What do child care and college tuition have in common? They’re both very expensive.
Although college students no longer consider themselves children, they are often still being helped by their parents in many ways. For example, some parents help their children pay their college tuition, while some students work to pay their way through college.
It is a weird time for people in their late teens or early-to-mid 20s. We are adults, yet we don’t have as many responsibilities yet.
Whether parents pay entirely or students contribute, the cost of going to college is expensive. For students who have a job, they most likely go to class and go to work after or vice versa.
The annual costs of some basic things people need to pay for such as housing in college and college tuition are expensive. The annual cost of off-campus housing according to the Economic Policy Institute is $10,709. In addition to that, college tuition is $12,607 annually.
In comparison, when paying for child care, people working minimum-wage jobs would have to work full time to afford it. They would have to work for 37 weeks, or from January to September, to be able to pay for care for one infant.
According to the EPI, the average cost of infant care is $10,640, which is $887 per month.
In the future a lot of us will possibly have kids. Right now most of us are focused on the cost of college, not raising a child. Interestingly, when comparing the two, the cost to care for an infant in Pennsylvania is just slightly less than in-state tuition for 4-year public college.
Because of the high cost of child care, there are many families who cannot afford it. The US Department of Health and Human Services states that only 27.5 percent of families in Pennsylvania can afford infant care. The more children a family has, the more difficult it becomes. The EPI states that child care for an infant and a 4-year old, for example, costs more than paying rent in 18 metropolitan and rural areas in Pennsylvania.
Child care is more difficult than college tuition to afford because there is limited help in paying for child care. For college tuition, there is financial aid, loans, scholarships and other ways to help college students to afford their education. There are far fewer ways for parents to get assistance in funding child care.
This is a concern because, according to the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, getting an education early on is important because of the large amount of brain development and learning that happens during these years. If more money was put toward helping infants and toddlers receive quality child care, it would help the children in the long run.
Learning more at a younger age tends to raise grades later in life. A study by Sean F. Reardon and Ximena A. Portilla has shown that higher income families that received quality child care have achieved higher test scores compared to those from lower income families.
A college education is important for many to succeed in life. And it is great that a structure was put in place to provide assistance to those who can’t afford to pay their tuition; however if a child does not receive quality child care early on, they are at risk of not doing as well later on.
The foundation of a good college education starts with quality child care. They both need to be affordable.
