Tag: Crisis

  • Lessons From the Military for Solving North Carolina’s Child Care Crisis – The 74

    Lessons From the Military for Solving North Carolina’s Child Care Crisis – The 74


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    The U.S. military faced a new threat to national security toward the end of the 20th century. This threat affected the recruitment and retention of our nation’s armed forces, reducing their capacity to defend the denizens of the United States and our interests overseas. 

    The threat wasn’t the Cold War; it wasn’t tension in the Middle East; and it wasn’t international or domestic terrorism.

    The threat was a lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality child care.

    The makeup of the armed forces changed following the shift from a national draft to an all-volunteer military after the war in Vietnam. More service members had families in the late 1970s and 1980s — many of them with young children. And many more of those families included two working parents than in previous decades.

    The child care crisis faced by the military 40 to 50 years ago was similar to the one civilians face today. More families with working parents increased the demand for child care. Thousands of children languished on waitlists, forcing families to consider forms of supervision that lacked consistent standards for safety, teacher training, student/teacher ratios, and curricula. Teachers were poorly compensated, and turnover was high.

    Back then, as now, parents couldn’t afford the fees necessary to cover the costs of addressing these challenges, and limited public investment wasn’t enough to fill the gap.

    Graphic by Lanie Sorrow

    Because the child care crisis was seen as a threat to the collective future of Americans, elected officials took action. Congress passed the Military Child Care Act of 1989, which put a priority on affordability, accessibility, and quality in child care for service members.

    With the end of child care stabilization efforts that were undertaken during the pandemic, North Carolinians now face a similar threat to our own collective future. The military’s approach offers lessons for where we can go from here, in our communities and across our state.

    An experiment in universal child care

    The Military Child Care Act wasn’t the first time the military had taken the lead on child care. During World War II, women entered the workforce in massive numbers, filling the roles of men who were drafted to serve in the military. This raised the question of who would care for children when both parents were working outside the home to defend American interests.

    Congress responded with the Lanham Act of 1940, creating a nationwide, universal child care system to support working families with children through age 12. Federal grants were issued to communities that demonstrated their need for child care related to parents working in the defense industry.

    The program distributed $1.4 billion (in 2025 dollars) between 1943 and 1946 to more than 600 communities in 47 states. The grants could be used to build and maintain child care facilities, train and compensate teachers, and provide meals to students.

    In his 2017 analysis of the Lanham Act’s outcomes for mothers and children, Chris M. Herbst, of Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs, found that “the Lanham Act increased maternal employment several years after the program was dismantled.”

    An image of Rosie the Riveter from a 1943 issue of the magazine Hygeia (published by the American Medical Association) demonstrating the need for child care.

    Herbst also found that “children exposed to the program were more likely to be employed, to have higher earnings, and to be less likely to receive cash assistance as adults.”

    One lesson Herbst took from his research was that the Lanham Act was successful because of the broad support it received from parents, advocates for education and women, and employers. He noted: “Each group was committed to its success because something larger was at stake.”

    Today’s military-operated child care model

    While the Lanham Act was a short-lived national experiment that hasn’t received much study, the military’s child care program since adoption of the Military Child Care Act of 1989 has become a widely acclaimed model for publicly subsidized early care and learning, serving about 200,000 children each year.

    Four categories of child care are available through military-operated child care programs: Child Development Centers (CDCs), Family Child Care (FCC), 24/7 Centers, and School Aged Care (SAC). The official military child care website describes each program type:

    • Child Development Centers (CDCs) — CDCs provide child care services for infants, pretoddlers, toddlers, and preschoolers. They operate Monday through Friday during standard work hours, and depending on the location offer full-day, part-day, and hourly care.
    • Family Child Care (FCC) —  Family child care is provided by qualified child care professionals in their homes. Designed for infants through school agers, each FCC provider determines what care they offer, which may include full-day, part-day, school year, summer camp, 24/7, and extended care. 
    • 24/7 Centers — 24/7 Centers provide child care for infants through school age children in a home-like setting during both traditional and non-traditional hours on a regular basis. The program is designed to support watch standers or shift workers who work rotating or non-traditional schedules (i.e., evenings, overnights, and weekends). 
    • School Aged Care (SAC) — School age care is facility-based care for children from the start of kindergarten through the end of the summer after seventh grade. This program type operates Monday through Friday during standard work hours. SAC programs provide both School Year Care and Summer Camp.

    Requirements for military-operated child care programs are typically more stringent than state requirements. For one thing, they must be accredited by one of the following: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (NECPA), the Council on Accreditation (COA), or the National Accreditation Commission (NAC).

    For context, the requirements for licensed child care in North Carolina are relatively stringent compared with other states, but still fall below the requirements for NAEYC accreditation, which is widely recognized as the national standard. Only 110 programs in our state are NAEYC-accredited — many of which are Head Start or military-operated programs — out of about 5,300 total state-licensed programs.

    Military-operated child care programs offer families hourly, part-day, full-day, extended, or overnight care, plus afterschool and summer programs.

    Fees are on a sliding scale based on income, ranging from $45 to $224 per week.

    The maximum rate is on par with the national average for civilian child care in 2023, meaning that almost every family using military-operated child care programs is paying less than the national average for typically higher-quality early care and learning.

    The Department of Defense budgeted about $1.8 billion for child care in 2024 — about 0.2% of its $841.4 billion total budget.

    Military child care in North Carolina

    In addition to military-operated child care programs, service members may be eligible for Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN), a fee assistance program for families who can’t access military-operated child care. MCCYN pays a portion of the cost of enrolling children in early care and learning programs that meet the military’s high-quality standards in their community.

    North Carolina is one of 19 locations where military families may be eligible for MCCYN-PLUS, which expands the MCCYN program to child care programs that participate in state or local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in places where nationally accredited care is not available.

    Both programs rely on the availability of high-quality child care in civilian communities. That’s a challenge in North Carolina, which was already facing a child care shortage before the pandemic. Our state has lost almost 6% of licensed child care programs since February 2020, with more expected to close because stabilization grants have ended.

