By Dan Canon
There are 150,000 single parents in Kentucky, and not a lot of them are in college. That’s because it’s notoriously difficult to raise a child and go to college, and the obstacles are so considerable that most prospective student-parents don’t even try.
The annual income for the average college-age female (19-21) in Kentucky is just under $11,000. The average cost in Kentucky for private child care is just over $4,300 a year.
In short, even if grant money will pay the average Kentucky mom’s tuition, she’ll have to shell out a third of her income to attend classes in the first place.
The lack of affordable, on-campus child care for students and staff is an embarrassment. U of L is virtually the only university in the state that doesn’t offer some child care opportunity. NKU, WKU and EKU all have it, as does the University of Kentucky. While students aren’t exactly leaving U of L en masse to go to Indiana University-Southeast, I’d be willing to bet that some of them would do just that if they knew about the well-maintained, affordable child care center located on the IUS campus.
Although hundreds of thousands of dollars for a child care program may seem like quite a lot of money, it pales in comparison to the university’s recent expenditures. A $10.5 million natatorium, the $14.2 million library expansion and the $41.4 million Belknap Research Building have all recently come to campus, and make even a million look like a drop in the bucket.
The fact of the matter is that a university is a business, and businesses invest money in programs that will make money. If university bureaucrats raise $4 million in pledges for a proposed baseball stadium but ignore the preposterous dearth of child care on campus, this is only because they believe that one is profitable and the other is welfare.
But U of L officials have missed the boat. Despite recent stabs at attracting more non-resident students for the foreseeable future, U of L will likely be composed primarily of Louisvillians. The policy choices of the University eventually manifest themselves in the quality of the workforce in the city at large.
The failed “Little Cardinals” program — a previous attempt at child care by the University — was insufficiently advertised and poorly executed. University-sponsored child care can work at U of L, but it will require more diligence and foresight than has been previously displayed.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first column of its kind. The Cardinal has been calling for campus child care for years now, but ultimately, your tuition dollars speak louder than us.
If you’re a single parent — or if you even give a damn about facilitating educational opportunities for single parents — write a letter to the SGA, to President Ramsey, to Senator McConnell, or to anyone who will listen. Tell them that offering child care isn’t just charity, it’s good business.
Dan Canon is a student at the University of Louisville, Brandeis School of Law and a columnist for The Louisville Cardinal. E-mail him at: opinion@louisvillecardinal.com
