This article from Inside Higher Ed titled, For Arkansas Single Parents, A Scholarship that Helps Pay for Living Expenses, explains Hilary Clinton’s dedication to helping single parents in college. Hilary helped get the scholarship program, “Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund,” off the ground and was board president for 3 years. This program provides discretionary aid to low-income single parents in attending college, preventing the rise of dropouts. I had no idea that such programs existed. Generally single parents have less financial access to higher education because of childcare and transportation. Before single mother, Amanda Condon, knew she could go back to college she stated, “There was no way I was going to be able to go to school, and provide for my kids, and maintain my grade average.” After being helped by this scholarship, she will be graduating [debt-free] with an associate’s degree in emergency management. Inspired by the success of this scholarship program, Clinton proposed to expand this initiative worldwide and call it “Student Parents in America Raising Kids, or SPARK,” where up to million student parents single parents would be granted as much as $1,500 per year for expenses like child care and other implications. This nationwide effort to help single parents could be extremely beneficial in improving the future of both higher education and the economy. Ruthanne Hill, executive director of the Arkansas fund, states that this program could boost state economies. If more people graduate from college, they will be “earning higher salaries, paying taxes and putting more money into the economy.”
The potential benefits that SPARK has to offer to both our economy and higher education system really resonated with me. Everyone deserves equal opportunity in getting an education and the fact that the costs of a babysitter or gas for a car have been preventing this concept really upsets me. I really hope this program becomes fully implemented, so that parents don’t have to give up on their education and can pursue the careers they’re most passionate about. Arkansas has been doing it right with the “Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund”; and I hope America follows in their footsteps soon with “SPARK.”
I liked this article very much. I hope this program becomes fully implemented so that this major issue can be effectively addressed. I liked the fact the the article mentioned students usage of financial aid outside their academic needs to put towards daily necessities (i.e, transportation and gas). Implementation of a program such as this in an urban setting like NYC would yield very promising results.
SPARK does sound like a great program! Being a single parent and a student seems like a lot to juggle. I’m not sure that getting $1,500 a year will make a huge dent in a parent’s childcare expenses, but I’m glad to see that Hilary Clinton is bringing attention to the issue and spreading awareness.