    According to the NC Military Affairs Commission, there are 12 military bases and more than 130,000 active-duty military members in North Carolina, giving us the fourth-largest active-duty military population in the nation.

    In January 2025, Fayetteville Technical Community College hosted the state’s first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit, organized by the North Carolina Department of Military and Veteran Affairs (NCDMVA) to discuss the problem that military communities are having with access to community-based child care.

    The first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit in January 2025.( Katie Dukes/EdNC)

    The summit culminated in a screening of Take Care, a documentary about North Carolina’s child care crisis produced by the state Department of Health and Human Services and featuring EdNC’s early childhood reporter, Liz Bell.

    Along similar lines, at the North Carolina Defense Summit in April 2025, the theme was “Spouse Resilience,” and the summit included a panel and presentation on child care.

    Higher compensation for higher quality

    The issues of spouse resilience and child care are inextricably linked for Angie Mullennix, who works for The Honor Foundation at Fort Bragg, helping members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) transition to careers in the private sector after their military service.

    Mullennix served in the U.S. Army for four years after high school and has previously worked for the Department of Public Instruction as the state military liaison. Her husband recently retired from the SOF himself. They have two teenage children.

    “If you look at the number of military spouses in North Carolina who have degrees and credentials and could be in the workforce, from nurses to lawyers, lots of them are staying at home,” Mullennix said.

    “A big reason why about 40% of (military) spouses do not work is because of child care not being available to them,” Mullennix said, noting that lack of child care is also a barrier to workforce participation among the civilian population.

    When Mullennix’s children were under the age of 5, she used hourly child care on base, which was available at no cost when her husband was away on assignment.

    “You ask any parent in the world, I don’t care who they are, there’s nothing more important than their child’s safety — then their education,” Mullennix said. “And yet, the two things we think are the most important, we put (their providers) at the lowest pay and ask them to do quality care.”

    That’s what sets military child care apart from civilian early care and learning for Mullennix: high quality standards and higher pay for early childhood educators, including benefits. She sees lessons in this for North Carolina.

    “You gotta pay them to keep them, there’s no secret behind that,” Mullennix said. “If you pay them high, you can also set the standards really high.”

    And because workforce participation — and military readiness — is directly tied to the accessibility and affordability of high-quality child care, not investing in it threatens our collective future.

    “North Carolina, or any state that doesn’t offer child care, is shooting itself in the foot,” Mullennix said.

    Lessons from military child care

    Policymakers at every level who are seeking to end the child care crisis can learn much from the military child care model. One report on the topic offers these lessons:

    1. Do not be daunted by the task. It is possible to take a woefully inadequate child care system and dramatically improve it.
    2. Recognize and acknowledge the seriousness of the child care problem and the consequences of inaction. 
    3. Improve quality by establishing and enforcing comprehensive standards, assisting providers in becoming accredited, and enhancing provider compensation and training. 
    4. Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies. 
    5. Expand the availability of all kinds of care by continually assessing unmet need and taking concrete action steps to address it. 
    6. Commit the resources necessary to get the job done. 

    That report was published 25 years ago by the National Women’s Law Center, but its lessons hold up today. Similar lessons have been highlighted in more recent articles published by The New York Times, The 74 Million, and New America, along with the final report published by Mission: Readiness before the Council for a Strong America dissolved last year.

    EdNC ran these lessons by Susan Gale Perry, CEO of Child Care Aware of America, and Linda Smith, director of policy for the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska — and one of the primary architects of the military child care system.

    Both agreed these are the right takeaways for policymakers across North Carolina to consider.

    Lesson 1: Do not be daunted by the task

    Gale Perry said the top lesson for her is: “Start where you are, know that change is possible, and have a goal post in mind.”

    She pointed out that the military’s goal wasn’t a fully publicly funded child care system. It was a system that acknowledged Americans’ values around the role of parents in raising young children — and paying for their care and education. But also that their employers and the government “have a role in offsetting that cost, so that we can ensure that child care is quality, and it is stable, and that the families can actually afford it.”

    Smith said there was no “silver bullet” when she and her colleagues were tasked with solving the military’s child care crisis in the 1990s — and there isn’t one for the civilian child care crisis today.

    We had to redo the standards, we had to look at the workforce, we had to look at the health and safety issues, we had to look at the fees and how we could bring those fees down. We had to look at the infrastructure of all of it. We’ve got to start thinking about the interconnectedness of all of these things if we’re going to be successful in this country.

    Smith said people think that because she worked for the secretary of defense, “I could just tell all the bases what to do, and that would magically happen, which is so not true. It wasn’t just like we could give an order and everybody jumped.”

    She said you just have to start where you are, and move up.

    Lesson 2: Acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and the consequences of inaction

    “The military understood very early the link between people getting to work and child care,” Smith said.

    As the military shifted away from relying on conscription and became a more welcoming workplace for women, the need for child care became evident. Smith described working on a base where children were routinely left in cars when their parents were unexpectedly called into work.

    “So (military leaders) really got the connection to their guys going to work very quickly, and I think that we still haven’t all understood that in this country,” Smith said, though she notes businesses have started making that connection since the pandemic.

    “The other thing the military understood was that a pilot is every bit as important as the mechanic who works on the plane, and so they invest in all of their people,” Smith said.

    She and her team had to design a program that worked for everyone, or it wouldn’t work for anyone.

    Lesson 3: Improve quality

    Smith said quality was of critical importance when she was designing the military’s child care system in the 1990s, especially after child abuse and neglect scandals that came to light in the 1980s.

    She and her team studied the child care standards of all 50 states and created a set of military standards that fell squarely in the middle. Then they set about training the 22,000 early childhood educators they already had — most of whom were military spouses — to meet those standards.

    That was a six-month training program. Then there was an 18-month training to get them to move beyond those standards toward national accreditation. They hired highly qualified trainers to work with educators at each site.

