Daycare costs more than college in 31 states. More info and an interactive map at the Washington Post.
Daycare Costs
12 thoughts on “Daycare Costs”
Comments are closed.
Leave saving the world to the men? I don't think so.
Leave saving the world to the men? I don't think so.
Daycare costs more than college in 31 states. More info and an interactive map at the Washington Post.
Comments are closed.
Apt. 11d 
Another nice illustration of how PA defunded its public colleges. Infant care isn’t cheap.
LikeLike
My daycare costs for a 3 year old and an 8 year old (wrap around care) are over 2 times the cost of my mortgage. That’s what matters more to me.
LikeLike
When I went to college in Idaho, in the 90’s, it cost about $1000/semester to attend. Officially, tuition isn’t allowed for state residents, so that was “fees”. Of course, it cost more to live on campus, but especially at that time for Boise State, less than a quarter of the students lived on campus. It is more expensive than that now, but not all that much- I think it’s about $2K/ semester. That sounds great, and in most ways is, but if you suspect that it means that the professors are under-paid and over-worked, that lots and lots of (poorly paid) adjuncts are used, that the facilities are not top-notch, and so on were the case, you’d be right. (It’s also often hard to get all the classes you need to graduate in 4 years, but the financial incentive to do so is pretty low.) (Because the academic job market is so bad, the universities can still hire very good professors, at least at the junior level, even given the bad pay and working conditions.) Childcare in Idaho is also relatively cheap (so, not much more than college) but I suspect that that’s in part because of fairly lax regulation. Whether the fairly lax regulation is, all things considered, a good thing in this area or not isn’t something I have an informed opinion about.
LikeLike
Matt, I’m employed at Boise State right now. Tuition for in state is $3146 per semester, so not too far off. I’ve got a child in the campus child care center and her yearly tuition is a little over $9000. So if you went to BSU year round — about the same price as infant child care. Ha!
And yes, Idaho has terrible regulation for child care.
LikeLike
Thanks for that information, Mary AA- I should note that I got a nice education at BSU, and don’t regret having gone there at all. Despite the obvious draw-backs caused by perpetual under-funding, it’s a good place to study. Certainly, the price is much more what state universities should be aiming at.
LikeLike
Perhaps caring for young, vulnerable children should cost more than educating adults? Paying for child care these past six years is the reason I’m not stressing out about our future college costs. Prior to having children, I would have never believed we could find a way to pay $2000 plus dollars a month in child care costs but of course we figured out a way to do it without going into debt. I assume we’ll figure out a way when it’s time for college.
Only 16 more months until youngest is in school and our child care costs will go down to like $800 a month!
LikeLike
scantee said:
“Perhaps caring for young, vulnerable children should cost more than educating adults?”
You would think so. College students can generally feed themselves, they don’t generally need to have diapers changed, they aren’t demanding to be held and carried all the time, they can amuse themselves for hours at a time…Why shouldn’t college be cheaper?
LikeLike
The high cost of childcare is one of the reasons I’m not in full time paid work. The only way I could cover the costs would be to return to a corporate career I no longer want.
If I went full time with photography I’d barely cover the cost – throw in the stress of pick ups and drop offs and figuring out to & from play dates & activities, our family life would be one big ole ball of stress.
LikeLike
It always surprised me that saving for your kids university education is pushed so hard when I have to pay comparable amounts to get them through child care.
LikeLike
I think daycare staffed properly might cost more, or at least as much, as college tuition. But, college tuition at state colleges used to be subsidized by the state, at least in some states, and is unfunded, making it more like child care.
Why do people treat the costs differently? because they see daycare as replacing parental care, while few of us would be expected to replace college personally, as part of our parental care. We pay for college because we’re buying someone else’s expertise, while we pay for daycare because someone else is buying our expertise, not because we need experts to care for our children (usually, until daycare becomes schooling, or special needs, or coaching, ro teaching).
LikeLike
Bee Jay – you are dead on, and partly because in-state land grant tuition has historically been less, sometimes a lot less, than the cost of providing university education. The national trend of lessening subsidy for university could be an overlay for the map, and as the percent paid through tuition went up, day care costs as a fraction would go down.
SHOULD the state be heavily subsidizing uni education? Couple ways to look at that, one is, The Youth Are Our Future, We All Benefit From Their Success, the other is, why in Hell do you want the taxes paid by burger flippers to subsidize the educations of the children of far more successful people. Some days I am in column A, and some days I am in column B.
LikeLike
Of course, it makes a difference that one pays childcare costs monthly, while college costs are largely up-front payments due at the beginning of the semester. So the payments are disbursed differently in non-trivial and certainly impactful ways.
LikeLike