Dissertation
Campus characteristics and policy contexts linked to campus child care centers: an event history analysis
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2021
DOI: 10.17077/etd.006231
Abstract
Campus child care centers have often been credited for supporting the occupational success of faculty and staff with dependent children. These centers have also been hailed as essential supports for student-parents’ participation in higher education, integration into campus life, and academic success. In recognition of the value of campus child care centers to a marginalized student population, the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 authorized the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) Program to assist campuses in funding campus child care center services for low-income student-parents. Despite unprecedented growth in the number of student-parents enrolled in postsecondary education since CCAMPIS’s inception, the number of campus child care centers declined by approximately 25 percent from 1999 to 2014 (personal IPEDS analysis). After finding that availability of affordable and convenient child care was likely the major factor affecting college success outcomes of student-parents at CUNY, Wladis et al. (2018) called for further research to examine how federal funding for on-campus child care contributes to student-parent persistence and attainment outcomes. My purpose for this study was to illuminate possible factors contributing to the likelihood that campuses offered on-site child care during the period under study. To accomplish this purpose, I have examined correlational relationships between various organizational characteristics and policy contexts of campuses and the presence or absence of campus child care centers from 1999-2014. My guiding research question was: did campuses’ organizational characteristics and policy contexts predict the presence of campus child care center services available to student-parents?
I have constructed a dataset to allow for the analysis of a range of factors that may have influenced campuses’ decisions of whether to offer on-site child care. This new dataset combined data from a variety of sources, including from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program (CCAMPIS), the Office of Child Care’s Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) data, the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), membership records from the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions, the State Ideology Data developed by Berry et al. (1998) and updated by Berry et al. (2010), and the State of Preschool Yearbook data published by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).
I have analyzed this data utilizing two event history analysis (EHA) techniques: binary time-series-cross-section (BTSCS) data analysis and discrete-time analysis. EHA methods were ideal for answering my primary research question because they enabled me to analyze longitudinal panel data with time-varying explanatory variables.
My risk set consisted of Title IV-participating campuses within the U.S. between the 15-year-period from 1999, the first year that CCAMPIS grants were awarded, to 2014. The analyses were designed to test my proposed theory and to shed light upon campus decision-making practices surrounding offering or not offering on-site child care.
Variable clusters included in the models were designed to test the extent to which campus decisions concerning campus child care centers could be predicted by both organization-level and state policy-level factors. Variables were selected taking into account rational systems, natural systems, and open systems organizational theory perspectives. Organization-level factors included a campus’s demand for an on-site child care center, the resources available to a campus to support a center, and a campus’s organizational identity as embodied both by the campus’s institutional type and by additional individual, differentiating features. State policy-level factors included internal (intrastate) and interaction-based (interstate) policy determinants.
EHA analyses revealed numerous significant results. Overall, results supported the importance of rational systems, natural systems, and open systems-related explanatory variables both at the organization-level and at the state policy level. Empirical support confirmed the significance of early childhood education programs, urbanicity of campus locale, representation of part-time women students, representation of degrees and certificates awarded to women, representation of women among faculty, total student enrollment, tuition and fee revenues per student, CCAMPIS grants, representation of students receiving federal grants, institutional control, institutional sector, MSI, religious institution, open admission campus, representation of students of color, graduate student employee union, CCDF recipients per capita, state citizen ideology, state government ideology, campus child care representation in state, state public preschool quality rankings, and regional location in predicting campus choices surrounding whether to provide on-site child care to students’ children. CCAMPIS grant emerged as a particularly robust positive predictor.
More than one in five college students in the U.S. is also a parent, yet student-parents comprise an understudied population in the higher education and student affairs literature (Reichlin Cruse et al., 2019). This study presents a pioneering analysis of the seeming contradiction between the simultaneous increase in the number of student-parents enrolled in postsecondary education and decrease in campuses offering students vital child care support. At a theoretical level, the study’s findings contribute to our emerging understanding of the degree to which processes described by varying institutional theories, in addition to rational, structural processes, help us to understand factors related to whether campuses decide to provide on-site child care. Campus child care center closures have devastating implications for equitable participation in higher education among disadvantaged gendered, racial and ethnic, and socioeconomic student groups. It is therefore essential for higher education scholars as well as organizational and governmental policymakers to develop a more complete understanding of the purposes of campus child care centers, what makes campuses offer on-site child care, what makes campuses stop offering on-site child care and what makes campus child care centers resistant to closures, so that we may take proactive, targeted steps to ameliorate this burgeoning crisis.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Campus characteristics and policy contexts linked to campus child care centers: an event history analysis
- Creators
- Jessica K Ezell Sheets
- Contributors
- Cassie Barnhardt (Advisor)Frederick Boehmke (Committee Member)Knute Carter (Committee Member)Jodi Linley (Committee Member)Ernest Pascarella (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Educational Policy and Leadership Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2021
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.006231
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xix, 254 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2021 Jessica K. Ezell Sheets
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-250)
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Campus child care centers provide essential services to campus communities. They create opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to engage in the important work of higher education. In recent years, however, far too many on-site centers have closed. From 1999 to 2014, there was a 25 percent decrease in U.S. campuses providing on-site child care. At the same time, higher education experienced tremendous growth in its student-parent population. As of 2019, one in five college students was a parent. This disconnect between campus child care center closures and the simultaneous growth of student-parents is puzzling and disturbing.
This study explored this startling trend. I analyzed campus organizational characteristics and state policy contexts, testing their relationships to campuses’ child care provision choices. My analysis enabled me to draw conclusions about campus-level and state policy-level features and qualities associated with campuses’ choices to provide (or not provide) child care. I also examined the types of campuses and states that were starting, and stopping, to provide child care services to students’ children during this time period.
This study matters because it offers useful insights to campus leaders and state and national policymakers about the specific types of campuses we must invest in to reverse this unsettling campus child care trend. Equitable child care access matters. Lack of access to high-quality child care disproportionately harms women, students of color, and low-income students. By investing in campus child care, we invest in equitable student graduation outcomes and equitable career opportunities for campus faculty and staff.
- Academic Unit
- Educational Policy and Leadership Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984188477702771
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