The purpose of this study is to critically explore low-income women's experience as they negotiate post secondary education in community colleges. Three research questions explore the context through which low-income women have entered the college experience, what that experience is like for them, and how the community college experience has impacted their consciousness and view of their futures. This study has significance because poverty is a critical social issue for women, post secondary education is a route out of poverty yet social welfare policy does not support access to education, community colleges have traditionally provided access to education but supports for women have been diminished, and poor women's voices and their own definitions of educational access and success are missing from the public and academic debate of these issues. Past qualitative studies that focus on poor women's experience of college are smaller parts of quantitative studies. Other existing in depth studies have focused on obstacles, persistence, and support systems, or have been studies of special transitional programs formed specifically for welfare eligible women. There is little knowledge of women's experience and sense of self from their perspective as students who are also in poverty. This study uses the research technique of in depth unstructured interviews with eight welfare eligible women student parents in Oregon's Parents as Scholars Program. Six themes emerge from the narrative interviews with the participants that that have implications for educational practice and add to and expand the small body of qualitative work that has been done on the college experiences of low-income women students. / Graduation date: 2012