College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS)

The CAPS program addresses the significant barrier faced by parenting students, particularly those in low-income households, in pursuing higher education. Nationally, one in five students is a parent, and many struggle with childcare responsibilities while trying to complete their education. This often leads to lower retention rates and completion rates and limited opportunities for economic advancement, perpetuating cycles of poverty.

In Virginia, the VFCCE launched the College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS) program to tackle these challenges and expand the state’s talent pipeline. The program provides comprehensive support, including childcare assistance, financial help for unexpected expenses, and learning resources for children. This initiative enables parenting students to complete credentials or degrees that significantly improve their earning potential, lifting families out of poverty.

The CAPS program also works to improve long-term outcomes by enhancing access to early childhood education, offering paid internships, and creating family-friendly campuses. By piloting these solutions, Virginia aims to set a national standard, using data-driven strategies to support students and their children. Ultimately, the program seeks to strengthen the workforce, improve retention and completion rates, and combat generational poverty through education and family support.

The CAPS project was initially launched as a pilot following implementation for replication research design. For each of the elements below, the data-gathering tools, roles, and variables have been outlined at the outset of the project in collaboration with college partners.

• Policy and practice needs assessments were conducted based on the nationally recognized capacity assessment created by Generation Hope, and included elements from evidence-based adult learner assessments.
• Based on assessment results and team interviews, identify key barriers student parents face in pre-enrollment, enrollment processes, and student support.
• Review benchmark student outcomes data for student parents (enrollment, enrollment intensity, pathways, retention, and completion).
• Technical assistance – the amount, type, frequency, and quality. Participating colleges will send team members to project webinars, participate in monthly check-ins, and request campus-specific assistance as needed.
• Financial assistance – average amounts of direct-to-student grants, scholarships, work, and loans to supplement unmet needs.
• Student supports – the type, frequency, and quality of advising, social-emotional, and career-related supports.
• Policy and practice modifications documented and disseminated across the entire community college system.

COVID-19 illuminated the deep and interconnected inequities parents in low-wage jobs experience as they strive to raise their children and improve their economic opportunities. Women’s labor force participation has declined precipitously; those affected are disproportionately women and those without a college degree, especially in rural areas. Despite the Commonwealth’s overall strong economic prosperity, the state ranks 7th in the nation for the share of women in poverty. With a labor market shortage of more than 300,000 jobs, Virginia needs a skilled talent pool to fill these good jobs and help support businesses that want to stay in the Commonwealth and grow. 

Nationally, 1 in 5 students is a parent student. To help expand the talent pipeline and break the cycle of poverty for single parents, the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education (VFCCE) created a scalable initiative for unemployed or underemployed parents to increase economic mobility by improving family wages, job placement, college enrollment, retention, and degree completion

The VFCCE team is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution because we are embedded within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), encompassing 23 colleges and 40 campus locations across the state. This extensive network provides us unparalleled access to a diverse range of communities, including parenting students, first-generation college students, and low-income students. Our proximity to these students and their communities ensures that our solutions are directly informed by their needs and experiences.

Since launching the CAPS program, we have engaged with over 150 parenting students through surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews across several VCCS campuses. Their feedback has been critical in shaping the design of the College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS) program. For example, students identified childcare costs and a lack of family-friendly campus resources as key barriers to completing their education. This input has guided our decision to provide financial assistance for childcare and create more supportive campus environments.

Our team works closely with VCCS leadership, local community organizations, and employers to ensure the CAPS program aligns with student needs and regional workforce demands. This collaboration directly supports VCCS's strategic priorities, including increasing regional capacity, providing meaningful postsecondary credentials, and addressing workforce gaps. By leveraging the resources and expertise of Virginia’s community colleges, we are well-positioned to help parenting students overcome barriers to success and contribute to the state’s broader educational and workforce transformation.

