AAUW Urges Action on Child Care, Women’s STEM Participation at Community Colleges

With Mother’s Day fast approaching, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) organization released a report Thursday to bring attention to the need for community colleges to facilitate campus-based child care services as well as to highlight the potential of community colleges for enabling women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

The report, “Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success” pays “special attention to student mothers and the importance of child care in enabling the educational success of women at community colleges,” said Dr. Catherine Hill, a report co-author and the AAUW director of research. The report recommends policies and practices aimed at helping women, particularly the more than 1 million student mothers, succeed in community colleges. It also focuses on the opportunities available in what have been nontraditional career fields for women, including those in STEM.

Joining Hill on Thursday during an audio news conference to discuss the report and its recommendations were her co-author and AAUW senior researcher Dr. Andresse St. Rose; Dr. Beverly Walker-Griffea, senior vice president for student services at Montgomery (Md.) College; Anne Hedgepeth, AAUW government relations manager; and LaKeisha Cook, a student at Montgomery College and single mother.

“Women are more than half of the 7.3 million community college students. And while we celebrate the accessibility that community colleges provide women we know that access alone is not enough,” St. Rose said.

“Nearly half of women entering community colleges do not earn a certificate, degree, or transfer to a four-year college long after they first enrolled. The low success rate of women at community colleges deserves our attention,” she said.

Focusing on the child care issue, St. Rose said that while the “more than one million mothers who attend community colleges are highly motivated to pursue their higher education to support their children and their families”, the lack of campus-based access to child care has been one of “the main reasons for dropping out of school.”