Black Student Parents’ Access to Affordable Child Care Support at Community Colleges

By Justin Nalley and Gabrielle Smith Finnie, Ph.D.

The issue brief, “Black Student Parents’ Access to Affordable Child Care Support at Community Colleges,” examines the CCAMPIS program to understand its impacts on Black student parents and offers legislative proposals for congressional reauthorization and adequate appropriations for this critical child care program.

Access to the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, a federal grant designed to support student parents with child care access and expenses, is critical for Black student parents in 2025. Child care costs strain parents nationwide. These costs are particularly burdensome for student parents, defined as parents pursuing higher education and responsible for providing for a child.¹ Black college students are more likely to be parents than other racial groups at both community colleges and four-year institutions. Over one in three (36 percent) of Black students enrolled in community colleges in 2020 were parents.² Forty percent of Black women in college are raising children.³ Black single mothers comprise 30 percent of undergraduate students who are single mothers, and nearly 70 percent of Black single-mother students are first-generation college students.⁴ Black fathers make up 19 percent of student parents and are less likely to have access to child care assistance than fathers of other races.⁵ Overall, access to on-campus child care has declined over time. Research suggests that students who used campus child care centers had greater retention and completion rates than their peers who did not.⁶ From 2004 to 2019, the share of public academic institutions offering child care services fell from 59 percent to 45 percent.⁷

Public community colleges experienced an even more pronounced decrease, from 58 percent to 41 percent over the same period.⁸ Only 38 percent of public two year institutions and 21 percent of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) offer on-campus child care.⁹ Additionally, 67 percent of Black fathers attend colleges without on-campus child care.¹⁰

Higher education institutions that have been awarded at least $350,000 in Pell Grant funds in the previous fiscal year (or at least $250,000 when CCAMPIS appropriations are greater than $20 million) are eligible to complete the highly competitive application process for a CCAMPIS grant on a four-year grant award cycle.

CCAMPIS grants can subsidize child care costs for Pell Grant-eligible students, support campus-based or community-based child care programs, provide before or after-school child care services, or provide student support, such as financial and career counseling.¹¹

Read the brief here.

¹ Nathan Sick et al., “Considerations for Postsecondary Data on Student Parenting Status,” (Urban Institute, March 2023).

² U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Postsecondary Student Aid Study: 2020 Undergraduates.

³ Lindsey Reichlin Cruse et al., “Parents in College: By the Numbers,” (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2019).

⁴ Jennifer Turner and Afet Dundar, “Advancing Equity in Attainment for Black Single Mothers in College,” (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 18, 2024).

⁵ India Heckstall and Christian Collins, “Expand Access to Affordable High-Quality Child Care to Better Serve Black Student Fathers,” (The Center for Law and Social Policy, September 2023).

⁶ Cruse et al., “Evaluating the Role of Campus Child Care in Student Parent Success,” (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, October 26, 2021).

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Renee Ryberg, Rachel Rosenberg, and Jessica Warren, “Higher Education Can Support Parenting Students and Their Children with Accessible, Equitable Services,” (Child Trends, January 11, 2021).

¹⁰ Heckstall and Collins, “Expand Access to Affordable High-Quality Child Care to Better Serve Black Student Fathers.”

¹¹ Adam K. Edgerton, “Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools (CCAMPIS): In Brief,” (Congressional Research Service, January 23, 2024).