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Student parents are among the least likely student groups to complete college. Regression models were run using 2003–2019 American Time Use Survey data to explore time poverty among college students. Results indicate that students with children under 13 years had significantly less discretionary time and free time, spent significantly less time on their education, enrolled part-time at significantly higher rates, and spent significantly more time studying while simultaneously caring for children, compared with students without children under 13 years. The strength of these relationships was strongest when children were younger. Parents with children under 6 years, and mothers of children of all age-groups, had significantly higher time poverty than other groups, yet spent significantly more time on education after controlling for discretionary time, at the cost of significantly less free time for themselves. Results suggest that improving college outcomes for student parents may require consideration of time poverty. 

In this exploratory study, we report results from interviews with 49 students at a large public urban university in the US who enrolled in at least one course online. In line with the literature, many students cited work or family reasons for enrolling in an online course. However, when asked at the end of the interview whether there were any other life events that impacted the time and energy that they had for their studies, 73% of the students cited at least one additional external stressor, and many of them cited up to three or four different categories of external stressors. These included illness/disability, death in the family, caretaking responsibilities, and housing instability, among others. One particularly striking result is that 89% of the external stressors reported by students in response to the final questions of the interview had not been volunteered by students when they were originally asked why they enrolled online or what factors impacted their course outcomes—this suggests that the prevalence of these more complex environmental factors may go underreported in studies that do not ask about them explicitly.