equivalency exams and college with classes, tutoring, counseling and parenting seminars.

The program also provides weekly stipends.

One of the most powerful aspects of the Fatherhood Academy, according to Raheem Brooks, who runs the program at LaGuardia, is that it brings dads together to talk. 

"A lot of our kids, if we did a survey, didn't have their dads in their lives, or if they did, they were dads who weren't very involved," says Brooks.

"They don't want to continue that harmful legacy: they want to empower their children and participate in their lives."

An average of 77% of students complete the program.

When they leave, Brooks says, it's to take dead-end jobs. "History actually tells us and has conditioned us to believe that that's the value of a father a lot of the time: just being the person who makes the money." Add.

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The program's support enabled Benítez to graduate six years after he first enrolled in a

.

He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in May 2020. He is now a program mentor and parent advisor at the Aspen Institute. 

Shakur Burden, a student at LaGuardia Community College, is studying to become a social worker while raising her son and working.

He found out about the Parenting Academy from a flyer in his parole office.

The show “gave me a family, a brotherhood that I had never seen before,” he says.

“[The Academy of] Parenting gave me a sense of belonging that I had never felt before.

They watch over you."

The initiative is part of the institution's social mission, so it is much more than a recruiting tool, according to Kenneth Adams, president of LaGuardia. 

“There is a broader community service mission,

” Adams said.

“We have an obligation to serve Queens – more broadly, the city, but definitely Queens – in ways that go beyond recruiting students for our undergraduate programs.”

Morehouse College, historically an institution for black youth in Atlanta, has also experimented with supporting dads in college.

In the past year, his

program has supported three students through graduation with financial support and guidance.

The school is expanding the program to include those in need even if they are not raising children.

Helping dads graduate, experts say, involves more than helping some individuals.

When dads go to school, they are more likely to be able to earn wages to support their families.

They also increase the chances that their children will go to college.

That can then be a stimulus for the economy.

Short of creating programs like the Parenting Academy, colleges that want to improve the graduation rates of parent-students can expand on-campus child care, award more scholarships for parents, reconsider policies on the presence of children in classrooms, classrooms and offices, collect more data, and create more spaces for children in shared places like libraries.

But parents who study believe that

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