How Colleges are Tackling the Growing Childcare Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated cracks in the fragile social safety net university and college employees rely on. The sudden absence of caregiving support caused by the pandemic was a tipping point.
This study shares advanced practices from colleges and universities that are making significant strides toward alleviating employees’ personal and professional needs around childcare. Learn how to maximize the reach and impact of your institution’s existing caregiving benefits, provide new offerings to relieve significant caregiving pain points, and keep your pulse on the caregiving supports employees need the most.
Why institutions must do more to support caregivers
The long shadow of the pandemic continues to disrupt personal and professional lives
Burnout, turnover, chronic workplace stress, and employees leaving the field—the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to impact higher education faculty and staff. Faculty morale remains concerningly low despite the interventions higher education leaders put in place during the pandemic, like stopping tenure clocks, revisiting promotion standards, and rebalancing workloads.
Despite a return to normal operations on most campuses, the current challenges higher education leaders face in hiring, developing, and retaining talent can feel nearly insurmountable. Data collected from faculty at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in spring 2022 revealed the majority of faculty were struggling.
86% of UNM’s respondents said they were unmotivated to work. Faculty reported having more university service obligations including tutoring and mentoring responsibilities since the onset of COVID-19. Depression, anxiety, mental strain, and other health effects were also reported. Nearly half of faculty respondents had considered leaving the university.
In most states, childcare is not affordable (by a long shot)
Once childcare is arranged, the stress of finding care converts to the stress of paying for care. Over the last 40 years, childcare costs increased by 2,000% in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines affordable childcare as no more than seven percent of a family’s income. Comparing state-by-state staff and faculty salary data to the average cost of childcare, we find that in every state childcare is unaffordable for nearly all single-income faculty and staff.
7 childcare pain points and how to alleviate them
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Finding flexible childcare
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Securing backup care when schools are closed
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Paying for caregiving
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Dealing with hidden costs
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Responding to emergencies
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Making time to participate in important moments
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Navigating caregiving benefits help
How to raise awareness and drive usage of current caregiving supports
While higher education as a sector must do more to support caregivers of young children, many institutions already have robust caregiving policies and programs, but do a poor job of communicating them to employees. However, relying on traditional communication channels (e.g., email and newsletters), providing benefits information on the HR website that is only relevant to new parents, and expecting information gatekeepers like department chairs and deans to connect employees to resources causes caregiving benefits to be underutilized at many colleges and universities.
To help you get the most out of what your institution already offers, this section shares innovative practices that amplify the voice and reach of HR to heighten employees’ awareness of institutional caregiving supports.
Regularly assess caregiving needs to identify and fill benefit gaps
In our review of caregiving offerings across higher education institution types and sizes, we found many HR offices are overly focused on pushing out information about benefits and lack insight into the wellness wants and needs of employees across units.
Institutions that appear to provide more holistic benefits packages find ways to keep a finger on the pulse of evolving employee childcare needs by maintaining open lines of communication with employees. Through informal and formal networks, HR units at these institutions gather employee input and adjust offerings to ensure that policies and programs help reduce current and future caregiving demands.
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