How Scholarships and Emergency Aid Can Keep Student Parents Housed

The decision to go back to college as an adult is a hopeful one. Finishing a degree or learning a new set of skills can open doors to better jobs, higher pay and more career stability. 

Unfortunately, the journey toward a degree is often fraught with obstacles for adult students, especially those who are parents. Balancing work, school and life is never easy. And recent research from New America shows those learners are facing an increasing struggle to stay housed. “For student parents aged 35 to 39 … [b]eing enrolled in college while parenting school-age children is associated with eviction filing rates double that of their non-student peers, 22 percent compared to 11 percent.” 

The consequences are steep. Earlier research from New America found that just 15% of parenting students threatened with eviction went on to complete their degree. That’s 23 percentage points lower than students who never faced an eviction threat.  

An eviction notice doesn’t just disrupt a semester. It can end an education altogether, along with the career opportunities a degree can unlock. 

A System of Outdated Assumptions 

The root of the issue comes down to students falling through the cracks. Federal, state and institutional financial aid systems still operate according to decades-old formulas centered around “traditional” students: 18- or 19-year-old incoming freshmen who live on campus and study full-time. With every step away from this profile, students face increasing difficulty paying for school. Aid formulas rarely account for childcare, transportation or off-campus housing costs, and part-time attendees are eligible for less aid than their full-time peers.  

In addition, many older students have also already used up their lifetime Pell Grant eligibility from an earlier stint in school, sometimes while still carrying loan debt from that first attempt. Layer in the fact that a fifth of all college students are raising children, and the scale of the problem comes into focus. 

This is where scholarships and emergency aid programs can do more than pay for tuition and books. For a parent balancing coursework, a job, and a child’s school pickup schedule, a housing crisis is not a side issue — it is often the single event that determines whether they stay enrolled. Aid that specifically targets basic needs, rather than tuition alone, addresses the actual point of failure. 

Approaches That Make an Impact 

Emergency aid can make all the difference. Unlike formal financial aid appeals, which can take weeks to process, emergency aid from colleges and nonprofits can be disbursed within days.  Sometimes, a relatively small grant is all it takes to help a student stay housed, stay enrolled, and keep their education on track.  

As an intervention for preventing students from dropping out, emergency aid is tested and proven. In 2025, Scholarship America distributed more than $1.1 million in emergency grants to help 1,555 students from all walks of life continue their education even as they faced food shortages, car repairs and unexpected licensing fees. 

Scholarships built for non-traditional students — ones that do not assume a straight-from-high-school, dependent, childless applicant — can account for childcare and housing costs directly in their award calculations, rather than treating them as an afterthought. 

Wraparound support, paired with financial aid, can make a world of difference. Money can help solve the immediate issue, but connecting parents to housing counseling, legal aid for tenants facing eviction, and campus childcare resources will help prevent it from happening again. 

Addressing the Bigger Picture 

Ultimately, consistent support of returning adults, parenting students and other new traditional learners will require a system-wide rethinking of financial aid formulas and federal aid policies, to reflect real family budgets and journeys toward a degree.  

But scholarships and emergency aid are, and remain, vital methods of support. For a parent who’s one missed paycheck from a housing court date, they are often the only intervention that arrives in time to keep them in school. 

Higher education is an engine of economic mobility. This research is a reminder that the engine stalls easily for parents who are already running on empty, and that the support systems built for a different kind of student do not always catch them. Thoughtful, well-targeted, efficiently disbursed aid can keep more of these families in their homes, and more of these parents on track to finish what they started.