Yvette Higgins 

Report for Minnesota

A $4 billion higher education budget bill passed by the Minnesota House cuts funding for a program that supports student-parents. 

The Student-Parent Support Initiative (SPSI), passed in the 2023 legislative session, gives money to programs that help students with children succeed in higher education through one-on-one support, emergency grants for unexpected medical bills, childcare support, scholarships and more. 

Twenty-three percent of undergraduate students at Minnesota colleges and universities are parents, and nearly half of them are single mothers, according to a 2020 report from the Center on Equity in Higher Education. 

Karina Villeda, a 29-year-old single mother of a 4-year-old daughter, said in an interview she never considered herself college-material growing up. Now, she is graduating with a major in political science and psychology from the University of Minnesota and plans to go to law school after taking a gap year. 

Villeda said she could not have achieved her goals without programs that support student parents. She said the Jeremiah Program, which supports low-income moms attending college and gets funding from SPSI, offered extraordinary mental health support as she navigated school, a full-time job, and parenthood.  

“Student parents are people that are very determined in order, obviously, to have their children have a really good life,” Villeda said. 

Mike Dean, executive director of North Star Prosperity, said in an interview cutting this program would jeopardize the futures of student parents and their children and deprive the state of hardworking taxpayers. 

“By dismantling the supports that enable these parents to earn their degree and contribute to our workforce, legislators are going to be undermining the economic stability of our entire state,” Dean said. 

The state grant program, which helps low and middle income students pay for higher education, is facing a $239 million deficit, which Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, co-chair of the Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee, said during the House floor debate on April 28 was equal to an entire year’s worth of state grants going out to students. 

Rarick said cutting funding for SPSI was a bipartisan decision. 

“It was something that just started two years ago and has barely gotten off the ground,” Rarick said.

The House language, sponsored by Rep. Dan Wolgamott, DFL-St. Cloud, would grant $2 million to SPSI in 2026 and 2027 and end the initiative in 2028. The Senate’s budget bill would spend $6 million on the initiative over the next two years. 

The House committee has a zero budget target, which means they had no additional money to spend on new programs, while the Senate has a $100 million budget for higher education, which they put mostly toward the state grant program, according to Sen. Robert Kupec, DFL-Moorhead. 

If both bills pass, a conference committee made up of members from the House and Senate will determine a final budget. 

Kupec said in an interview he did not have a guess of what the conference committee would decide. 

“We are in uncharted waters here with a completely tied house,” Kupec said. 

Rep. Nathan Coulter, DFL-Bloomington, proposed an amendment to the bill that would give $6 million to SPSI in the next two years. The amendment failed on a 67-67 vote across party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.  

Only 8% of single mothers earn a degree within six years, while 50% of women without children earn degrees, according to the Center on Equity in Higher Education. Single mothers who earn an associate’s degree are less likely to live in poverty, save the state an average $21,857 in public assistance and pay about $82,059 in taxes over their lifetime. 

Dean said student parents are often too busy to go to the Capitol to stand up for themselves. 

“The groups that push back the least are the groups that they sort of go after,” Dean said. 

Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.