The House Reconciliation Bill Will Harm Student Parents

In a party-line vote, Congressional Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that would do massive harm to higher education funding and public safety net programs that parenting students rely on to succeed in college. The legislation, now on its way to the Senate, proposes $350 billion in cuts to education and workforce programs, $300 billion to agriculture, and $880 billion to Medicaid. The policies they are proposing would make almost $2 trillion in cuts, to provide tax cuts that mostly benefit millionaires and billionaires, on the backs of low-income students and families. Among those most vulnerable to these massive proposed cuts are parenting students, who already face steep barriers to accessing and completing their higher education.

Today, over 3 million undergraduate student parents and 1 million graduate student parents are enrolled in higher education, which accounts for roughly one in five undergraduate students. These students are more likely to be women and students of color, and most attend community colleges where flexible schedules and support services help them balance school, work, and caregiving. Despite facing greater financial hurdles, student parents tend to earn higher GPAs than their non-parenting peers. When parenting students succeed, so do their children. Helping hard-working parenting students succeed is good for their long-term economic security, for local economies, for meeting workforce needs, and in the long term, reduces reliance on public benefits.

Yet Congressional Republicans are proposing cuts to critical supports that are essential to student parents’ success. These supports include cuts to federal student aid like the Pell Grant and affordable loan repayment options, as well as safety net programs that provide food assistance and affordable healthcare through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. Cutting these vital resources would roll back hard-won progress and make it even more challenging for parenting students to thrive in higher education. We break down what these proposed cuts would mean in practice and why protecting and expanding support for student parents is not only the right thing to do, but a smart investment in our nation’s future.

Among the proposed cuts are changes to the Pell Grant program, which provides federal financial aid to help eligible low-income students pay for college. The maximum Pell Grant is currently $7,395 an academic year. Presently, to be awarded a maximum Pell Grant, students must be taking 12 credit hours per semester, or about 4 classes, to be considered “full time.” This bill would increase the full time definition to 15 credit hours which, according to a National College Attainment Network (NCAN) analysis, would result in a $1,479 cut to those currently receiving the maximum Pell Grant, meaning students taking 12 credits will see a total Pell award drop of $5,916.The purchasing power of Pell already does not cover the average cost of college attendance, which leaves more students to have to take out loans to afford college.

This proposal would also eliminate eligibility for Pell for students enrolled less than half-time, and because half-time enrollment would now be defined as 7.5 credits, most students would need to be enrolled at three-quarters time to qualify for Pell. The significant changes to Pell Grant eligibility would completely eliminate awards for at least 1.4 million students, according to a Center for American Progress (CAP) analysis, who are going to school part-time while they balance work and family commitments, such as parenting.

As Russell Lowery-Hart, the Chancellor of Austin Community College, said during testimony before the Senate Health Education and Labor Committee this week, “Classes are not organized by single hours. This proposal would force students to take nine hours—three classes—each term to receive any support. Raising a family, working two part-time jobs, while going to school is incredibly difficult—and the many who could not afford to take a minimum of three classes would fall through the cracks.”

In the 2019-2020 academic year, 56.9 percent of student parents reported using Pell and other grants to pay for college compared to 36.5 percent of their non-parenting peers*. For student parents, taking additional classes to maintain the same amount of aid is too costly as they have child care and work commitments that make it harder to manage an added class to their already demanding schedules. Student parents struggle to meet their basic needs due to limited resources available to support their higher education. One student parent even shared with us how receiving the Pell grant “helped ease the financial burden of school. Without that support, getting my undergraduate degree would’ve been much harder and impossible.” This story goes to show that student parents need additional financial support to complete their college education, not less.

SNAP is the largest nutrition assistance program, helping 42 million American families afford food. In 2023, 13.5 percent of U.S. households reported facing food insecurity, meaning they experienced reduced quality, variety, or intake of food. House Republicans in the Agriculture Committee are proposing a $290 billion reduction in SNAP that will harm American families, including parenting students, and leave them struggling to meet their basic need for food. Student parents have higher expenses than their non-parenting peers as they have to account for additional living costs such as child care, which in some states can be just as expensive as college tuition. Approximately 30 percent of parenting students participate in SNAP, compared to 9 percent of their non-parenting peers, and 29 percent of parenting students report experiencing food insecurity compared to 21 percent of their non-parenting peers. Eliminating basic needs support services like SNAP will create additional barriers for these students to complete their postsecondary education. At a time when grocery and food prices are rising, House Republicans want to remove additional supports, which will make it more difficult for parenting students to make ends meet for their families.

