The shortage of affordable child care and the gender stereotypes that discourage women from pursuing careers in mathematics and science are two of the biggest barriers holding women back in community colleges, according to a report released on Thursday by the American Association of University Women.
The report, “Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success,” recommends policies and practices to help women succeed at two-year colleges. It focuses on the need for affordable, convenient child care and for more-aggressive efforts to steer women into the relatively well-paying STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, or math).
According to the report, a year of child care can cost more than a year of college at a four-year institution, with a price tag of $4,650 to $18,200. That’s more than many students can afford.
LaKeisha Cook, 31, is a single mother who is studying to become a physician’s assistant at Montgomery College’s campus in Germantown, Md.
Knowing that her 3-year-old daughter is just minutes away in a campus-based day-care center, “I can go to class with peace of mind,” she said during a conference call for the news media with the report’s authors.
Most of her cost is covered by a federal program, Child Care Access Means Parents in School, but she worries that the money might dry up.
Support for the federal program has dropped from $25-million in 2001 to $16-million last year, according to the report’s authors, Andresse St. Rose, a senior researcher at the university women’s association, and Catherine Hill, director of research there.
In 2010, 57 percent of community-college students in the United States were women, the report says. More than four million women attend the nation’s two-year colleges, more than the number of undergraduate women attending either public or private four-year colleges.
Nearly half of the women who enter community colleges leave without earning certificates or degrees or transferring to four-year colleges, and the lack of affordable child care is one of the primary reasons, Ms. St. Rose said.
Less than half of community colleges offer on-campus child care, and some of those have waiting lists, according to the report, which was compiled based on interviews with community-college leaders, a review of literature on two-year colleges, and federal data.
Shifting to the need to recruit more female STEM students, the report points out that women make up the vast majority of registered nurses but only a fraction of engineering and automobile-service technicians, carpenters, and mechanics.
With the exception of nursing and other health-related fields, female-dominated jobs generally pay less and offer fewer opportunities than those requiring comparable levels of math and science study.
The report blames women’s underrepresentation in STEM fields largely on gender stereotypes and a lack of information and support.
Last year the Institute for Women’s Policy Research also called on community colleges to do a better job of encouraging women, especially those with children and low incomes, to pursue studies in the STEM fields.
