No Time for College? An Investigation of Time Poverty and Parenthood

ABSTRACT

Postsecondary outcomes are significantly worse for student parents even though they earn higher GPA’s on average. This study used institutional records and survey data from a large urban U.S. university to explore whether time poverty explains this trend. The results of regression and KHB decomposition analysis reveal that students with preschool-aged children have a significantly lower quantity and quality of time for college than comparable peers with older or no children, and that time spent on childcare is the primary reason for this difference. Both quantity and quality of time for education had a significant direct effect on college persistence and credit accumulation, even when controlling for other factors. Thus, greater availability of convenient and affordable childcare (e.g. increased on-campus childcare, revised financial aid formulas that include more accurate estimates of childcare costs) would likely lead to better college outcomes for students with young children.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic momentum
• college persistence
• financial aid
• student parents
• time poverty

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the staff at the City University of New York Office of Institutional Research and Assessment who assisted with the data for the project, including David Crook, Zun Tang, Colin Chellman, and Natalya Petroff. The authors are also grateful for the work of the research assistants Diane McAllister and Yi Tong.

At the time the study detailed in this article was conducted, Dr. Hachey was a Professor of Teacher Education at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Notes

^1. Housework was defined as all unpaid work necessary to sustain the household, except childcare (e.g., cooking, cleaning, household errands, grocery shopping, paying bills, household maintenance, etc.).

^2. Technically, these two measures of time poverty explained 583.6% of the reduction in credit accumulation attributed to having a child younger than 6 years old (when controlling for all other covariates). This confounding percentage was greater than 100% because the direction of the relationship reversed, with students with young children completing more credits than their comparable peers after accounting for measures of time poverty (although this difference was still not significantly different from 0), as we can see in Table 5.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 1431649). Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agency.