    “And if you didn’t do it, guess what? You’re fired!” Smith said.

    There was an incentive to participate in the training, beyond keeping their jobs — higher compensation.

    “Maybe some were grumpy about it, but we didn’t have to fire people,” Smith said.

    North Carolina already has some tools in place to help educators advance their education and improve their compensation, specifically through the WAGE$ and TEACH programs — both of which were highlighted in the report that identified these lessons.

    “(The military) realized they had to get serious about quality and quality standards. And I would say that’s a lesson for us now, particularly in a climate that is deregulatory,” Gale Perry said. “And while I’m for sensible regulatory reform, I think we have to be really thoughtful about not wanting stacks of child deaths in child care sitting on a desk waiting to be investigated.”

    Lesson 4: Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies

    Smith said that while designing the military’s child care program, she and her team figured out that there was no way parents could afford the actual cost of high-quality child care. So they set up a subsidized system that would provide a 50% match — on average — to parents’ fees, paid directly to child care programs.

    “We had to, on average, match parent fees dollar-for-dollar, with the higher-income people paying more and the lower-income paying less,” Smith said. “So a major, for example, would pay two-thirds of the cost, and a private would pay one-third, but the average was 50/50.”

    Smith pointed out that we’re already subsidizing child care in ways that are hidden — through the public benefits and social programs that early childhood educators often rely on because of low compensation, and through lack of workforce participation.

    Lesson 5: Expand the availability of all kinds of care

    Gale Perry said the military’s model really stands out to her for its ability to assess unmet needs and take action to improve.

    “In the early 2000s when there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a lot of deployments of National Guard and Reserve who did not live on post and did not have access to on-post child care,” Gale Perry said. “That is really when the military got in the business of thinking about, how do we help build capacity and make child care accessible for military families off post?”

    That’s when the MCCYN came about, subsidizing high-quality early care and learning in a broader array of settings in the communities where service members live.

    Smith said that the Military Child Care Act was originally targeted toward child care centers, but she recalls briefing the assistant secretary of defense on the potential effects of that strategy when they were designing the system:

    I remember saying we need to apply all of this to family child care, to school-aged care, to part-day preschools, because if we don’t, all the parents are going to have a demand on these centers that we can’t meet, right? Because if you lower the cost in the centers and you improve the quality, why would somebody go to another place when they get it cheaper and better over here?

    She made the case for educators in every setting getting the same access to training and the same level of compensation, because that’s what would work best for everyone.

    “Everything applies to everybody,” Smith said. “And I think that was one of the smartest policy decisions we made.”

    Lesson 6: Commit the resources necessary to get the job done

    “There was this perception that we just had a lot of money and we threw it at” child care, Smith said. But that wasn’t the case.

    “When they passed the Military Child Care Act, it didn’t come with an appropriation,” Gale Perry said. “So they had to fight equally hard for the funding, and a lot of the funding actually ended up coming from local base commanders making the decision to invest in child care.”

    Now the military submits a budget request to Congress each year, and depends on those appropriations.

    For state and local policymakers seeking to solve the civilian child care crisis without public investment, the woman credited with solving the military’s own child care crisis 35 years ago has a message.

    “It’s gonna cost. There’s no way it doesn’t cost,” Smith said.

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.



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  • NSW inquiry into ‘university crisis’ – Campus Review

    NSW inquiry into ‘university crisis’ – Campus Review

    The NSW Upper House on Monday referred a Parliamentary inquiry into its universities to investigate and report on the “crisis” in the sector.

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  • Higher Education Leadership in Times of Crisis – Edu Alliance Journal

    Higher Education Leadership in Times of Crisis – Edu Alliance Journal

    First in Leadership Series by Barry Ryan, PhD, JD August 11, 2025

    It is hard to think of a time when higher education was swimming in a pool filled with a greater number of shark-like threats than at present.

    Some of these were predictable (in hindsight), some not so much. Let’s set aside blame, however, on either an institutional level or on a more global basis. The vital thing now is for genuine leaders to help chart courses that will lead higher education, not just to mere survival, but to new and meaningful purposes that will benefit this generation and the next.

    When situations are “normal,” we may be tempted to imagine that we need leadership that can keep the legacy intact, turn the crank, not rock the boat. But normal no longer exists, does it?

    I remember a senior university leader, who admonished me, as I began a new presidency: “everything’s going great—just don’t mess it up” (using slightly more colorful language). One year later, seismic changes in higher ed created an unexpected crisis and necessitated major changes in the institution. Almost everything that had contributed to its prior success turned, overnight, into a liability.

    There is, of course, more than one crisis in which higher ed is being buffeted. The sheer number of colleges and universities that have ceased to exist at all, or have been merged to various extents with others, or are currently teetering on the brink, appears in news stories almost every day. The root causes are legion and often woven together: financial shortfalls, a shrinking number of students, reductions in state and federal support, the disappearance of many international students, families, and prospective students increasingly unable to justify the cost of a degree, the “value” of which is seriously questioned. The list goes on.

    Of the three large “types” of higher education in the United States—public (state) colleges and universities, private not-for-profit colleges and universities, and for-profit entities—the vast majority are struggling in meaningful ways.

    If you find yourself in a leadership role in this age of crisis, what are some key things you can do to keep becoming a better leader and more effectively serve your institution and your colleagues? Here are three suggestions that you may find helpful.

    First, don’t panic.

    And even if you do feel panic welling up inside you, do your best to keep it from becoming obvious. Phil Slott, who was involved in the Dry Idea marketing campaign in the 1980s, seems to have coined a relevant phrase: “Never let them see you sweat.” It just stresses you out more and does little to inspire confidence in those who are looking to you for leadership.

    Once you’ve steadied yourself, the next critical realization is that leadership in crisis cannot be solitary work.

    Second, remember every day, you can’t do this alone.

