Saturday, April 19, 2008, 12:41pm
At my job interview in September, I suggested (based on some wonderfully helpful feedback from readers) that the Anne Arundel CC model of evening childcare might be a great way to help returning adult students succeed. My argument was that working parents would be much more able to commit to regular class attendance if they could drop off their kid(s) at a good childcare center on campus. Ideally, keep the cafeteria open late enough that they could grab something to eat before class, too. A parent who knows her kid is okay is able to focus on other things.
The students I spoke to loved the idea. The women I spoke to loved the idea.
The men did not love the idea. I didn't get the job.
I've worked at two colleges now that have evicted their onsite daycare centers. (My previous college did that the same month TB was born. I was fit to be tied.) Daycare centers tend to be money-losers, and enrollment-driven institutions don't like to use space that could have gone to tuition-paying students for just about anything else.
Trying to balance a single college's budget, I get that. I really do. I wrote that $250 check every week for TB's daycare (the going rate around here at the time), and it was painful. I did the math once; it worked out to $13,000 a year, and there was no financial aid. And the daycare workers weren't exactly getting rich.
Something is fundamentally wrong.