Many college students don’t have enough time for their studies. This “time poverty,” as we call it, is often due to inadequate child care access or the need to work to pay for college and living expenses.
In an effort to understand how much time poverty affects student outcomes, we surveyed more than 41,000 U.S. college students. We found that the more time poverty, the greater the chances of a student earning fewer credits or dropping out. This is especially true for Black and Hispanic students and for women, who have significantly less time for college compared with their peers, largely due to time spent on their jobs and caring for children.
Our research describes how differences in time available for college are often the result of structural inequities in higher education, such as insufficient financial aid for students who have children or who have to work to pay the bills.
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