“Her school counselor, Rita Guerra, insisted that she was college material,” first lady Michelle Obama recounted during a speech earlier this year.
Guerra helped Dominguez find medical care, complete her FAFSA and make up her AP exams after she gave birth. Dominguez ultimately graduated in the top 1 percent of her class and is currently finishing her senior year at the University of California, Riverside, where she is majoring in psychology.
But beyond encouragement for young mothers to pursue their college dreams, there’s something else that plays a critical role in making those dreams a reality: campus-based child care.
“UC Riverside has a day care on campus so my daughter was there while I went to class, studied for exams, or finished any school work,” Dominguez explained in an email to Diverse. “Once we were home, I could focus on my daughter and not worry about homework.”
Despite the growing number of college students with children, campus-based child care has been on the decline in recent years, according to a new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
The percentage of community colleges with child care on campus dropped from a high of 53 percent in the 2003-04 school year, to 46 percent in 2013, the report shows. And at public four-year institutions, the percentage of campuses with child care decreased from 54 to 51 percent from 2002 through 2013.
