President Donald Trump’s war on higher education has been a central feature of his second term — with Trump targeting student protesters for deportation, revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and yanking billions in research funding. But while Trump reserves much of his more public rancor for university presidents, student activists, and faculty, his administration is also preparing to launch an assault on a largely invisible population on college campuses: parents.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed eliminating Child Care Access Means Parents in School, also known as CCAMPIS: the only child care program exclusively for lower-income students who are parents. Tucked into Trump’s proposed annual budget from earlier this month is a plan to eliminate all $75 million in funding for CCAMPIS. That’s separate from the $1.6 billion in cuts to tuition assistance for lower-income students proposed by House Republicans in their “Big, Beautiful, Bill,” which is predicted to be the largest wealth transfer, in the form of tax cuts, from the poor to the rich in the nation’s history.
Despite the relatively low profile of parenting students on college campuses, over 22 percent of college students are parents, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Of those roughly 3.8 million students, more than half have at least one child under the age of 5.
Experts argue that these cuts align with the Trump administration’s efforts to lock lower-income students and parents out of higher education, which will have generational consequences for the thousands of families reliant on the already critically underfunded program.
“It’s part of a broader agenda to make education less accessible, particularly for low-income students.”
“It’s part of a broader agenda to make education less accessible, particularly for low-income students,” said Jennifer Turner, a senior research associate at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “We know that education is a pathway to economic mobility for [student parents] and for their children and then for future generations to come.”
Parents face a host of barriers to finishing their degree, but cost and accessibility of child care is high-up on the list. “All parents of young children, of course, struggle to find child care, but I think it can be even more challenging for student parents,” said Casey Peeks, senior director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress.
Parenting students are much more likely to work part-time than non-parent students, so in addition to juggling child care and school, they’re also balancing a work schedule, she explained.
“All of that makes it harder to find care and also afford care because they’re unlikely to work full-time,” said Peeks.
Although pop culture might suggest that most college students are young adults studying living on campus at tiny liberal arts colleges or massive state schools, the reality is quite different for parenting students — and for the U.S. student body in general. Over half of parenting students attend community or technical colleges, compared to 40 percent of non-parenting students. Parenting students are also much more likely to attend for-profit institutions, with roughly 20 percent studying at such schools, according to a report from Student Parents Action.
Carrie Welton, senior director of policy and advocacy for anti-Poverty and basic needs at the Institute for College Access and Success, knows firsthand the challenges that low-income student parents face. At 17, she gave birth to her son; a month later, she graduated from high school. But the road to higher education was far more fraught.
“Pursuing a college education is … often a lifeline out of poverty.”
Although she had originally planned to join the National Guard, that was no longer on the table. Instead, she cobbled together a mix of part-time and full-time work, public benefits, and student loans to put herself through school, eventually completing her bachelor’s degree after 12 grueling years.
Welton said she fought so hard to get her degree because she wanted a better life for herself and her young son.
“The thing that gets lost in these conversations is, for people who come from low-income backgrounds, and from marginalized and minoritized communities — pursuing a college education is not about just having a fulfilling career,” she said. “It’s often a lifeline out of poverty.”
Research has consistently shown that a college degree can help lift entire families out of poverty. In 2019, people with a bachelor’s degree earned roughly $30,468 more than those without a high school diploma and $24,388 more than those with a high school diploma or its equivalent. People with a bachelor’s degree are also less likely to utilize government assistance programs.
The effects of obtaining a degree are also generational. Children of college graduates are much more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree themselves and have higher lifetime earnings.
For Turner, this isn’t just an attack on access to higher education, it’s an attack on reproductive rights. “One of the tenets of reproductive justice is the right of parents to raise their children in a safe and healthy environment,” she said. “The administration’s proposed cuts to college student child care programs hinder parents’ ability to do that. If parents don’t have access to quality, affordable child care, it limits their access to education and the workforce, which impacts their well-being, the well-being of their families and communities, and the overall economy.”
Even without these cuts, Turner said that CCAMPIS is currently critically underfunded. A congressional analysis in 2018 found that only 11,000 students received CCAMPIS grants, despite the fact that roughly 3.1 million students are raising children.
“Under the Biden administration, it was still underfunded. It has been for a very long time, and so it’s really important to fully fund the program so that it can actually meet the needs of student parents,” said Turner.
Not every student parent automatically qualifies for CCAMPIS. Universities can apply for CCAMPIS grant awards if they have a high percentage of federal Pell Grant recipients. Then lower-income students — defined by having or qualifying for a federal Pell Grant – can apply for CCAMPIS and receive on-campus child care through their schools.
In 2022, 399 schools were awarded CCAMPIS funding, according to a congressional report.
However, visibility is a major barrier to students entering the program. Katie Conte, who as a parenting student established the pilot program for Bergen Community College’s student-parent fellowship, said the program isn’t well advertised, even on campuses where it’s available. Conte went back to school when her kids were past preschool age but said she wouldn’t have waited had she known the program existed. “I would have been able to go to college and start a career where I was actually making money being able to support myself and my kids,” said Conte, who was widowed when her youngest son was 4, suddenly leaving her the only provider.
To justify ending the program, the Trump administration claimed that it was made redundant by other child care grants.
Turner noted that the administration was trying to claim that CCAMPIS was made duplicative by the Child Care Development Block Grant program, a federally funded block grant program that provides low-strings funding to states for child care subsidies for low-income families. Because it’s a block grant, states are able to add various eligibility requirements, including work requirements, that can make it complicated for parenting students to get access to it.
Without CCAMPIS, many students will have to drop out of school, warned Tanya Ang, executive director of Today’s Student Coalition.
“They won’t be able to finish a post-secondary credential, or they will never be able to start one,” said Ang. “Many of these students are living day to day, paycheck to paycheck.”
Being forced to drop out without a degree could set these students back even further financially.
“Broadly, parenting students have lower completion rates than their non-parenting peers, and the risk of pursuing education and then dropping out without a credential means somebody doesn’t have a credential, but they have student debt on top of it,” said Welton.
An analysis from the Center for American Progress found that almost half of student parents who borrowed a federal student loan defaulted within 12 years of enrolling. That’s twice the rate of default for borrowers without children.
Women and people of color will bear the brunt of the impact. An analysis from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that nearly three-quarters of parenting students are women, and the majority of undergraduate student parents are people of color.
Potential cuts to CCAMPIS are not the only current risk to students. Turner said that the proposed Trump budget would have a disastrous impact on lower-income college students, including parenting students. In addition to ending CCAMPIS, the proposed budget would eliminate $1.6 billion in spending on programs supporting low-income students and preparing them for college. Trump has also begun recollecting defaulted student loans.
Funding for CCAMPIS occurs during the annual appropriations process, which typically happens at the end of the year — so for now, the program is not imminently on the chopping block.
“Access to education is largely under assault,” said Turner. “If I hadn’t had things like the Pell Grant and student loans and things like that, then I wouldn’t have been able to go to college. So it’s really not just an access issue, it’s an equity issue.”
