Parenting Students Need Affordable Child Care. The CCAMPIS Reauthorization Act Will Help

In a speech earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon lamented that colleges used to be a good place to meet a spouse, “maybe even have your first child.”

Colleges are notoriously difficult places for those who have children to succeed. In addition to navigating institutions designed for students without dependents, parenting students face nontuition costs that are significantly higher than those of their peers without children, in part due to the high costs of child care.

Fifty nine percent of community college students who were caregivers and stopped out of school said they left in part to provide care for a child, based on prior survey based research from New America.

Luckily, Congress can help address the child care problem and ease the burden on the more than 3 million undergraduate parents in college. The newly reintroduced Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) Reauthorization Act would improve child care access for low-income student parents by providing increased funding to subsidize care for them.

CCAMPIS is the only federal grant program designed to support the child care needs of parenting students in higher education. Colleges and universities apply for the competitive grant and use the funds to subsidize high quality child care on or off campus for low-income parenting students. Subsidized care can be full-time, part-time, or before-and-after school care for those with school-aged children.

In 2018, $50 million in CCAMPIS funding subsidized care for approximately 11,000 of the 3 million undergraduate students in America. Currently, appropriations stand at $75 million per year. Increasing annual CCAMPIS appropriations to $500 million, as the CCAMPIS Reauthorization Act would do, could help approximately 100,000 more parenting students afford quality child care.

The newly reintroduced legislation would strengthen the existing program by increasing annual appropriations, upping the minimum grant award amount colleges receive, and requiring institutions to connect parenting students to other programs that help secure essential needs, among a few other provisions.

The additional funding could make a significant dent in challenges parenting students face in affording care. With just 264 out of nearly 6,000 colleges in the U.S. receiving grants in fiscal year 2023 (the most recent year for which information is publicly available), an infusion of grant funds could help far more colleges better serve parenting students with child care assistance.

This year, CCAMPIS’ fate has been uncertain. The President’s budget request in May proposed eliminating the program, arguing that it is duplicative of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). However, CCDBG serves only 14 percent of eligible children ages 5 and under and can impose state that serve as barriers to those enrolled in college. CCAMPIS provides targeted support to reach parenting students.

While the Senate Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, voted to level-fund CCAMPIS for fiscal year 2026, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a bill that would eliminate funding for the program.

Eliminating CCAMPIS funding would jeopardize enrollment in school for parenting students who rely on the program. As one student told us, “Without CCAMPIS, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to finish my last year of dental hygiene school after working so hard to get into the program and make it through. We’re already struggling financially. Without CCAMPIS, we would go further into debt and I may have to halt my schooling once again.” - Sarah*, a dental hygiene student at a community college in the north east.

Making colleges a place that parents or future parents can succeed, as McMahon wants, will require investment to make child care affordable and accessible for parenting students. For many, it is the difference between a degree and economic stability for their families, or continued reliance on low wage employment and difficulty securing their basic needs.

Erin, a community college student in Arizona, told us “child care funding has given me the ability to care for myself and work toward a better future for my family, all while knowing my children are in safe, nurturing environments.”

With the CCAMPIS Reauthorization Act, Congress can support more students like Erin in working towards the future they imagine for their children.

*A pseudonym has been used at the student’s request