# The PROSPECT Act: Making Child Care More Affordable for Student Parents

This bill tackles a real problem facing millions of families: the sky-high cost of child care, especially for babies and toddlers under age three. Right now, about 5.4 million college students have dependent children, but only about five percent of colleges actually provide child care on campus. This forces student parents to choose between paying for expensive child care, dropping out of school, or struggling to do both. The PROSPECT Act aims to fix this by giving federal grants to community colleges and minority-serving institutions to build and expand child care programs specifically for their students' babies and toddlers.

The bill would provide $9 billion over five years to help community colleges and minority-serving institutions create or expand infant and toddler child care on their campuses and in their communities. Schools could use these grants to build new child care centers, train more child care workers, or offer flexible care options that work with student schedules—including evenings, weekends, and breaks when regular child care is hard to find. The bill specifically targets community colleges and minority-serving institutions because research shows that student parents are more likely to attend these schools, and these institutions already lead in training child care providers, especially providers of color.

The bill also makes it easier for student parents to access federal financial aid by requiring schools to inform them about dependent care allowances they can claim. Additionally, it increases federal funding for the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant program, which helps low-income families pay for child care. The overall goal is straightforward: remove one of the biggest barriers keeping student parents from finishing their education by making quality, affordable child care available where they study.