Recommendations for Colleges

On the basis of our work with 10 community colleges, we grouped suggestions for improving child care access and support for parenting students into five themes and 11 recommendations.

Child care is treated as a stand-alone service at many community colleges rather than integrated as a core student success support. Parenting students represent nearly one in five undergraduates nationwide, with even higher concentrations at community colleges. Data show they are less likely to complete degrees than their peers without children, despite earning similar GPAs.¹ The difference? Higher non-tuition costs² than non-parenting students, difficulty finding reliable child care, and time poverty.³

Colleges that integrate child care into their equity goals, strategic plans, and basic needs services are better equipped to support parenting students and improve retention. In addition, child care access can be a powerful tool for reengaging adults with some college but no credentials, which is an urgent priority for many institutions and states.⁴

Recommendation 1.1: Make Child Care Part of Strategic Planning and Equity Goals

Colleges should explicitly include child care access and parenting student support in their strategic plans, equity goals, and basic needs initiatives. Institutions like Madison College and Forsyth Tech have demonstrated that embedding child care into institutional priorities helps sustain services, secure funding, and drive student success. Madison College, for example, created a student-parent task force that reports to senior leadership and integrates child care into its strategic plan. Forsyth Tech connects parenting support to its basic needs office and views child care as essential to retention and completion.

Parenting students rely on a patchwork of care arrangements. No single model meets all their needs. Data from New America and national surveys show that over 60 percent of parenting students depend on family, friends, and neighbors for child care,⁵ while formal on-campus centers only serve a fraction of parenting students,⁶ even at the most well-resourced colleges. This reflects the fact that parenting students face complex schedules, work demands, and financial constraints that require flexible, layered child care solutions.

Colleges that offer a mix of campus-based care, partnerships with community providers, drop-in options, and connections to subsidies or referral networks are better equipped to help parenting students stay enrolled and succeed.

Recommendation 2.1: Provide a Mix of On-Campus, Off-Campus, and Flexible Supports

On-campus child care centers alone cannot meet the demand for parenting student support. Madison College, for example, pairs its on-campus center (which prioritizes parenting students) with partnerships with community centers like the YMCA and is building a new center to expand capacity. Quinsigamond Community College used Perkins funding to hire a parenting student navigator and is developing drop-in child care for when other care is not available, like during evening classes or in emergencies. Forsyth Tech partners closely with the regional CCRC agency to connect parenting students to local providers and subsidies, and its SPARC program offers holistic basic needs support that includes child care as a key component. Colleges that combine on-campus care with community partnerships and financial support are better able to meet the actual needs of parenting students.

Recommendation 2.2: Strengthen Support for Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) Care

The majority of parenting students rely on FFN care because it offers affordability, cultural alignment, trust, and flexibility that formal centers may not. Yet FFN care can be fragile, especially when providers face their own resource challenges. Colleges can help strengthen FFN arrangements⁷ through policies and services that make them easier to sustain, such as priority class registration for parenting students, family-friendly study spaces, and clear guidance on bringing children to class when care falls through. Some colleges also encourage student-parent networks or clubs that help parents build community and informal support systems, even if liability concerns prevent formal co-op child care arrangements. These strategies help create an ecosystem of support that aligns with how most parenting students actually piece together care.

Parenting students are often called an “invisible population” because colleges lack systems to consistently identify and support them. Without reliable data, institutions struggle to connect parenting students to services, measure outcomes, or make the case for funding. This invisibility contributes to gaps in support that can derail parenting students’ educational journeys.

Colleges that proactively collect and integrate parenting status into student records, especially during admissions, advising, or registration, are better positioned to design effective supports and advocate for resources.⁸ Data collection also helps ensure that child care and other student support for parenting are part of larger equity and completion conversations on campus.

Recommendation 3.1: Integrate Parenting Status Data Into Student Records

Madison College and Forsyth Tech demonstrate two models for gathering actionable data on parenting students. Madison asks about parenting and caregiving responsibilities during admissions and allows students to update this information through the student portal at any time. Forsyth gathers parenting status during intake sessions through its SPARC office, which provides wraparound support to parenting students. Both approaches ensure that student-parent data are linked to other key information, such as academic progress, GPA, and use of support services. This allows the institutions to monitor trends, identify equity gaps, and tailor interventions. Madison includes the option for students to identify the ages of their children or other dependents, or to opt out of responding, helping balance data needs with privacy considerations.

Recommendation 3.2: Leverage Data to Secure Funding and Improve Services

Colleges that track parenting student data can advocate for funding and design more targeted programs. Parenting data can strengthen grant proposals or reporting for federal programs like CCAMPIS and Perkins, state basic needs funding, and private philanthropic support. It can also help colleges make decisions about how to use their resources to support increased degree attainment. For example, Madison College uses its parenting student data to conduct targeted outreach about child-friendly campus events and to evaluate the impact of services on retention. Forsyth Tech’s dashboard allows SPARC staff to monitor academic performance and intervene early when parenting students show signs of struggle.