    A 19th-century lawyer by the name of Abe Lincoln is credited with the adage: “A person who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.” That rings true for any leader who tries to do everything and assumes they have sufficient knowledge (or wisdom or experience or insight) to solve every problem on their own. No one does—no matter how experienced.

    So where do you turn for help? The answer is two-fold: internally and externally. You need to draw on both circles and find confidential, experienced, and reliable counsel.

    Choose very carefully with whom you share the issues internally. Depending on the nature of the problem you’re trying to address, success might well be thwarted if there is a lapse of absolute confidentiality. At the starting point of the process, you need to be able to rely on one other person, or perhaps a very small circle, with which you will be able to expand bit by bit as the timeline moves along.

    There are difficult audiences and stakeholders in the life of an academic institution, and ultimately, all must be included in the process of working through a crisis. The sequencing of sharing information and inviting input, though, must be very carefully structured. If you’re a president, oftentimes the first person you seek is a senior member of the administration—a provost, vice president, or someone in a similar position. At times, it could be the chair of the board or a wise and thoughtful alum. But whoever the person(s) may be, the timing of sharing the situation and seeking input for solutions is everything.

    It’s very important not to neglect external assistance as well. It is all but impossible to generate a sufficient perspective on a crisis from only one (your) vantage point, or even from that of your small, trustworthy group. You’re very likely not the first institution to face these problems, and consulting with trusted external leaders can provide not only perspective but also ideas you may not have thought of on your own.

    Some of these leaders may be in academic institutions, but not necessarily. It is always helpful to have relationships with leaders in other professional fields as well, who may be particularly helpful in providing fresh perspectives and ideas. For example, in my own experience, I’ve found such people in leadership of non-profit organizations or boards, key corporate positions, government at various levels, and experienced friends with whom I served long ago, and could provide input on both my institution’s situation and also my own strengths and weaknesses. In addition, external folks don’t have the same emotional investment as someone internal, so the chances of a more neutral observation point are increased significantly.

    There is a temptation—and often a prudent one—to seek external input from lawyers. There are, of course, a fair number of attorneys and firms with expertise in higher education, which can be a plus. Higher education is a very specialized field, and, frankly, most lawyers have a huge knowledge deficit in terms of the operational realities of a college or university. Their tendency is to think, “Well, I know higher ed—after all, I went to college and law school” (or maybe even taught a course or two). Beware the well-intentioned lawyer who does not have directly relevant practice experience.

    This, of course, does not at all preclude seeking competent legal advice for certain aspects of the problems you may be facing. For example, most institutions have or will need counsel in employment matters. Even if not the center of your challenge, these issues will likely arise as part of the need for a solution to your challenges. If it appears you will have to make difficult financial decisions that might impact faculty or staff, you should seek excellent employment counsel much sooner rather than later. With students, Title IX requirements, for example, may dictate the need for specialized counsel, as might certain types of accreditation issues.

    Third, leadership is not “one size fits all.”

    Every leader has different abilities and personalities. Even though many institutions experience similar types of crises, the circumstances of each call for a bespoke solution.

    However, some very important leadership characteristics can increase the probability of success in these situations. In part two, we’ll examine these and how to cultivate them.

    Dr. Barry Ryan invested the first half of his career in higher education in teaching and the second half in administration. During that same timeframe, he pursued a parallel career in law and legal education. He​ served as the Supreme Court Fellow in the chambers of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and is a​ member of numerous federal and state bars. He has been appointed as the president of five universities and provost and chief of staff at three others. Among the institutions he served have been state, private non-profit, and private for-profit universities. Included in his academic experience were two terms as a Commissioner of the regional accreditor WASC​ (WSCUC).

    He has been appointed as the president of five universities and provost and chief of staff at three others. Among the institutions he served have been state, private non-profit, and private for-profit universities. Included in his academic experience were two terms as a Commissioner of the regional accreditor WASC​ (WSCUC). Dr. Ryan has led institutions through mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations that have preserved academic​ quality, expanded access, and strengthened long-term viability. His leadership has been marked by​ transparency, shared governance, and a commitment to stakeholder engagement at every stage of these processes.

    He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, his J.D. from the University of​ California, Berkeley, and his Dipl.GB in international business from the University of Oxford.

    Edu Alliance Journal provides expert commentary and practical insights on U.S. and international higher education, focusing on innovation, policy, and institutional growth. Published by Edu Alliance, a consulting firm with offices in the United States and the United Arab Emirates, the Journal reflects the organization’s mission to help colleges, universities, and educational organizations achieve sustainable success through strategic partnerships, market intelligence, and program development.

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  • Northwestern University Announces Major Staff Cuts Amid Federal Funding Crisis

    Northwestern University Announces Major Staff Cuts Amid Federal Funding Crisis

    Northwestern University is moving forward with plans to eliminate more than 400 staff positions as it confronts significant financial challenges stemming from a $790 million federal funding freeze implemented by the Trump administration, according to multiple sources familiar with internal discussions.

    The cuts will affect staff across multiple schools within the university system, including the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the McCormick School of Engineering. Administrators have begun notifying affected departments of the impending workforce reductions.

    In a university-wide communication released earlier this week, Northwestern leadership confirmed the elimination of approximately 425 positions throughout the institution. Half of these positions are currently vacant, while the remainder will result in actual job losses. The reductions are expected to decrease the university’s staff-related budget by roughly 5 percent.

    The administration characterized the decision as necessary to address what they termed a “significant budget gap” that cannot be resolved without reducing personnel expenses, which represent 56 percent of Northwestern’s total annual operating costs.

    Prior to implementing the staff reductions, university leadership directed schools and administrative units to approach the cuts strategically, with instructions to “think strategically about how to minimize the impacts to their units, our workforce, students, and the University.”

     

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  • Intl students not behind rent crisis: RBA – Campus Review

    Intl students not behind rent crisis: RBA – Campus Review

    A Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) analysis has found the post-pandemic international student boom only marginally drove up the price of rent and inflation.

