One of the reasons that Theresa Graif, a student in Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, decided to take this academic year off in the wake of her son’s birth, is that she cannot afford day care.
“Financially, it didn’t make sense for me to look into day care,” Graif, who is already struggling with student loans, said.
Graif is not alone in her worries. It is no secret that child care is expensive in New York City, but for graduate students like Graif, the expenses can be particularly difficult. And there is increasing evidence on campus that some parents are feeling the pressure.
According to the Graduate Student Advisory Council’s Quality of Life Survey, which was compiled in the spring of 2009, 91 percent of graduate students with children classified Columbia’s support of student-parents as average to poor. Fifty-eight percent of parent respondents gave it the lowest two ratings possible.
The survey is conducted every two years, and asks students a broad range of questions about their quality of life, ranging from housing and family, to academics and library space. In 2009, it reached 19 percent of the graduate student body, and of the respondents, 6 percent indicated they had children.
Stefanie Pleschinger, a GSAS student, and chair of the Quality of Life Committee, believes that the cost and inconvenient location of outside child care are two of the biggest concerns for student-parents, along with housing and insurance, which she said contribute to the poor rating for student-parent support.
“What you always have to consider is the fact that we’re in a big city with very little space, and that’s very expensive,” Pleschinger said.
The University does not provide day care for its affiliates, but its Office of Work/Life provides a search service for parents to help them find child care that suits their family situation.
Carol Hoffman, associate provost and director of the Office of Work/Life, agreed that most local day care centers are extremely costly.
The University works to help its students meet these prices by providing funding for affiliated child care centers, to give University affiliates with children scholarships and financial aid. “They [child care centers] offer financial aid, but even with that, it’s not always affordable for graduate students,” Hoffman said.
For students, financial aid can become a critical issue. Eliza Miller, a student in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, applied to the Medical Center Nursery School for her youngest son. But even though Miller’s son was accepted and her family was offered financial aid, she still cannot afford the school.
“We only got an afternoon slot,” she said. “It works out to about $10,000 for 36 weeks of care. We can’t do it, and even if we could, I’d rather take that money and invest it.” The child care would cost about $280 a week.
In comparison, when Miller attended the City College of New York for her post-baccalaureate pre-med studies, she paid $55 a week for each of her two elder children to attend a full-day child care program at a center affiliated with the school.
Miller said she understands that child care is expensive in New York City, and does not blame Columbia for the prices. She believes the problem lies not in the prices themselves, but in the fact that graduate students usually don’t have high incomes.
The Office of Work/Life is working to help graduate students find cheaper alternatives to day care. According to Hoffman, officials are currently looking into group family care options, among other initiatives, in which a parent or another University affiliate could offer to host day care services in their home. These alternatives would be less expensive than center-based day care.
But some students argue that more could still be done to help graduate student-parents.
“It goes without saying that more could be done in terms of supportive services for graduate students,” said Ryan Close, a student in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and a member of the University Senate’s Commission on the Status of Women, which researches campus issues relevant to women.
Valentine Edgar, a student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and also a member of the Commission, said the issue extends beyond the graduate population. “Lack of affordable child care is a big frustration not only for Masters and Ph.D. students, but also for GS students and younger Faculty,” she wrote in an email.
Maya Tolstoy, chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, said that while the commission has reviewed child care in the past, it is not currently working on the issue. Still, Tolstoy—who uses Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory on-site child care service—said that this kind of option is good for parents. “If your child is sick or you need to breast-feed, it’s nearby.”
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