The legislation would dramatically change the benefit amounts and eligibility for individuals to qualify for SNAP. For example, one proposal would mean SNAP benefits are insufficient to afford a healthy diet over time, by reducing how often the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is updated, which helps determine SNAP benefit levels. A limitation on TFP updates will result in cuts to benefits over time and make it harder for parenting students who qualify for SNAP to afford rising grocery costs.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, was instructed to identify $880 billion in cuts. Medicaid is the country’s largest health insurance program for Americans with low incomes or disabilities. It improves access to healthcare, positively impacts health outcomes, and financially supports families by reducing out-of-pocket costs. The proposed cuts to Medicaid will negatively affect student parents who utilize it to afford healthcare for themselves and their children.

Medicaid provides coverage to roughly 72 million Americans, including 31 million children, and the proposed cuts would threaten healthcare coverage for the estimated 3.5 million students who currently access Medicaid. The new proposals such as the new work requirements and increase of eligibility checks to twice annually would burden student parents with increased paperwork and risk their eligibility for health insurance. Studies have shown that individuals who have Medicaid coverage in Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion states have had their medical debt reduced by $1,140, and low-income adults have gained better access to credit and were less likely to be evicted from their homes. This is significant because student parents often come from low-income backgrounds and experience housing insecurity. Additionally, financial hardship can affect student parents’ mental health, and when they can’t afford health insurance for critical care like psychotherapy, it affects their well-being and puts their college completion at risk.

In addition to the direct harm that cuts to Medicaid would cause, historically, when states have to make up for reductions in federal funding for Medicaid, they do so by cutting funding for higher education. Analysis from The Institute for College Access and Success shows that some states would need to find hundreds of millions in additional funding for the state share of Medicaid to make up for the loss of federal funding. Some of that funding would inevitably be taken from state higher education budgets. As a result, parenting students would find themselves pressed from both sides, with likely higher costs and less support from their colleges, and potentially less help to pay for medical expenses for themselves and their children.

Parenting students already carry some of the highest levels of student debt, and the Republican-led proposal threatens to make that burden even heavier. These students often borrow not only to cover tuition but also to afford child care, housing, and food while pursuing a degree. Yet instead of meeting these financial realities with support, the bill would eliminate Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans, cap borrowing for graduate students, and strip away affordable repayment options, changes that would particularly harm the roughly one million student parents in graduate programs.

As Dr. Mark Brown, president of Tuskegee University, noted during yesterday’s Senate HELP committee hearing, “Eliminating or reducing Graduate PLUS loans without an alternative would severely limit access to graduate education, particularly for high-need, high-potential students in critical fields.” Without viable alternatives, student parents, many of whom already face economic insecurity, could be locked out of graduate and professional programs entirely.

The bill also dismantles current income-driven repayment (IDR) options—including SAVE, PAYE, and ICR—and replaces them with a single, less generous plan. Under this new plan, monthly payments would rise by 50 percent or more for many borrowers, forgiveness timelines would be extended by up to a decade, and key protections like payment caps would be removed. Future borrowers would be pushed into a new “Repayment Assistance Plan” (RAP) that lacks income protections, imposes mandatory minimum payments, and penalizes small increases in income, features that would be especially burdensome for low-income parenting students, many of whom rely on programs like SNAP or Medicaid to make ends meet.

Rather than simplifying the system, these sweeping changes would increase confusion, raise costs, and make student loan repayment far more difficult to navigate, especially for parenting students already juggling school, work, and caregiving. Stripping away fair and flexible repayment options not only threatens their ability to complete college but also undermines broader goals of economic mobility and workforce development. Lawmakers should invest in policies that reflect the real costs of pursuing higher education while raising children, not balance budgets on the backs of student parents striving to build a better future.

The House reconciliation legislation will make college more expensive for student parents who are already struggling to make ends meet. These cuts will increase their rates of food insecurity, and cause many to become uninsured because they lack the critical support that SNAP and Medicaid provide. Ultimately, these cuts will harm student parents and pressure them to stop out or leave college altogether. This will limit their ability to provide economic security for their families, and potentially leave them with debt and no degree to boost their earnings and support loan repayment.

To help American families and improve higher education attainment, policymakers must address basic needs insecurity, including food, healthcare, child care, and more. Critical safety nets like SNAP and Medicaid, and federal student aid such as Pell Grants and flexible loan repayment options, help student parents focus on their academics while juggling their family and work commitments. Strengthening these supports is essential to help them complete a college degree and secure a job that leads to their long-term family financial security.

*calculations are from NPSAS