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Tim Dunnuck |
Providing high quality child care on a university campus is not only family friendly, it's good business.
Research clearly shows that the provision of child care by employers improves employee recruitment and retention, reduces employee absenteeism and increases job productivity. Campus child care is particularly valuable to students. Student parents with children in campus child care are more likely to stay in school and graduate in fewer years, they have a higher graduation rate, and they have a higher grade-point average (GPA).
Child care has a long history on the Bloomington campus. In fact, the 1998-99 school year has seen several important milestones for IUB child care programs. Knee High Day Care Cooperative recently celebrated its 30th year. Hoosier Courts Cooperative Nursery School is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
In recent years, the Bloomington campus has been aggressive in improving and expanding its child-care services. The formation of the Campus Child Care Support office in 1996 has significantly improved the overall coordination and support of IUB child care and has, for the first time, provided parents with one contact for all campus child-care information. Through the IU Child Care Capital Investment initiative, all five IUB preschool programs will have undergone extensive facility renovations by the end of 1999, thus improving the facilities and adding more than 50 enrollment slots for children.
But there is still much work to be done. Affordability remains the most crucial issue for IUB child care. Because the system operates primarily on parent fees, IUB child care is not affordable for many IUB employees and students. The IUB Child Care Coalition, a child care advocacy group, has identified affordability as its top priority.
All of the IUB child-care programs are fully enrolled and many maintain lengthy waiting lists, indicating that availability also continues to be an issue. Infant and toddler care is particularly hard to find on campus. The expansion of current programs and the establishment of new programs are other priorities for the coalition.
Through the support of the campus and the hard work of the campus child care staff, we have high quality child care at IUB. We now need to make sure that these programs are more accessible to a larger IUB population. Campus child care not only benefits families, it benefits the entire university.
You can read more about campus child care at this Bloomington campus Web site:
http://www.indiana.edu/~hrm/child_care/CHILD.htm
(Editor's note: For information on campus day-care facilities on other campuses, click on the opening IU Web page and then on specific campuses. Then, follow the links. You may be interested also in a new initiative at IUB, the Student Parent Support Services, launched last month as a clearinghouse for student and community parent resources. See what's up at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~iuparent
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