CR’s July 11, 2025, Times Standard Article The Child Development Center Supports Academic Success

Published on Jul 8 2025

Providing childcare remains a significant challenge for many parents, especially for college student-parents who are balancing work, childcare, and budgets. According to a September 24, 2024 U.S. News article, the Urban Institute reports that more than 5.4 million college students in the United States are parents, which equates to nearly one in four undergraduate students. This shows that student-parents comprise a significant population in higher education. 

Studies have also shown that providing campus childcare can help address some of the challenges this population faces in their quest to attain their education. However, despite the need and benefit these services provide, the number of higher education institutions providing childcare to student parents has been decreasing. In an October 2021 report, Evaluating the Role of Campus Childcare in Student Parent Success, researchers found that over the previous decade the share of public higher education institutions offering onsite childcare services declined by 14% —from 59% in 2004 to 45% in 2019. The steepest decline of 17 percentage points took place at community colleges, where the largest share of student-parents were enrolled. More recent data from New America shows that by 2022, only 38% of public institutions and 7% of private nonprofit institutions offered childcare on campus.

At College of the Redwoods, the Child Development Center (CDC) supports our student-parents by offering high-quality and affordable childcare on the Eureka Campus. Locally, we know that childcare is a constant source of stress for student-parents, made even more stressful with the closure of many childcare programs during the pandemic. Anecdotally, students have told us that since the pandemic, it is becoming more difficult to rely on family and friends to provide childcare while they are in school and it is becoming harder and harder for childcare centers to find workers. 

We know that operating a childcare center is expensive. We also know that student-parents’ budgets are tight. While it may not make fiscal sense to offer a campus childcare service, we do not view our CDC as a business operation – especially when 79% of students using the CDE are single parents. In addition to providing the vital childcare services these students need, the CDC also serves as a lab school for our Early Childhood Education program, providing hands-on training and experience to future teachers. This dual role helps address both the childcare shortage and the childcare worker shortage in our area. That is why our Board of Trustees has long supported the recommendation to ensure that our CDC has the necessary funds to operate. We see it as an important part of our ability to meet the needs of our community, help our students achieve their dreams, and more importantly, as an investment in our young children. 

The data bears this out. According to our Institutional Research, the CDC outcomes for the 2024–2025 academic year reveal that single parents who utilized our CDC consistently outperformed their peers who did not. These students achieved an average GPA of 3.04, compared to 2.78 for non-users and higher than the overall district average of 2.88. Their course retention rate was 93.96%—4.28 percentage points higher than single parents not using the CDC and 3.23 points above the district average. Course success rates showed an even larger gap, with CDC users succeeding at 85.23%, surpassing non-users by 7.6 points and the district average by nearly 7 points. Over the past five years, term-to-term persistence rates for CDC users have also remained strong, averaging 88–90%, far exceeding CR’s overall persistence rate of 64% during the same period.

I know firsthand how hard it is to be a student-parent and how critical childcare is to single parents balancing school and work. I am very proud that the College of the Redwoods’ Board of Trustees is firmly committed to doing all that we can to provide affordable childcare on campus and support the dreams of our student-parents. 

We would not have realized the success we had seen if it were not for Wendy Hill, the Director of our CDC. The Board of Trustees and I appreciate Wendy for her commitment to listening to our student parent population, figuring out what their needs are and then creating solutions that are responsive to those needs. It is thanks to Wendy and the Child Development Center staff and teachers that our student-parents do not have to take time off of school or give up on their dreams of attaining a degree, getting a job, and advancing their careers.