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The Intercept
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Finds a New Way to Attack Education: Cutting Aid for Students Who Are Parents
President Donald Trump's war on higher education has been a central feature of his second term — with Trump targeting student protesters for deportation, revoking Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, and yanking billions in research funding. But while Trump reserves much of his more public rancor for university presidents, student activists, and faculty, his administration is also preparing to launch an assault on a largely invisible population on college campuses: parents. Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed eliminating Child Care Access Means Parents in School, also known as CCAMPIS: the only child care program exclusively for lower-income students who are parents. Tucked into Trump's proposed annual budget from earlier this month is a plan to eliminate all $75 million in funding for CCAMPIS. That's separate from the $1.6 billion in cuts to tuition assistance for lower-income students proposed by House Republicans in their 'Big, Beautiful, Bill,' which is predicted to be the largest wealth transfer, in the form of tax cuts, from the poor to the rich in the nation's history. Despite the relatively low profile of parenting students on college campuses, over 22 percent of college students are parents, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Of those roughly 3.8 million students, more than half have at least one child under the age of 5. Experts argue that these cuts align with the Trump administration's efforts to lock lower-income students and parents out of higher education, which will have generational consequences for the thousands of families reliant on the already critically underfunded program. 'It's part of a broader agenda to make education less accessible, particularly for low-income students.' 'It's part of a broader agenda to make education less accessible, particularly for low-income students,' said Jennifer Turner, a senior research associate at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. 'We know that education is a pathway to economic mobility for [student parents] and for their children and then for future generations to come.' Parents face a host of barriers to finishing their degree, but cost and accessibility of child care is high-up on the list. 'All parents of young children, of course, struggle to find child care, but I think it can be even more challenging for student parents,' said Casey Peeks, senior director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress. Parenting students are much more likely to work part-time than non-parent students, so in addition to juggling child care and school, they're also balancing a work schedule, she explained. 'All of that makes it harder to find care and also afford care because they're unlikely to work full-time,' said Peeks. Although pop culture might suggest that most college students are young adults studying living on campus at tiny liberal arts colleges or massive state schools, the reality is quite different for parenting students — and for the U.S. student body in general. Over half of parenting students attend community or technical colleges, compared to 40 percent of non-parenting students. Parenting students are also much more likely to attend for-profit institutions, with roughly 20 percent studying at such schools, according to a report from Student Parents Action. Carrie Welton, senior director of policy and advocacy for anti-Poverty and basic needs at the Institute for College Access and Success, knows firsthand the challenges that low-income student parents face. At 17, she gave birth to her son; a month later, she graduated from high school. But the road to higher education was far more fraught. 'Pursuing a college education is … often a lifeline out of poverty.' Although she had originally planned to join the National Guard, that was no longer on the table. Instead, she cobbled together a mix of part-time and full-time work, public benefits, and student loans to put herself through school, eventually completing her bachelor's degree after 12 grueling years. Welton said she fought so hard to get her degree because she wanted a better life for herself and her young son. 'The thing that gets lost in these conversations is, for people who come from low-income backgrounds, and from marginalized and minoritized communities — pursuing a college education is not about just having a fulfilling career,' she said. 'It's often a lifeline out of poverty.' Research has consistently shown that a college degree can help lift entire families out of poverty. In 2019, people with a bachelor's degree earned roughly $30,468 more than those without a high school diploma and $24,388 more than those with a high school diploma or its equivalent. People with a bachelor's degree are also less likely to utilize government assistance programs. The effects of obtaining a degree are also generational. Children of college graduates are much more likely to earn a bachelor's degree themselves and have higher lifetime earnings. For Turner, this isn't just an attack on access to higher education, it's an attack on reproductive rights. 'One of the tenets of reproductive justice is the right of parents to raise their children in a safe and healthy environment,' she said. 'The administration's proposed cuts to college student child care programs hinder parents' ability to do that. If parents don't have access to quality, affordable child care, it limits their access to education and the workforce, which impacts their well-being, the well-being of their families and communities, and the overall economy.' Even without these cuts, Turner said that CCAMPIS is currently critically underfunded. A congressional analysis in 2018 found that only 11,000 students received CCAMPIS grants, despite the fact that roughly 3.1 million students are raising children. 