Friday, December 30, 2016

Universities cut services for a big group of their students: those over 25 - Matt Krupnick, Hechinger Report

Forty percent of U.S. university and college undergraduate and graduate students are, like Nalesnik, 25 and older, according to U.S. Education Department data. Even among undergraduates alone, the figure is higher than 30 percent. The number who are parents — among both undergraduate and graduate students — has increased from 3.2 million to 4.8 million since 1995, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports. But colleges and universities are largely not set up to deal with them. Instead, as budgets tighten, they’re shedding services such as day care. The proportion of four-year universities with day care centers — most of which also accept university employees’ children — is down from 55 percent to 49 percent since 2002, and the proportion of community colleges, from 53 percent to 44 percent, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. http://hechingerreport.org/universities-cut-services-big-group-students-25/