On Sept. 30, 2022, Assembly Bill No. 2881 was approved by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “This bill would require the California State University and each community college district, and request the University of California, with respect to each campus in their respective jurisdictions that administers a priority enrollment system, to grant priority in that system for registration for enrollment to a student parent, as defined, by no later than July 1, 2023.”
An analytical study conducted by Wheelhouse at the University of California, Davis found that 13.4% of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and California Dream Act Application (CADAA) filers were student-parents in 2018. This is about one in ten students. A student-parent is someone who has dependent children while enrolled at a higher education institution. On the Students with Dependent Children FAQs page on the FAFSA website, a “dependent child” is defined as someone under “18 years of age whose parent or legal guardian is the student.”
As of Spring quarter of the 2022-2023 school year, the University of California, Riverside adhered to the request made by the bill and granted student-parents attending the university priority registration.
Non-Traditional Student Director Dallys Cobian explained the importance of priority-registration for this student population, expressing that “as a student-parent, my schedule kind of revolves around my children’s… [There’s] a limited window of classes that I can take and unfortunately there aren’t a lot of evening or weekend classes available.” She further explained how her children’s schools start at 8:00 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m., requiring her to be available at both times for pick up and drop off. She also lives 30 miles away from UCR, which she elaborated can also impact how many classes she can take during the day. Cobian ends by stating that “we’re not asking for special treatment, we’re asking them to consider the circumstances… With priority registration, that gives us first dibs at some of those classes that we can take.”
According to information from the registration help desk, UCR identifies student parents “based on data from the FAFSA/California Dream Act applications.” The University Registrar, Bracken Dailey explained why the university chose to use those two applications to determine eligibility, stating that “we felt like this was the most streamline. As for our campus, we have quite a large population [that] already completes those two documents. And so it seems like a pathway that most of our students have already completed.”
There are challenges that come to this process, Dailey expressed that “[student-parents] come in very different shapes and sizes and at a certain point we have to be able to operationalize this. Off the legislation, it has to define [a] dependant. The FAFSA and the DREAM Act [defines] a dependent based on government taxes and government definitions of what a dependent is.”
In scenarios where dependency claims change midway through the academic year, Dailey stated that the best thing to do would be to “reach out to me, so we can explore what has occurred, and establish if it meets the requirements for priority registration. And if it does, then we will make sure that the student is eligible for it.”
Despite student-parents being provided priority registration since the end of last quarter, Cobian claimed that a decent portion of the population is unaware that they qualify for priority registration. She explained that some student-parents and caregivers do not fill out the financial aid documents because they think that they will not qualify for aid, unaware that those same forms are what are being used to determine eligibility for priority registration.
At the Registrar, Dailey stated that “we probably didn’t do a well enough job. Anyone who submitted the FAFSA or DREAM Act who qualified did get that priority registration, but unfortunately there are students who fell outside. We probably did not do a good enough job to get the word out there. Now we have to try and find those students who are falling through the cracks that have not completed either of those documents and figure out how to best proceed with those individuals.”
Cobian explained some of the various ways that her department at ASUCR is working on getting word out to student-parents on campus. “We’re opening a Non-Traditional Student Director Instagram page… We need to find a way to get the word out about different things that are available. Get to know other student parents that are going through the same things… And word of mouth works great.”
For those seeking help or advice regarding the situation, Dailey stated that the best way to get help would be to go to registrar.ucr.edu. “It does have information about registration on the main page and it lists who has priority registration. On the contact page you have my contact information, as well as other people in the office, and so they are more than welcome to reach out to me.”