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  • Welcome to Mississippi Child Care Crisis – The 74

    Welcome to Mississippi Child Care Crisis – The 74


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    Child care worries have been made worse this summer by federal cuts and depleting pandemic funds, and they aren’t expected to ease by the first day of school. While their kids might have gotten a rest, parents reported longer commutes and newfound stress.

    A dozen parents from across the state told Mississippi Today about summer child care plans for their toddlers and elementary school-aged children. They shared a mix of anxiety about finding care and frustration with existing options.

    Parents have had more reasons to be anxious about those options this summer than in previous ones. A loss of federally funded summer programming for youth, added fees for day care tuition and the loss of vouchers to subsidize tuition costs have changed the landscape of child care.

    Shequite Johnson poses with newborn Noah on a work trip in Jackson, Miss., on Feb. 12, 2025. (Shequite Johnson)

    For Shequite Johnson, a professor at Mississippi Valley State University, it has meant driving 45 minutes in the opposite direction of her job for day care.

    “I’ve had to leave my 13-year-old with my 4-year-old,” she said. “And you’re put in a situation where you have to make these decisions. Some are even leaving their babies at home by themselves for five hours and checking on them during lunch hour.”

    She had to pull her 4-year-old boy from a day care in her hometown because of excessive fees. She was charged a $20 late fee at pickup, a $100 registration fee for each of her two boys, and a $150 supplies fee that was announced in June on top of the $135 weekly fee.

    The Mississippi Department of Human Services recently announced a cutback on vouchers that subsidize child care costs. Without Johnson’s child care voucher, her nearby options were limited to a city-run program in an unsafe neighborhood and three programs in aging facilities.

    Delta Health Alliance runs free and reduced summer programming for elementary-aged children. But Johnson makes more than the income cut-off.

    “It’s a crisis right now in Mississippi,” said Carol Burnett, executive director of Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “The lack of affordable child care prevents employers from keeping their workforce. And yet the state of Mississippi wants people to go back to work.”

    “Parents are having to make choices. And none of them are good,” she added.

    The Child Care Initiative operates a program that connects single moms with higher-paying jobs and covers the costs of child care during the transition. The organization is also advocating for the Mississippi Department of Human Services to spend some of the $156 million in unspent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families on Mississippi’s Child Care Payment Program.

    The Child Care Development Fund, which nationally supports these voucher state programs, relied on pandemic-era funding that ran out in September. The Department of Human Services asked the Legislature for $40 million to continue serving the same number of families – but received $15 million.

    In April, the department put a hold on renewals for child care vouchers except for deployed military parents, parents who are TANF recipients, foster children guardians, teen parents, parents of special needs children and homeless parents. As a result, 9,000 parents lost child care assistance.

    The department will keep the hold until the number of enrollees drops to 27,000 or its budget goes below $12 million in monthly costs. As of Friday, it had no further update but said it will have an announcement in the next couple of weeks.

    Using TANF funds unspent from past years regardless of whether they were allocated for child care assistance is prohibited, according to federal guidance. However, the TANF state office can use the leftover funds to form a direct payment program. Ohio and Texas enacted this policy.

    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regional manager Eric Blanchette shared this idea with Mississippi Department of Human Services Early Childhood Director Chad Allgood, according to an email obtained as part of a records request filed by Mississippi Today into communication regarding TANF funds. As of Friday, there were no plans to enact a similar policy in Mississippi.

    A second rent

    Monica Ford pays nearly $1,600 in monthly child care costs for three kids. She works as a Shipt delivery driver in addition to her day job as a Magnolia Guaranty Life Insurance Co. auditor. She, her husband and their children recently had to move in with his parents.

    Monica Ford poses with children Tahir, 7, Kian, 4, Nuri, 1, at Freedom Ridge Park in Ridgeland, Miss., July 19, 2025. (Monica Ford)

    “It’s more than I’ve paid in rent,” she said. “It’s why I live with my family now.”

    She uses a Jackson day care that charges $10 per minute for late pickup. The fees must be paid by the next morning.

    Nearly all of the single mothers interviewed said they take on extra work to cover the rising costs of child care in their area. It’s extra work that sees them spending less time with their children.

    Ashley Wilson’s child care voucher wasn’t renewed in the spring. She works 55 hours a week at a bingo hall and at Sonic Drive-In.

    “We don’t get help. That’s what I don’t understand,” said Wilson, an Indianola parent.

    Her preferred day care option in Indianola charged $185 per week and $20 late fees, which Wilson could not afford. Her sister was able to afford monthly costs because of an arrangement with an Angel – a benefactor who helps local families with tuition at day care providers.

    Wilson tried other day cares in town. Several were in dangerous neighborhoods with staff that left milk bottles to spoil. Her toddler came home wet some afternoons and with cuts another. She gets help from family when she can.

    Whitney Harper lost her child care voucher in April. She is lucky when a relative is willing to watch her 2-year old. Lately, she has considered hiring a sitter off care.com, a website that connects parents with local babysitters. In Jackson, where she lives, the hourly rate is $14 per hour.

    Most of the day cares in the Jackson metro area charge between $150 and $250 per week, which is more than she can afford as a sales associate at Home Depot.

    “It has been harder this year. They won’t work around my schedule, but I need the job,” she said of her employer.

    ‘This is the worst I have seen it’

    Day care centers are left on the brink when families lose child care vouchers. Making up the lost revenue has meant higher tuition and fees for some centers and reaching out to private donors for others.

    “These are small businesses,” Burnette said. “The big story in child care is how much it costs to run it. It requires adequate public investment.”

    Level-Up Learning Center leadership team poses in front of their Greenville, Miss., location on July 26, 2024. Left to right are Chief Operating Officer Adrienne Walker, CEO Kaysie Burton and COO/Athletic Director Kwame Malik Barnes. (Level Up Learning Center)

    This week, Level Up Learning Center owner and CEO Kaysie Burton visited Greenville’s Walmart, seeking to persuade the manager to sponsor his employees’ child care tuition. She submitted two grant applications and is working on at least three others. Burton’s business survived flooding and relocation. But the latest voucher cutback could shut her banner-adorned doors to the community

    At Level Up Learning Center, 75% of parents rely on child care vouchers. In the last three months, 20 Learning Center parents have lost their child care vouchers yet most have stayed. Burton has a policy of not turning parents away if they are willing to contribute a portion of the weekly rate. She has not increased her tuition or instituted punishing fees.

