Blazing a Trail: Investing in the Next Generations of Campus Families

Why We Exist

Every year, thousands of families rely on campus children's centers: student parents balancing lectures with pickup times, faculty and staff who need consistent care to stay in their jobs, and community families who trust these centers for high-quality care. For all of them, a campus children's center can be the difference between stability and struggle.

These centers carry a dual mission that sets them apart from typical child care. They are living laboratories, often among the first places where the latest research in child development and early education gets put into practice. Studies on lab school programs show this dual mission of teaching and research measurably strengthens the quality of care children receive. Centers also double as training grounds for the next generation of early childhood educators, giving college students hands-on experience under the guidance of credentialed staff.

The National Coalition for Campus Children's Centers is a coalition of members supporting one another and this shared mission: balancing the need for accessible childcare with a commitment to high-quality early childhood education and ongoing research. We exist because no single center should have to carry that balance alone.

Why Now

More than one in five college students today is a parent, and campus centers are just as vital to the faculty and staff who keep our institutions running. Yet the number of campus-based childcare centers has been shrinking for over a decade. Every center that closes doesn't just remove childcare. It removes a pathway to graduation, a workplace benefit that retains talented staff, and a training and research site that has no easy substitute.

How Funding Helps Us Blaze the Trail

Blazing a Trail is our campaign to protect, strengthen, and grow campus children's centers nationwide. Your support helps us:

Sustain centers at risk of closing, through emergency grants and operational support
Launch new centers on campuses with no childcare infrastructure at all
Strengthen centers' role as research and training hubs, keeping them connected to the latest early childhood research and preparing the next generation of educators
Equip our member centers with education and awareness resources, including toolkits, best practices, and shared knowledge that help directors make the case for their programs on their own campuses
Build a national data hub, giving members the evidence they need to demonstrate their center's impact locally, for students, staff, faculty, and community families alike

Every dollar keeps a light on in a classroom and keeps a center standing at the intersection of care, quality, and research.

Join us. Help us light the way for the families and children who are counting on it.

Blazing a Trail

Investing in the Next Generation of Campus Families