CCAMPIS Changes Put Politics Ahead of Student Parents

Since the spring, almost 300 colleges nationwide had been waiting to learn which of them would receive a Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) grant.

The federal program offers vital funding that colleges use to subsidize child care for students with children, and initially, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) estimated it would distribute nearly 150 of the grants. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, publicly bragged how many applications the agency received for the program.

Then, late last month, with no fanfare, Education Department published the list of grant recipents—just 40 colleges had gotten grant funding. That followed moves the department made last year, first opting not to hold a grant competition, instead using Congressional funds to pay existing grantees further in advance. Then the department cut off CCAMPIS money to about a dozen grantees, claiming their programs facilitated teaching young children about gender and race. 

But the Trump administration has attempted to disrupt grantmaking far beyond the single CCAMPIS program. The Education Department has proposed rules that would enable it to end multi-year grants early, “for convenience.” The plan also would force grantees and their affiliates to comply with President Donald Trump’s prolific executive orders. The Office of Management and Budget drafted similar regulations that would direct that political appointees approve federal grants.

As the administration cements this authoritarian approach, grant recipients continue to live in a state of uncertainty about whether the federal government will pull their grants for political reasons, or even execute them at all. And the repercussions from politicized grantmaking will fall hardest on vulnerable people these programs were created to help.

What Is CCAMPIS?

Consider CCAMPIS, which has seen bipartisan support. Congress gradually boosted CCAMPIS appropriations from $15 million in fiscal year 2017 to reach $75 million in fiscal 2023, where it has remained since.

Instead of doling out the funds across an estimated 148 colleges, the department made just 40 awards and frontloaded the grants, that is, paid CCAMPIS grantees in advance for future years of the four-year grant.

That means just over $18 million went out the door in new grants for 2026,, and the remainder of the money will be given out over the next three years to just the 40 recipients. The frontloading strategy minimized the number of colleges receiving CCAMPIS grants and in turn, the number of parenting students who can access subsidized child care this academic year.

Students with children often view these types of services as financial salvation. 

Earlier this year, we wrote about Maimouna, a nursing student at an Arizona community college. 

Miamouna had long wanted to help those in pain, in part because of the lack of quality care her late parents received. But she and her husband were financially strained—she was only able to enroll when she found out that a CCAMPIS grant could cover the cost of off-campus childcare for her toddler. 

“When my family was accepted to their child care program, I was crying because I was so happy. There’s no way I could do it without child care,” Maimouna said at the time. 

But that money vanished when the Education Department decided not to run the CCAMPIS grant competition. Maimouna couldn’t enroll in fall 2025, instead working 40 hours or more a week just to help afford child care. She was only able to return to school after her college began working with a local nonprofit that paid for child care expenses. 

That was expected to be one-time support. Maimouna had no plans for how she’d finance child care for her remaining time in college. In Arizona, the state’s child care subsidy waitlist has grown from 10,000 children to over 13,500 since she shared her story.

Consequences of fewer grants won’t fall just on parenting students, either. For some grantees, CCAMPIS pays for salaries of staff members who work in campus-based child care centers or whose role it is to help find care for parents and connect them to off-campus resources.

Campus-based child care centers that have long held CCAMPIS grants could close, or pivot to serving only families that can afford full-tuition rates. 

At some colleges, staff will almost certainly lose their jobs. And colleges will lose institutional knowledge from staff who have developed practices to support parenting students. Often, just one staff person on a campus is directly responsible for parenting student support, so this could leave some colleges suddenly without any such programs. 

This appears to be the administration’s backdoor way to weaken the CCAMPIS program, which it has proposed to eliminate several times. 

Even if the Education Department runs future CCAMPIS grant competitions, colleges will be left to wonder whether it is a stable source of funding—and they might not apply at all, leaving parenting students without needed support. 

What About Other Grants?

The Trump administration’s interruptions of grant programs extend beyond CCAMPIS, too. As Education Week reported recently, the Trump administration often is handing out far fewer grants than it initially pledged. 

In the case of the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program, the department said in May it would make 25 new awards, but in September announced only four. Another program, Supporting Effective Educator Development, saw a similar cutback, with the department making just half the promised 30 grants, the news outlet reported.

That’s on top of the regulations both the Education Department and OMB have proposed.

OMB’s plan in particular would be damaging, rewriting grant rules for the entire federal government. It would require that political appointees review grants before issuing them to confirm they fit with federal priorities. Federal agencies would also need to ensure grant money couldn’t benefit diversity initiatives. 

This influence creates an untenable political situation, subjecting grantees to the whims of any new administration. In the case of CCAMPIS recipients, it undermines their ability to provide stable child care assistance for parenting students. 

Congress created CCAMPIS and has steadily boosted funding because lawmakers want to invest in parenting student success.

Lawmakers should make clear that this, and other grant programs, must be run the way they are legally intended, with open competitions, consistent awards—and no political test for who gets support.