    But making up the lost revenue can be a challenge. Since the cutback, she has let seven teachers go, or roughly a third of her staff.

    “We’re down to skin and bones right now,” Burton said. “I am willing to take anybody that is willing to come partner with us and help us help parents so that their kids can keep coming in.”

    When Burton started her business during the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw the need in the Mississippi Delta for affordable, quality child care. She remains committed to helping prepare a future generation of Greenville leadership.

    “We’re in the thick of it with our parents,” Burton said. “And we all just need help and we need prayer.”

    SunShine Daycare owner Barbara Thompson has greeted each parent at the door since she started babysitting neighbors’ kids in her living room. The former banker has long had a passion for raising neighborhood children regardless of their parents’ status or income. She raised her seven siblings when her mother died when Thompson was 12.

    But for the first time in 30 years of running a business in Greenville, Thompson is losing families by the dozen as well as longtime staff. She has leaned heavily on prayer and has reached out to state representatives for help. She fears more departures and the downsizing of her business.

    In the last two months, 12 parents pulled their kids from SunShine. She will have to let three teachers go as a result.

    “We won’t have any children if this continues,” Thompson said.

    She regularly informs parents of the child care voucher waitlist and of the process for renewals. Besides caring for children, Thompson advises many young parents in her community. She noticed that state agencies communicate primarily through email, which a lot of her parents don’t check regularly.

    Children who leave her stoop festooned with cartoon characters can face hours alone without parental supervision. Some children will sit and watch television with their grandparents. For Thompson, child care is about raising children to be “productive citizens.” The youngest years are some of the most important, she stressed.

    “They didn’t take it from us,” Thompson said. “They took from the children. That’s the world’s future.”

    Waitlisted

    Vennesha Price is waitlisted at nearly every day care in Cleveland, where she lives. She’s been on some of the lists for eight months.

    “If you haven’t been a resident for five years and you haven’t navigated the waiting list for five years, it’s harder to find a spot,” she said.

    She found it difficult to both have a productive work day and watch her elementary-aged children. Eventually, she found a day care that was 40 minutes away. She wakes up an hour earlier to make the commute in time before work.

    “I’m a single mother so it’s very difficult,” Price said. “After my grandmother went on to the Lord, it became a struggle trying to get to the day care in time.”

    She started factoring late fees into her monthly budget. She’s also including the gas money needed for the extra legs of her commute. Her child care costs doubled for June and July.

    “It’s almost like private school tuition now,” she said.

    This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Senator Murray Blocks Trump Education Nominee as Funding Crisis Deepens

    Senator Murray Blocks Trump Education Nominee as Funding Crisis Deepens

    U.S. Senator Patty Murray U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has blocked the fast-track consideration of Mary Christina Riley, President Trump’s nominee to serve as Assistant Secretary for Legislation and Congressional Affairs at the Department of Education, as the administration continues to withhold nearly $7 billion in funding for K-12 schools and adult education programs nationwide.

    The move by Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, forces Riley’s nomination to undergo full committee review rather than skipping directly to Senate floor consideration. The action comes just weeks before the new school year begins, with school districts across the country scrambling to address massive budget shortfalls created by the Trump administration’s funding freeze.

    “As schools nationwide scramble to figure out how many teachers they need to lay off and afterschool programs warn parents to make back up plans—all because President Trump is blocking over $6 billion in education funding he himself signed into law—there is no reason for any Department of Education nominee to skip committee consideration and get fast-tracked for confirmation,” Murray said in a statement.

    The senator’s parliamentary maneuver reflects growing Democratic frustration with the Trump administration’s decision to withhold funding that was previously approved by Congress. The administration notified states on July 1—the traditional deadline for fund distribution—that it was placing the money under review “given the change in Administrations.”

    The funding freeze affects six critical federal education programs that support teacher professional development, English language learning, after-school programs, and services for migrant children. The largest portion consists of $2.2 billion for Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, which fund professional development and activities to improve teacher effectiveness.

    Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have already filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the frozen funds, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta calling the move one with “no rhyme or reason” that came “abruptly” just weeks before the school year begins.

    The consequences are being felt immediately across the education landscape. The Afterschool Alliance warned that without the funds, “we will quickly see more children and youth unsupervised and at risk, more academic failures, more hungry kids, more chronic absenteeism, higher dropout rates, more parents forced out of their jobs, and a less STEM-ready and successful workforce.”

    The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget, led by Russell Vought, has suggested the funding freeze is part of an investigation into whether money has been used for what it calls a “radical leftwing agenda,” including scholarships for undocumented students or teachings on LGBTQ topics.

    Murray rejected these justifications, arguing that the administration has provided no clear explanation for the delay and no timeline for when funding might be released. Even some Republican senators have criticized the move, with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) telling Education Week she “strongly oppose[s] the administration’s decision to pause the delivery of education formula grant funding.”

    The funding freeze represents part of a broader Trump administration effort to reshape federal education policy. The administration’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget would eliminate all six of the grant programs currently under review, as part of a 23 percent cut to domestic spending.

    Murray, a former teacher and longtime education advocate, has been a vocal critic of the administration’s education policies. She has previously blasted Trump’s plans to dismantle the Department of Education, calling the idea “terrible” and arguing that “Trump and Musk don’t know what it’s like to count on their local public school having the resources to get their kids the education they deserve.”

    The affected programs serve some of the nation’s most vulnerable student populations, including:

    • Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants (Title II-A) for teacher professional development
    • 21st Century Community Learning Centers (Title IV-B) for after-school programs
    • Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (Title IV-A) for STEM education and school mental health
    • English Language Acquisition (Title III-A) for English language learners
    • Migrant Education (Title I-C) for children of migrant workers
    • Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants for adult education programs.