The College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS) Program, launched in 2022, aims to improve educational and economic outcomes for single-parent students in Virginia's community colleges. During its pilot phase, CAPS provided coaching, wrap-around services, and financial assistance to over 100 parent-students across five colleges (Brightpoint, Central Virginia, Germanna, New River, and Tidewater). The program focused on expanding outreach, improving support services, and creating family-friendly environments.

Early outcomes from the pilot phase, ending in May 2025, show promising results: CAPS students exhibited higher success rates and earned more credits than other parent students. Notably, 35% of participants earned a career studies certificate, certificate, or associate degree, totaling 57 postsecondary awards. Investments from the Petters Foundation, the ECMC Foundation, Sentara and other partners supported these successes.

Building on the lessons learned, the CAPS program will expand statewide in Fall 2025. It will adopt a coaching model inspired by successful VCCS programs and focus on providing comprehensive support to more parent students, helping them balance childcare responsibilities, manage finances, and succeed academically. This statewide expansion will strengthen Virginia’s educational system and workforce by ensuring parent students have the support needed to earn credentials and secure better economic outcomes.

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The CAPS program is innovative because it directly addresses the unique and often overlooked challenges faced by parenting students in higher education, combining comprehensive support with a scalable coaching model. The CAPS program goes beyond traditional financial aid or childcare support by providing personalized, high-touch coaching tailored to the specific needs of parent students. This coaching model, inspired by successful VCCS initiatives like Mellon Pathways and Great Expectations, ensures each student receives individualized guidance, holistically addressing academic, personal, and financial challenges.

What sets CAPS apart is its emphasis on creating family-friendly environments within colleges, improving student support services, and developing policies prioritizing parent students' needs. By providing direct financial assistance for childcare, offering career-focused coaching, and promoting flexible learning environments, we are making higher education more accessible and sustainable for parents who often juggle multiple responsibilities.

This approach supports the immediate needs of parenting students and serves as a model for other institutions. By demonstrating the effectiveness of these integrated support systems, CAPS has the potential to catalyze broader change in higher education, encouraging other colleges to adopt similar models. It could shift the market by highlighting the importance of targeted support for nontraditional students, leading to more inclusive and equitable educational opportunities across the country.

CAPS Program Goals:

• 85% of parent students will be placed directly into employment, earning wages 200% above the poverty level within six months of credential completion.
• 95% semester-to-semester retention and 90% of parent students on track to complete an associate degree within three years or a certification within 18 months.
• Create a data-driven external evaluation that will serve as a national blueprint for best supporting parent students and their children across the Commonwealth and country.
• Improve long-term outcomes for children of parent students by improving access to early childhood education and quality educational programs.
• Work with pilot colleges to develop family-friendly campuses to serve all parent students better.
• Lead a results-based national conversation on the best policies and practices to serve parent students and their children in a way that improves the talent pipeline and student success.
• Develop statewide mechanisms to collect comprehensive, accurate data on parent-students parental status, educational needs, and outcomes.
• Streamline and expand access to social benefit resources for parent-students to cover basic needs such as food, housing, and transportation.
• Create comprehensive support services for parent-students by establishing campus-based resource centers and centralizing access to services.
• Advocate for policy changes that directly address the needs of VCCS parent-students, including increased financial aid, affordable childcare, and improved access to public benefits.

The VFCCE team represents the intersection between passionate educators and professionally adept fundraisers:

At an executive level, Jennifer Gentry holds a doctorate degree in education and over 30 years of direct fundraising experience. Her dual capacity as a Vice Chancellor of Institutional Advancement ensures philanthropic support of the Community College System moves the needle on academic advancement and student achievement.

Full-Time Staff (including VCIA): 9

The College Attainment for Parent Students (CAPS) Program was launched in the Fall of 2022 and enrolled its first parent student cohort in May 2023. 

Effective July 1, 2021, Virginia’s State Board for Community Colleges adopted Opportunity 2027, a six-year strategic plan to guide Virginia’s Community Colleges, with one overarching goal: to achieve equity in access, learning outcomes, and success for students from every race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic group.

