“Without the child-care scholarship she found through the Philadelphia-based nonprofit, Family Care Solutions, Rooney says, she’s not sure what she would do. She’ll find out this summer, when she’s signed up for classes but won’t have the scholarship.

Student parents like Rooney make up about a quarter of all postsecondary students in the United States, according to a new report released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The report estimates that of the total of 3.9 million student parents in the country, more than half are low-income. About 12 percent of all undergraduate students in the United States are single parents, and of those, more than three-quarters are low-income. The vast majority of them are women. ”