Why Colleges Should Get Involved in Child Care Advocacy

The child care crisis in the United States is hardly just an issue for working families with young children. A 2023 Ready Nation study found that the issues parents face in securing reliable child care cost the U.S. economy an estimated $122 billion a year via lost earnings, productivity, and revenue.

Businesses lose an average of $1640 annually per working parent in revenue and hiring costs due to parents’ struggles with inadequate child care. For colleges and universities, the toll extends beyond productivity of employees experiencing child care challenges to an institution’s ability to retain and graduate the 1 in 5 undergraduates who are parents.

Parenting students have a 37 percent degree attainment rate within 6 years (compared to 61 percent of all undergraduates), despite having similar GPAs to nonparenting peers, suggesting that nonacademic factors cause them to stop out. The Hope Center’s 2023-2024 Student Basic Needs Survey Report found that 45 percent of parenting students who had stopped out of college and subsequently reenrolled cited child care or caregiving responsibilities as a reason for stopping out.

With fewer high school graduates as a result of the demographic cliff, colleges and policymakers need more strategies to enroll and retain older and parenting students. 36.8 million adults ages 18-64 have some college, but no degree. Failing to enroll and serve older adults, including those who have children, doesn’t just put college enrollment numbers and budgets at risk - it jeopardizes local economies and employers’ ability to fill jobs that require a college education.

Parenting students tend to be older than their non-parenting peers, and with a median age of 32, represent an area of promise for increasing retention and graduation rates as well as helping meet local workforce needs, but only with the proper supports, which include child care access.

Yet, colleges often overlook an opportunity: by supporting early education advocacy in their communities, they can help secure the child care infrastructure that both parenting students and their employees need.

Increasing options for local, affordable, quality child care can help colleges support parenting students on the path to degree completion. Colleges aren’t set up to solve the child care crisis alone, but by getting involved with advocacy for early education and child care locally, colleges can work not only to strengthen retention and graduation of parenting students but also to improve attendance, job satisfaction, and retention of employees who need child care.

How have states and localities addressed child care, and how could it help colleges?

While federal investments in programs like Head Start and the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) are key to helping families access quality child care, they aren’t funded at levels to fully meet the needs of working families. For example, CCDF serves only an estimated 13 percent of eligible families with children ages 5 and under.

In the absence of adequate funds to meet families' child care needs, some states and localities are working to implement local solutions to make child care more available and affordable. Below are a few examples and what these solutions could mean for colleges.

Vermont

In 2023, Vermont passed Act 76, enacting a new payroll tax to bring more funds into the state’s child care system. Act 76 infused $125 million into the state’s child care subsidy program, increasing reimbursement rates for providers and reaching more families with subsidies to help them pay for care.

Vermont’s increased investment in child care didn’t come simply from legislators trying to find child care solutions, but from years of grassroots advocacy led by child care advocates. Ultimately, advocates got local businesses on board to address the problems they face when employees can’t secure reliable child care, leading to a long list of businesses endorsing the campaign for Act 76.

Vermont’s Child Care Financial Assistance Program is open to those enrolled in postsecondary training or education, meaning students can receive subsidies that help them secure quality child care. Because the subsidy is available to families making up to 575 percent of the federal poverty level, faculty and staff at colleges are likely benefiting too. In the first year after passing the legislation, 1000 new child care spots were created, chipping away at the state’s shortage in available care - ultimately a good thing for anyone with child care needs, including student parents, faculty, and staff.

New Mexico

In 2022, New Mexico made child care free for families earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, invested in grants to expand child care in areas suffering shortages, increased provider reimbursement rates, and put money towards scholarships for those enrolled in Early Childhood Education programs. The state did this by drawing on revenue from its Land Grant Permanent Fund, which comes from leases and royalties on oil and gas production.

The results include a 21 percent increase in students served in preK, 11% growth in infant and toddler care, and 10 percent growth in families accessing the state’s child care assistance program, along with waived copayments for families.