     

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  • Capitalism and Culture, Their Connection in Crisis Now (Richard Wolff with Henry Giroux)

    Capitalism and Culture, Their Connection in Crisis Now (Richard Wolff with Henry Giroux)

    On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides updates on Medicare advantage and “pre-authorization” as a way to reduce Medicare payments, liberals and radicals split over Mamdani, Trump’s current budget further deepens the inequality of wealth across the US, and Mexico attends the BRICS meeting in Rio de Janeiro. In the second part of today’s show, Professor Wolff interviews Professor Henry Giroux from McMaster University, Canada, on capitalism, culture, and fascism in the U.S. today.

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  • The crisis in the youth sector is a big problem for universities

    The crisis in the youth sector is a big problem for universities

    It is hard for universities to see beyond their own sector crisis right now, but the crisis facing the youth sector today will be the problem of universities tomorrow.

    The youth sector in the UK greatly contributes towards supporting students and graduates of the future, but it is currently under threat and the deepest impact will come for those young people who face the highest barriers to accessing higher education.

    The youth sector engages young people to develop their critical skills for life, including how to build relationships with peers; resilience and developing social and emotional skills; and how to integrate into a community. Many within the higher education sector will recognise these as areas which students and graduates are also struggling with.

    At a time where universities are being called upon to widen access for young people, the reality is young people are facing narrower opportunities than ever. The challenge for widening participation teams will be multifaceted, including supporting attainment raising in schools; tackling entrenched views from schools and families of expectations of what their children can achieve; and providing the support needed for widening participation students to progress well once in higher education.

    So how can the higher education sector help ensure that the challenges the youth sector are facing today don’t become a nightmare for widening participation teams to tackle in the future?

    What is happening in the youth sector?

    The youth sector includes large organisations such as UK Youth, Scouts and Girlguiding, to smaller grassroots organisations who run clubs and activities in and out of schools and community centres across the country.

    There are many similarities between the crises facing the higher education sector and that of the youth sector. Much like universities, the youth sector has faced years of substantial defunding. A YMCA England and Wales report on The state of funding for youth services found that “local authority expenditure on youth services has fallen 73% in England and 27% in Wales since 2010-11” which “represents a real-term cut of £1.2bn to youth services between 2010-11 to 2023-24 in England, and £16.6m in Wales.”

    At the same time as these cuts, the rate of young people who are NEET (not in education, employment or training) is growing, with 13.2 per cent of 16-24 year olds reported as NEET in 2024, and 15.6 per cent of 18-24 year olds NEET. Both figures have increased compared to previous years, particularly in young men. These young people need support and youth services are increasingly unable to provide it.

    Organisations and charities who have been supporting the youth sector are closing at a rapid rate. The National Citizen Service (NCS), a national youth social action programme which has been running since 2009, has been cut by the Labour Government. Student Hubs, the social action charity I worked with which supported students to engage in social and environmental action, has closed. YMCA George Williams College, an organisation which supported the youth sector to improve monitoring, evaluation and impact of their activities closed on 31 March 2025 to the shock of many across the youth sector.

    Whilst the Government’s National Youth Strategy announced in November 2024 is welcome, it will not fix years of systematic underfunding of youth sector services.

    How will this crisis impact universities?

    David Kernohan’s analysis of the UCAS 2025 application figures shows that applications are down, with only applicants from the most advantaged quintile, IMD quintile 5, having improved. We are in the midst of what could be a big decline in the rate of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds entering higher education, despite the transformative opportunities it provides.

    This comes at a time where there is greater expectation by the government and the regulator for universities to be proactive in supporting students’ and young people’s skills, learning and access to opportunity. In February the Office for Students announced successful providers in their latest funding round to deliver projects which tackle Equality of Opportunity Risk Register areas. The register supports universities to consider barriers in the student life cycle and how they might mitigate against these.

    Seeing the range of projects which have been awarded funding, it is clear that universities are being pushed to go further in imagining what their role is in shaping the lives of the students they engage, and it starts significantly earlier than freshers’ week. This funding shows that more emphasis is being put on universities to address barriers to participation by the Office for Students, and with the youth sector in crisis, this may need to become even wider if universities are to fulfil their access missions.

    Thankfully, there are actions universities can take now which will make a difference both to young people and widening participation teams.

    Tackling the problems together

    The youth sector cannot afford to wait. If universities want to be ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow, they need to build strong collaborative relationships with organisations already situated in communities whilst they are still here. Partnership with the youth sector offers an opportunity to enhance university strategic activity whilst making genuine social and economic impact.

    Universities could be doing more to provide expertise on monitoring and evaluation of youth activities, enhancing quality of local activities, and conducting research to support future outcomes. There’s an opportunity for universities to learn from these partnerships too, particularly because the youth sector has a range of expertise which is highly applicable to the work the sector is doing in broadening their widening participation and civic strategies. These partnerships will sometimes be informal and sometimes they might be formalised through knowledge exchange programmes like student consultancy.

    Students can play a big role in linking universities and youth services. Research conducted by the National Youth Agency in 2024 found “that fewer than seven per cent of respondents to a national survey of youth workers are under 26 years old”. There is a desperate need for youth workers and particularly under-30s to support the sector. Student Hubs’ legacy resources detail the approach we took to supporting students to volunteer in local schools, libraries and community centres to provide free support to young people as part of place-based programmes with universities.

    Universities and students’ unions have spaces they are looking to commercialise, whilst also trying to give students jobs on campus. Universities and students’ unions could work collaboratively with community groups to use spaces on campus, provide student work through staffing them, and in turn support young people and families to access campus facilities.

    The time is now

    One of the hallmarks of a crisis is communities coming together to meet challenges head on, and universities shouldn’t wait to be invited. Trust will need to be built and relationships take time to forge.

