Leah Hennig After my first week of school, returning to university as an after-degree student and mother to a two-year-old, I walked into a family dinner, and my sister immediately asked, “Have you dropped out yet?” Obviously, she had heard that we were struggling with the transition, and that I had cried a couple of times after dropping my daughter off at daycare, and this only proved her point that a mother’s place is in the home. This question made me realize that I needed to find support elsewhere, which I have since found through the care and community nurtured by my daughter’s daycare, the Students’ Union Child and Early Learning Centre (SUCELC).
Child care is the most integral infrastructure supporting student parents, and investments made to ensure campus child care is affordable and reliable directly contribute to student success. The university’s decision to cut 100 per cent of funding to campus child care is confounding, but their complete unwillingness to be transparent and accountable has been even more concerning.
I ran to be President of the Student Parents on Campus (SPOC) student group with the hopes of creating a campus where parents felt empowered to achieve their dreams. Our first item of business was this issue of the university terminating affiliation agreements at the start of this year with six university daycares, which have served the university community for decades. I met with the centre directors, campus union leaders, and other student parents who all expressed how dire this situation is. Child care for student parents will become more expensive, waitlists will become longer, and centres operating with deficits face closure or staff restructuring.
When I brought these concerns to university administrators, I asked a very simple question: how did you ensure that student parents would not be adversely affected by terminating the affiliation agreements? From the 10 administrators we contacted, the answers were the same: refusal to answer the question and redirection to Ravina Sanghera, the dean of Student Success and Experience, who had no role in making this decision. Our attempts to re-engage were met with silence.
The decisions made seemed to come with the belief that they would have no effect on university families. I hope I am very clear when I say that this choice will cause greater burdens on student parents, and that these consequences are already here. My daughter’s daycare, for example, has had to increase supplemental fees to maintain the programs offered, such as meals and field trips in the neighbourhood. Under the affiliation agreements, the university paid about $902.11 per child per year, which indirectly subsidized these programs. Now, families are paying $1,260 per year in programming and food fees in addition to the monthly daycare fees. The university reasoned that this decision was necessary due to budget constraints, as if students don’t have budget constraints of their own.
For student parents, child care is not just nice to have but the determining factor in their ability to study and come to class. The university would do well to think of child care as investing in infrastructure that allows student parents to access education, and not just a budget line. Luckily, this investment is incredibly small, as the affiliation agreements formed only 0.015 per cent of U of A’s annual expenditures, but even that small investment makes a world of difference to student parents. Without campus child care, student parents will face greater barriers to getting to class, studying, and researching. The university has clearly communicated its position: supporting the access needs of student parents is too costly and they are not changing their minds, no matter how damaging this policy is. It is now the university who is asking: “Have you dropped out, yet?”
Our access needs and sense of being welcome on campus deserve attention, a formal strategic plan, and funding to implement change and support. Investing in campus child care is a legal obligation the university has to invest in for employees on campus. But, ensuring there is child care for employees also greatly helps and benefits student parents. Anything short of that and the university is saying to student parents and mothers, like myself, in particular: you are not welcome here because you have given birth and supporting equitable access is too costly.