Like in Vermont, New Mexico’s child care subsidy program is open to postsecondary students, so colleges can support their parenting student population by helping them connect to this resource.

Although the number of children served by the state’s Child Care Assistance program (its subsidy) has increased since the state implemented expanded eligibility, enrollment for families with incomes between 50 and 100 percent of the federal poverty line has decreased. Additionally, the number of licensed care centers has increased, while in-home care providers have decreased by over 20 percent. This could mean challenges for student parents, who tend to be low-income and often have needs for care outside of the hours centers typically offer. Colleges could connect to local advocacy work to improve access for student parents, and ensure those with lowest-incomes are able to access subsidies and the type of care they need to stay in school.

New Orleans

In 2018, New Orleans’ began its City Seats program to support families with free, high-quality child care for children ages 6 weeks through 3 years old. After voters approved a tax millage in 2022, the program expanded its reach to more qualifying families with an additional $21 million in annual funding, matched by a state fund to increase reach. The millage funding allowed City Seats to serve five times more families.

New Orleans offers a local example of what can be done with advocacy to get voters on board with efforts to fund early education. Local colleges could stand to benefit by connecting their student parents with the City Seats program for care options.

Other Efforts

Other states and localities have pushed for expanded child care access, often with a focus on preK. Some cities are getting creative in their efforts to enhance child care access for families, like Madison, South Dakota, which funded a child care center with tax increment financing (TIF), typically used for roads and sewers, noting that child care is infrastructure. The City of Madison, Wisconsin sold an old fire station to Madison College for $1, which the college agreed to turn into a child care center to expand its existing child care services.

What can colleges do?

Colleges that want to explore advocating for child care solutions in their area for the benefit of their students and workforce can consider:

1. Collect data to understand the needs of your students and staff

Although parenting students make up a large portion of both undergraduate and graduate students, campuses often don’t know much about who they are or what they need. Limited data to identify which students are parents or caregivers, how old their children are, and what their child care needs are can stall campuses from developing effective wraparound supports that meet their needs. But some colleges are leading the way in collecting data on parental status of students. For example, Madison College in Wisconsin asks students if they are caregivers and for the age range of their children. Resources like the Family Friendly Campus Toolkit and the Data-to-Action Campaign for Parenting Students can help colleges learn more and get started in collecting more robust data.

Similarly, getting a pulse on the child care needs and struggles of employees can help colleges think about what local solutions they might advocate for, ranging from attempts at near-universal child care access like in Vermont or New Mexico to increased collaboration with Child Care Resource and Referral Networks that help families find care and help expand the supply of quality care locally.

1. Get connected to state and local child care advocacy work

Find out what organizations are leading the way in your state to build child care systems that work to make quality child care affordable for families.

Not sure where to start? Ask your college’s Early Childhood Education Faculty who is working locally to strengthen the child care system, or find your local Child Care Resource and Referral Network to get support in understanding the child care challenges and solutions organizations are working on in your area.

In addition to early education advocacy organizations, in some cases, Chambers of Commerce are working to help businesses find solutions to the child care crisis for their employees. For example, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce has released reports on child care issues and potential solutions in the state. The Texas Chamber of Business and Industry partnered with Early Matters and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to compile a report estimating how often parents are missing workforce or educational opportunities due to lack of child care. Colleges can stay connected to and learn from this type of work locally to advocate for solutions that help them graduate more parenting students and support their workforces.

Colleges and universities can build relationships with the players advocating for early education and child care in their area and get involved to advocate for solutions that meet the needs of community and college-affiliated people. Child care is an immense challenge, but it can be solved with all of us, to the benefit of all of us.

Conclusion

There’s no one solution to solve the child care crisis, or to make sure that student parents and college workforces have access to the types of care they need. Colleges that stay on the sidelines of the child care crisis risk solutions being developed without the needs of their students and workforce in mind, jeopardizing their ability to keep parenting students enrolled and their workforce retained and productive. But by getting involved in state or local advocacy for child care and early education, colleges can help push for solutions that meet the needs of their college community.