    The best time to start is now. Universities should mobilise whilst there is still a youth sector left to support, or the void left by the lack of youth services means universities’ involvement in young people’s lives is going to become even larger.

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  • The identity crisis of teaching and learning innovation

    The identity crisis of teaching and learning innovation

    Universities love to talk about innovation. Pedagogical innovation is framed as a necessity in an era of rapid change, yet those expected to enact it – academics – are caught in an identity crisis.

    In our research on post-pandemic pedagogical innovation, we found that the decision to engage with or resist innovation is not just about workload, resources, or institutional strategy. It’s about identity – who academics see themselves as, how they are valued within their institutions, and what risks they perceive in stepping beyond the status quo.

    Academics are asked to be both risk-taking pedagogical entrepreneurs and compliant employees within increasingly bureaucratic, metric-driven institutions. This paradox creates what we call the moral wiggle room of innovation – a space where educators justify disengagement, not necessarily because they oppose change, but because their institutional environment does not meaningfully reward it.

    The paradox of pedagogical innovation

    During the pandemic, universities celebrated those who embraced new digital tools, hybrid learning, and flexible teaching formats. “Necessity breeds innovation” became the dominant narrative. Yet, as the crisis has subsided, many of these same institutions have reverted to rigid processes, managerial oversight, and bureaucratic hurdles, making innovation feel like an uphill battle.

    On paper, universities support innovation. Education strategies abound with commitments to “transformative learning experiences” and “sector-leading digital education.” However, in practice, academics face competing pressures – expectations to drive innovation while being weighed down by institutional inertia.

    The challenge is not just about introducing innovation but sustaining it in ways that foster long-term change. While institutions may advocate for pedagogical innovation, the reality for many educators is a system that does not provide the necessary time, support, or recognition to make such innovation a viable, sustained effort.

    The result? Many feel disillusioned. As one academic in our research put it:

    I definitely think there’s a drive to be more innovative, but it feels like a marketized approach. It’s not tangible – I can’t say, ‘Oh, they’re really supporting me to be more innovative.’ There’s no clear pathway, no structured process.
    Academic at a post-92 university

    For some, engaging in pedagogical innovation is a source of professional fulfilment. For others, it is a career gamble. Whether academics choose to innovate or resist depends largely on how their identity aligns with institutional structures, career incentives, and personal values.

    Three identity tensions shaping pedagogical innovation

    Regulated versus self-directed identity Institutions shape identity through expectations: teaching excellence frameworks, fellowship accreditations, and workload models dictate what “counts” in an academic career. Yet, many educators see their professional identity as self-driven – rooted in disciplinary expertise and a commitment to students. When institutional definitions of innovation clash with personal motivations, resistance emerges.

    As one participant put it:

    When you’re (personally) at the forefront of classroom innovation…you’re constantly looking outwards for ideas. Within the institution, there isn’t really anyone I can go to and say, ‘What are you doing differently?’ It’s more about stumbling upon people rather than having a proactive approach to being innovative. I think there’s a drive for PI, but it feels like a marketised approach.
    Academic at a post-92 university

    For some, innovation is an extension of their identity as educators; for others, it is a compliance exercise – an expectation imposed from above rather than a meaningful pursuit.

    This tension is explored in Wonkhe’s discussion of institutional silos, which highlights how universities often create structures that inadvertently restrict collaboration and cross-disciplinary innovation, making it harder for educators to engage with meaningful change.

    Risk versus reward in academic careers Engaging in pedagogical innovation takes time and effort. For those on teaching and scholarship contracts, it is often an expectation. For research and scholarship colleagues, it is rarely a career priority.

    Despite strategic commitments to pedagogical innovation, career incentives in many institutions still favour traditional research outputs over pedagogical experimentation. The opportunity cost is real – why invest in something that holds little weight in promotions or workload models?

    As one academic reflected:

    I prioritise what has immediate impact. Another teaching award isn’t a priority. Another publication directly benefits my CV.

    Senior leader at a Russell Group university

    Until pedagogical I is properly recognised in career progression, it will remain a secondary priority for many. As explored on Wonkhe here, the question is not just whether innovation happens but whether institutions create environments that allow it to spread. Without clear incentives, pedagogical innovation remains the domain of the few rather than an embedded part of academic practice.

    Autonomy versus bureaucracy Academics value autonomy. It is one of the biggest predictors of job satisfaction in higher education. Yet pedagogical innovation is often entangled in institutional bureaucracy (perceived or real) through slow approval processes, administrative hurdles, and performance monitoring.

    The pandemic showed that universities can be agile. But many educators now feel that flexibility has been replaced by managerialism, stifling creativity.

    I’ve had people in my office almost crying at the amount of paperwork just to get an innovation through. People get the message: don’t bother.

    Senior leader at a Russell Group university

    To counteract this, as one educator put it:

    It’s better to ask forgiveness afterwards than ask permission beforehand.

    Senior leader at a Russell Group university

    This kind of strategic rule-bending highlights the frustration many educators feel – a desire to innovate constrained by institutional red tape.

    Mark Andrews, in a Wonkhe article here, argues that institutions need to focus on making education work rather than simply implementing digital tools for their own sake. The same logic applies to pedagogical innovation – if the focus is solely on regulation, innovation will always struggle to take root.

    Beyond the rhetoric: what needs to change

    If universities want sustained innovation, they must address these identity tensions. Pedagogical innovation needs to be rewarded in promotions, supported through streamlined processes, and recognised as legitimate academic work – not an optional extra.

    This issue of curriculum transformation was explored on Wonkhe here, raising the critical question of how universities can move beyond rhetoric and make change a reality.

    The post-pandemic university is at a crossroads. Will pedagogical innovation be institutionalised in meaningful ways, or will it remain a talking point rather than a transformation? Academics are already navigating an identity crisis – caught between structural constraints, career incentives, and their own motivations. Universities must decide whether to ease that tension or allow it to widen.

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