Much has been made of the rising cost of college tuition, less about the rising cost of childcare, although it is not less onerous. In many states, the cost of childcare exceeds the cost of tuition at a four-year college, according to a 2016 report from The Care Index.
As a result, the cost of childcare can be a stretch even for people with a solid income. Imagine then, trying to make ends meet while in school without any money coming in other than loans or a part-time or minimum wage job.
In 1998, Congress created a grant program aimed at helping low-income parents in college pay for childcare. The Child Care Access Means Parents In School (CCAMPIS) program is a little-known federal initiative that has had an outsize impact on the thousands of students it has reached, according to advocates.
CCAMPIS, however, is one of the programs slated to be cut from the federal budget in the upcoming fiscal year. The program was one of several higher education programs slashed in the Trump administration’s budget proposal.
Funded at $15 million annually since 2014, the program is a drop in the bucket relative to the larger federal budget. The program reached its funding apex at $25 million in 2001 during the Bush administration. Yet despite its small size, advocacy groups such as Young Invincibles say that the program has an outsize impact on the approximately 5,000 students it reaches annually.
Students can also attest to its importance. For Kyle Cerka and his partner, Stacey, the CCAMPIS grant meant the difference between attaining their educational and career goals – or having to put them on hold while their children were still young. Cerka estimates that childcare for his two children would have cost between $1,500 and $1,700 per month, a prohibitive amount on the family’s budget at the time, while he attended Ferris State University.