Opportunity 2027 adopts a definition of equity to provide a common understanding of this value with the context of the work at VCCS: Equity is the existence of an environment in which policies, practices, and beliefs are grounded in the principle of fairness and that acknowledges structural racism, gender disparities, and systemic poverty, while honoring the diversity of humanity. This environment explicitly prioritizes the success of all students to ensure that they have the necessary resources to fulfill their college and career goals.

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) has a public-facing equity dashboard as a transparent measurement of the progress on access, learning outcomes, and success. VCCS and all colleges promote a diversity and inclusion statement in one click on their websites. The VCCS website also provides a five-year trend noting the percentage of minority leadership, faculty, and staff across the system.

As the supporting arm of Virginia’s 23 Community Colleges, the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education (VFCCE) strives to have a diverse board of directors. Currently, the board includes 25 members, 13 men and 12 women. Twenty percent of board members represent minorities, are age diverse, and represent all regions of the Commonwealth.

The CAPS model focuses on providing value through comprehensive support services for parenting students at Virginia’s community colleges. Our program's key beneficiaries are parent students who face significant barriers to higher education, including childcare responsibilities, financial constraints, and a lack of flexible academic options. Our program delivers value by addressing these barriers through coaching, wrap-around services, and financial assistance.

Key services include:

• Personalized coaching: Providing one-on-one academic and career guidance, helping students navigate both their education and personal challenges.
• Financial assistance: Offering direct funding to help cover childcare costs, unexpected expenses, and other needs, ensuring that students can focus on their studies without financial stress.
• Family-friendly campus environments: Collaborating with colleges to create campus policies and spaces that are more accommodating to parents, helping them balance family and academic responsibilities.
• Career readiness support: Providing resources for internships, job placement, and post-graduation career development.

We deliver these services by leveraging the network of 23 community colleges under the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), which provides access to both urban and rural communities across the state. Our partnerships with local community organizations and industry leaders further enhance our ability to serve students effectively.

Parenting students need these services because they face unique challenges that make it harder for them to complete their education and secure good jobs. Our program helps these students access the resources they need to succeed, increasing their educational and economic outcomes. The program’s impact is measured by student success and its contribution to creating a more skilled workforce, thus benefiting the broader economy.

In terms of revenue, our program is supported by funding from partners like the Petters Foundation, the ECMC Foundation, Imaginable Futures and other philanthropic support, ensuring this critical initiative's long-term sustainability.

The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education has raised approximately $2 million from individuals and family foundations in Virginia, which are committed to helping single parents improve their families' lives through education. Additionally, national funders like the ECMC Foundation and Imaginable Futures continue to support the work of the CAPS program. The VFCCE board of directors has identified CAPS as a signature program and supports its continued fundraising and operational efforts. The VFCCE will work with the public information officers at the pilot colleges, VCCS’ Office of Strategic Communications, and advocacy organizations such as Voices for Virginia’s Children, to create awareness for the project and highlight student successes. Resources will provide real-time information to participating colleges and provide a “blueprint” for the remaining colleges within the system to scale promising practices.

Collaborating with Truist Foundation and MIT Solve offers transformative opportunities to overcome key barriers in scaling the CAPS program. Access to financial resources, expertise, and networks would address persistent challenges such as data infrastructure, sustainable funding, and equitable policy advocacy.

The Challenge’s financial support would help expand our data collection systems, enabling comprehensive tracking of parent-student outcomes to inform institutional practices and policy reforms. Additionally, MIT Solve’s expertise in technology and innovation could enhance our approach to leveraging real-time data to identify and address barriers faced by parent students.

Guidance from Truist Foundation’s network of philanthropic and corporate leaders could unlock new funding streams, ensuring the program’s sustainability. Furthermore, mentorship and visibility through MIT Solve would amplify CAPS as a national model, helping us connect with stakeholders invested in parent-student success.

Most importantly, collaborative support could catalyze institutional and systemic changes, enabling scalable solutions that prioritize equity for parent students. This partnership aligns seamlessly with CAPS’ mission to elevate economic mobility for single parents and establish a replicable framework for community colleges nationwide.