Giving Compass' Take:
- Krystle Pale shares her experiences advocating for student-parents like herself and their children at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
- How can advocacy like Pale's transform higher education institutions, making them more inclusive for student-parents and their families?
- Learn more about trends and topics related to education.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on education in your area.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Too many student-parents never make it to graduation, in no small part because their campuses don’t adequately help them fit college into their lives — or even just fit in, showing the importance of advocating for student-parents and their children.
Yet over 3 million student-parents across the nation, myself included, are pursuing higher education, seeking the intergenerational benefits that come with earning a degree. To reap them, we must overcome many obstacles, as colleges aren’t designed for students like us.
For me, the last hurdle I had to clear was graduation itself. After years of sacrifice — not just my own, but my whole family’s — walking the stage with my four children at my graduation from the University of California, Santa Cruz was deeply important.
The university, however, didn’t understand that or account for us. When I asked to accept my diploma with my kids, I was met with resistance, a particularly tough reminder of the work institutions have left to do to meet the needs and priorities of student-parents.
Earning my college degree in my late 30s was undoubtedly a major achievement, but so was going back for my bachelor’s in the first place — I didn’t even finish high school the first time around.
After I became a mom at 20, I earned my GED, hoping it would help me support my family. Continuing my education only got harder. I started and stopped community college more times than I can count, juggling bills, jobs, custody battles and parenting.
Finally, I transferred to UCSC, proud that I was taking this step two decades in the making and changing the trajectory of my and my family’s lives.
However, I didn’t fully realize what my education would cost my children, underscoring the importance of advocating for student-parents and children. Used to our tight-knit Tongan community, they felt like cultural outsiders when we moved to Santa Cruz, no longer surrounded by family, our native language or familiar foods and music.
Read the full article about advocating for student-parents by Krystle Pale at The Hechinger Report.