'Under the Biden administration, it was still underfunded. It has been for a very long time, and so it's really important to fully fund the program so that it can actually meet the needs of student parents,' said Turner. Not every student parent automatically qualifies for CCAMPIS. Universities can apply for CCAMPIS grant awards if they have a high percentage of federal Pell Grant recipients. Then lower-income students — defined by having or qualifying for a federal Pell Grant – can apply for CCAMPIS and receive on-campus child care through their schools. In 2022, 399 schools were awarded CCAMPIS funding, according to a congressional report. However, visibility is a major barrier to students entering the program. Katie Conte, who as a parenting student established the pilot program for Bergen Community College's student-parent fellowship, said the program isn't well advertised, even on campuses where it's available. Conte went back to school when her kids were past preschool age but said she wouldn't have waited had she known the program existed. 'I would have been able to go to college and start a career where I was actually making money being able to support myself and my kids,' said Conte, who was widowed when her youngest son was 4, suddenly leaving her the only provider. To justify ending the program, the Trump administration claimed that it was made redundant by other child care grants. Turner noted that the administration was trying to claim that CCAMPIS was made duplicative by the Child Care Development Block Grant program, a federally funded block grant program that provides low-strings funding to states for child care subsidies for low-income families. Because it's a block grant, states are able to add various eligibility requirements, including work requirements, that can make it complicated for parenting students to get access to it. Without CCAMPIS, many students will have to drop out of school, warned Tanya Ang, executive director of Today's Student Coalition. 'They won't be able to finish a post-secondary credential, or they will never be able to start one,' said Ang. 'Many of these students are living day to day, paycheck to paycheck.' Being forced to drop out without a degree could set these students back even further financially. 'Broadly, parenting students have lower completion rates than their non-parenting peers, and the risk of pursuing education and then dropping out without a credential means somebody doesn't have a credential, but they have student debt on top of it,' said Welton. An analysis from the Center for American Progress found that almost half of student parents who borrowed a federal student loan defaulted within 12 years of enrolling. That's twice the rate of default for borrowers without children. Women and people of color will bear the brunt of the impact. An analysis from the Institute for Women's Policy Research found that nearly three-quarters of parenting students are women, and the majority of undergraduate student parents are people of color. Potential cuts to CCAMPIS are not the only current risk to students. Turner said that the proposed Trump budget would have a disastrous impact on lower-income college students, including parenting students. In addition to ending CCAMPIS, the proposed budget would eliminate $1.6 billion in spending on programs supporting low-income students and preparing them for college. Trump has also begun recollecting defaulted student loans. Funding for CCAMPIS occurs during the annual appropriations process, which typically happens at the end of the year — so for now, the program is not imminently on the chopping block. 'Access to education is largely under assault,' said Turner. 'If I hadn't had things like the Pell Grant and student loans and things like that, then I wouldn't have been able to go to college. So it's really not just an access issue, it's an equity issue.'
Boston Globe
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Student-parents face uncertain future as federal child care program wanes
Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but d The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Advertisement 'We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care,' said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. 'Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar' for students to be able to complete degrees. Advertisement At Southern Connecticut State's drop-in child care center, teacher assistant Kayleigh Morgan greets Cai-Lonni Haywood and her son. Having good child care for her son has enabled Haywood to return to college, where she is pursuing a social work degree. Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced 'see-campus,' it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. 'I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school,' she said. 'If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it.' Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees th program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. Advertisement The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. 'You play the long game in federal policy,' said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. 'Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future.' Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. 'Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better,' said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. 'We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need,' said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Advertisement Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. 'Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner,' said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. 'A lot of students are not just a student anymore,' said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. 'We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working.' But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Advertisement 'The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly,' said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. 'But that's because it's really effective and important.' At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. 'We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough,' said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center 'was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are.' The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. 'The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people,' she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. Advertisement 'It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me,' she said. 'He just walks in and goes and lives his best life.' This story was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our . Listen to our .