Parenting students often navigate fragmented campus systems to access child care, basic needs assistance, academic advising, and financial support. This disjointed structure can create additional stress, confusion, and barriers. Colleges that coordinate these services or create integrated points of contact make it significantly easier for parenting students to connect with the resources they need to persist and complete their studies.

Recommendation 4.1: Centralize or Coordinate Student-Parent Services

Forsyth Tech’s SPARC office integrates child care support with emergency grants, food assistance, housing referrals, and transportation help. By consolidating these services, Forsyth creates a one-stop shop that reduces administrative burdens for parenting students and allows for more proactive, coordinated support. Such models ensure parenting students aren’t left to piece together services on their own. They address the reality of time poverty and can improve retention and completion. At Madison College, a student-parent task force reports to college leadership and helps align child care, advising, and basic needs initiatives. This ensures that child care is seen not as a stand-alone service, but as part of a broader strategy for student success and equity.

Recommendation 4.2: Build Partnerships with Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies

Many colleges cannot meet the full demand for child care through on-campus centers alone. Partnerships with local child care resource and referral (CCR&R) agencies help connect parenting students to community-based care, subsidies, and additional support.⁹ Forsyth Tech maintains an active partnership with its regional CCR&R, facilitating warm hand-offs and personalized referrals. Linn-Benton Community College goes a step further by hosting its local CCR&R (Family Connections) on campus, allowing for greater integration with institutional support. These partnerships expand child care options and connect colleges to external expertise. CCR&Rs bring deep knowledge of the local child care landscape, helping institutions design supports that reflect parenting students’ real-world needs.

Recommendation 4.3: Train Faculty and Staff on Parenting Student Needs and Campus Supports

Faculty and staff play a critical role in supporting parenting students, but they don’t always know what resources exist or how to connect parenting students with the help they need. Colleges should provide regular training or resources that raise awareness of child care services, parenting student supports, and basic needs programs available on campus. Montgomery College offers a strong example. In partnership with Believe in Students and Ascend at the Aspen Institute, the college recently launched the first professional development curriculum focused on parenting students.¹⁰ The training, which is strongly encouraged for faculty and staff, includes real stories from parenting students and practical strategies for supporting them in and out of the classroom. Training like this helps foster a more supportive, inclusive environment for parenting students and ensures they aren’t left to navigate complex systems alone.

Recommendation 4.4: Develop Flexible, Family-Friendly Campus Policies

Even with strong child care support, parenting students will inevitably face gaps in coverage, whether a caregiver cancels at the last minute or a child care program closes unexpectedly. Colleges can help fill these gaps by creating policies that offer flexibility. This might include clarifying when children can accompany parents to class or use family-friendly spaces on campus or offering hybrid or virtual participation options in certain situations. Making these policies clear and accessible sends a strong signal that the institution values and accommodates parenting students.

Sustaining child care support takes intentional, diversified funding. On-campus centers, partnerships, subsidies, and drop-in care all demand resources beyond what most colleges can provide from institutional funds alone. Colleges that successfully build and maintain child care services for parenting students tap into federal, state, local, and private funding in combination with tuition for child care services.

Diversified funding not only helps sustain services but also allows colleges to expand offerings to meet demand over time. Our site visits and research revealed that colleges with the most robust child care support have tapped into a mix of sources, including CCAMPIS and Perkins grants, state and local child care funds, philanthropic contributions, and institutional investments.

Recommendation 5.1: Combine Federal, State, Local, and Philanthropic Funding

Madison College demonstrates the power of diversified funding. The college blends CCAMPIS dollars, city and state child care subsidies, and private philanthropy to reduce costs for student families and expand capacity. Its successful effort to secure $10 million in funding to build a new child care center shows what is possible when colleges align vision, strategy, and fundraising. Quinsigamond Community College used Perkins funds to hire a parenting student navigator, embedding support for parenting students into its broader career and technical education strategy. Forsyth Tech has layered CCAMPIS grants, state child care grants, local partnerships, and basic needs funding to provide child care grants, connect students to community subsidies, and integrate child care as part of its SPARC office.

Recommendation 5.2: Advocate for More Flexible and Robust Public Investments

Colleges that systematically collect student-parent data are in a stronger position to advocate for sustained and increased public funding. Parenting status data can help institutions make the case for federal grants like CCDF¹¹ or CCAMPIS, state child care grants,¹² and local investments¹³ that support child care.

For example, Madison College has used data on parenting students to guide fundraising and advocacy efforts, while Forsyth Tech’s data dashboard supports its work in sustaining and growing its basic needs infrastructure, including child care services. By demonstrating clear need and impact, colleges can strengthen policy arguments for flexible, sustainable funding that treats child care as a core student success investment.