Single mothers have low rates of college degree

As of 2015, just 31 percent of single mothers ages 25 and older held a bachelor's degree or higher.

EOPS-CARE EOPS was established in California in 1969 to provide financial and academic support to community college students facing educational and socioeconomic barriers to academic success. As a subcomponent of EOPS, the Cooperative Agencies Resources for Education (CARE) program specifically supports welfare recipient single parents. EOPS-CARE provides specialized counseling, tutoring, childcare support, work study opportunities, book and transportation grants, emergency student loans, priority registration, social service referrals and advocacy, parenting workshops, and personal development and college survival classes (CCCCO, 2002). Between 2011 and 2012 the program served 76,232 students across California’s 112 community colleges (CCCCO, 2012a). At LCCD, 1,287 students were served by the program in the same time period.

Most of the low-income singlemothers in our sample (88%) reported involvement in the EOPS-CARE and/or CalWORKs programs. When these women were asked which parts of the program were most helpful, they said they especially appreciated the counseling experiences (55%), the provision of vouchers to help pay for books and supplies (42%), and priority registration that enabled them to enroll in high demand and increasingly unavailable required courses (40%.)