You Have to Study for a Test. But You Also Have to Bring Your Dad to a Doctor’s Appointment

When Naznin Musa was an undergraduate studying in the Netherlands, her home country, her father struggled with a series of health issues following a stroke, including a brain hemorrhage and early vascular dementia. Musa and her siblings stepped up to help, but the siblings had jobs and families to juggle, leaving Musa to wonder: Should I stay in school or take a leave of absence to help my parents manage? 

“I had to choose,” she says. “And for me, it was a no-brainer. I had to take care of my father.” Currently a master’s student in the Human Development and Education Program, Musa’s days included daily trips to the hospital and the rehabilitation center, among other tasks at home. A half year leave became a year, which became two. Eventually, she re-enrolled, but in this new role of student informal caregiver, she struggled. Often in ways that were not visible to others.

“In the Dutch context, ‘informal caregiver’ refers to people who provide care or support to someone close to them,” she says, as opposed to a professional caregiver. “In Dutch, this is what we call mantelzorg.”

This unpaid, ongoing support doesn’t only involve practical tasks like changing bandages or taking people to appointments. “It often means carrying emotional responsibility, uncertainty, and worry,” Musa says.

Back at school, she assumed she was the only student struggling in this way. Then she attended an event where a university researcher shared findings on young informal caregivers. Musa realized there were other students like her. She also realized that the gap at universities between this type of research and practice was wide.

“The discussion was interesting, but I kept asking myself: What do students actually gain from this in concrete terms?” she says. “How does this translate into something meaningful for those trying to balance higher education with care responsibilities?” Too often, she says, this kind of balancing isn’t acknowledged in higher education. “There are no tangible numbers known by the university and absolutely no recognition at all.”

The seed for an idea was planted and the personal became the political.

“That session was important not only because I met other students in similar situations, but because it became the moment when reflection started turning into action,” she says. “It was the beginning of the idea that I later translated into a platform proposal, developed further, and worked on in practice. It made me realize that this work could not stop at research alone.”

The proposal, what she calls the Platform for Student Informal Caregivers, is a plan to help her undergraduate university better understand students who manage studies and care responsivities, as well as concrete ways that the university could offer support and accommodations. It’s based on three pillars: community, information, and policy, each addressing a different layer of the problem.

“None of the pillars would have been enough on its own,” she says. “Community is important because many students who are young informal caregivers feel isolated, invisible, or simply different from their peers. They are often carrying responsibilities that others do not see, which can make university life feel very lonely.” 

The information section offers students details on support the university does offer, like possible financial arrangements in cases of study delay. Many students she met didn’t even identify themselves as informal caregivers in the first place. “If students do not recognize themselves in the language, or if the institution does not actively communicate support in an accessible way, then the information does not reach the people who need it most.”

The policy section gives students something concrete to rely on instead of forcing them to depend on personal understanding. “Without policy, support can become arbitrary,” she says, “and that is exactly how systemic inequality is reproduced.”

Within those broader categories, Musa specifically advocates for greater recognition because “recognition is what makes meaningful support possible,” she says. “Without recognition, student informal caregivers remain dependent on chance, on personal goodwill, or on whether an individual staff member happens to understand their situation.” 

She also pushes for flexibility around deadlines and assessments. “In the Dutch system, deadlines can be quite strict, and students may lose points simply because something is submitted late, but care responsibilities do not follow academic schedules,” she says. “If someone close to you is suddenly hospitalized and you have an exam or a deadline the next day, that clearly affects your ability to perform under standard academic expectations.” It’s also critical for students to be allowed, when they initially enroll, to indicate whether they have significant care responsibilities, making it easier for institutions to understand how many students are affected and provide more targeted support from the beginning.

Eventually, Musa began working on this issue at the national level with the Advisory Committee on Diverse and Inclusive Higher Education and Research (DIHOO), which provides advice to Netherland’s Ministry of Education. “One thing I am especially proud of is that I helped initiate and bring together a working group within DIHOO around this issue,” she says. “I did not want the topic to remain dependent on one person or one institution. I wanted it to become part of a broader and more durable conversation.”

As Musa looks ahead toward graduation and returning to this work in the Netherlands, she says she learned something important studying at the Ed School.

“I’ve learned that this issue is not only relevant in the Netherlands. Before coming here, my work was rooted very much in the Dutch higher education context, but during my time at HGSE, I realized even more clearly that student informal caregiving is a much broader issue,” she says.

“There are many students here balancing their studies with care responsibilities, even if the language used to describe that experience may differ. That made me see even more strongly that this is not a niche or purely national issue, but something connected to larger questions of student wellbeing, inequality, belonging, and access in higher education.”