Access to Campus Childcare and Freshman Single Parent Student Motivation

Single parent college students have the highest attrition rate of any group.  The assumption that single parent college students will be better motivated to study and persists in college, if they had campus childcare access.  The aim of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between access to campus childcare and single parent freshman student motivation to persist and motivation to succeed.  Because the highest attrition rate occurs during the first year of college, single parent freshman students enrolled in the 2014 Fall semester of a community college were invited to participate in the study.  One hundred sixty three students attending the two campuses that offer onsite childcare services completed the survey.  Based on a Spearman’s correlation analysis of data collected through the study survey instrument, access to campus childcare motivated single parent freshman students to persist and succeed in college.

Keywords

Single parent students, campus childcare, student retention