Miami Herald
16-05-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - When Cai-Lonni Haywood left the Navy, she wanted to go back to school to become a nurse. She tried a for-profit college, but it shut down suddenly. So she started attending community college in her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Soon something more important came up: a son, Landin. Once Haywood, now 31, gave birth, she needed child care to attend class. When she couldn't find any that she could afford, she dropped out. It's a story as common as it is little known across American higher education. More than 1 in 5 American undergraduates is a parent. For many of them, kids come first and school falls by the wayside. Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but despite a growing recognition of the challenges faced by students with children, the opposite is happening. The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. "We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care," said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. "Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar" for students to be able to complete degrees. The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced "see-campus," it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. Related: See which colleges and universities offer child care The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. "I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school," she said. "If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it." Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees the program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. "You play the long game in federal policy," said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. "Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future." Related:Parents are quitting jobs, passing on raises - to qualify for child care Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. "Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better," said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. "We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need," said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have educational attainment goals that parenting students who graduate can help them meet. Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. Related: As colleges lose enrollment, some turn to one market that's growing: Hispanic students "Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner," said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. "A lot of students are not just a student anymore," said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. "We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working." But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Related: Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents "The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly," said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. "But that's because it's really effective and important." At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. "We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough," said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center "was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are." The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. "The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people," she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. "It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me," she said. "He just walks in and goes and lives his best life." Contact editor Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@ This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast. The post A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
White House reverses course on proposal to eliminate Head Start
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has reversed course on a proposal to cut all funding for Head Start, a preschool and child-care program relied on by hundreds of thousands of low-income families. A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, who insisted on remaining unnamed, confirmed to USA TODAY on May 5 that the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget does not include changes to Head Start funding. A budgetary framework released May 2 did not mention Head Start or cuts to its funding. The document did, however, include cuts to other federal programs that support preschools directly and indirectly. The administration's shift seemed to allay the fears of at least some of the nation's more than 1,600 Head Start providers and grant recipients, who spent a month in limbo after USA TODAY first reported on April 11 that the White House was considering asking Congress to eliminate Head Start funding altogether from the Department of Health and Human Services' budget. Other news outlets – including the Associated Press, The Washington Post and The New York Times – later confirmed USA TODAY's reporting. On April 28, a group of state Head Start associations and regional providers sued the Trump administration in federal court over the reportedly planned cuts. The plaintiffs argued the White House was dismantling a "crucial program in defiance of Congress." In a statement May 2, Yasmina Vinci, the executive director for the National Head Start Association, said she was grateful Head Start was not "explicitly eliminated" in Trump's budget proposal. But the White House's broader efforts to slash more than $160 billion from the federal budget could still have implications for Head Start families, she warned. "The proposed deep cuts to non-defense discretionary programs – many of which Head Start families depend on – pose a serious threat to the strength and stability of these essential services," she said. "We will continue our efforts until there is clear assurance that Head Start and its related services are fully protected." Though Head Start appears to be spared from Trump's crusade against government spending, other preschool and after-school programs may be in jeopardy as the Republican-controlled Congress wrestles over the federal budget this summer. On the chopping block in the White House's funding proposal – which doesn't have the force of law, but will influence congressional Republicans – is a $75 million grant system that gives money to colleges to support child-care services. Supporters have lauded the "Child Care Access Means Parents in School" program for helping low-income parents succeed in college. The White House's budget request, on the other hand, says subsidizing child care for adults in college is "unaffordable and duplicative." In addition, the proposal would abolish preschool development grants, which set aside money for states to improve early childhood education. The White House has called the grants "unproductive funds" which officials claim have been used to "push DEI policies on to toddlers," referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. Both Republican and Democratic governors have publicly celebrated when their states were awarded the grants in recent years. Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@ Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Proposal to axe Head Start excluded from Trump's budget
