It is through history that we can contextualize the present situation at the University. To accomplish this, UMCDC Parents Organizing went to the archives.

Over forty-five years of struggle for high-quality early childhood education and care at the University of Minnesota.

In 1974, following three years of consultation and task-force studies of various sorts, the University of Minnesota opened a Child Care Center (hereafter the UMCCC), with room for 75 children, in the Grainger Building on the West Bank (1818 4^th St. S). From its inception, the Center was asked “to model state-of-the-art child care.”(1) In May of that year, Harold Chase, U Vice-President for Academic Administration, indicated that child care was “an idea whose time has come,” holding that the University “should take the leadership in solving this very tough problem” by establishing a model center.(2) The following month, in June 1974, the board of Regents approved the childcare proposal. The CCC was first administered under the auspices of the College of Education’s Institute of Child Development.

From its beginning, the UMCCC’s mission was multifold. It served University families, but was also “an employer of students and a resource to University faculty and students for purposes of research, teacher training, and observation.” In 1979, L. Steven Sternberg, the director of the UMCCC, wrote: “The Child Care Center has, and will continue, to play a role vital to the University of Minnesota. It enables parents to gain access to the University’s educational resources, it provides a training, observation and research site for students and faculty, it serves as a model which other programs use as a demonstration of the possibilities of full day care, and most importantly, it is uncompromising in the quality of care its children receive.”(3)

The location on the West Bank was, however, far from ideal, and the building suffered from major infrastructural deficiencies. In 1981, the UMCCC’s licensed capacity was cut to 68 after space and building code inspections, and the Center faced the “threat of eviction to make way for a parking lot.”

The Center persisted, and in 1988, the University had 3 childcare centers (the two existing student cooperatives plus the UMCCC) that together provided full-time care for up to 162 children or part-time care for 331 children. The UMCCC continued to maintain a model program, and was described in a 1988 report in the following way: “The Center is accredited by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs and is a leading member organization of the National Campus Child Care Coalition. Recognized as a model program, the Center each year receives many visits from scholars, childcare practitioners, and public officials from throughout the U.S. and other countries.” (4)

Yet capacity lagged far behind need, with hundreds of children (and sometimes approximately 400 families) on the Center’s waiting list each year; this was coupled with ongoing space problems.(5) Referring to all the work that had been undertaken in order to find long-term solutions to these problems in the late 1980s, the 1990 final report of the childcare task force talked of “a significant breakthrough”—the planned move to Rollins Avenue—and referred to an “overwhelming degree of cooperation and support.”(6) According to Sharon Doherty in U Women, “the good reputation of the child care center’s staff played a part in the University’s decision to expand campus child care.” The “childcare staff,” Doherty wrote, "sets a national standard.”(7) Referring to the fact that there had been over eleven task forces and over twenty studies, reports, and analyses on the issue of child care between 1971 and 1990, the 1990 report argued that “issues related to child care did not appear to need further study, they needed action.”(8)

The solution was the following: in 1990, the UMCCC’s administrative home moved from the Institute of Child Development to Support Services and Operations [now University Services].(9) In a 1993 letter to Robert O. Erikson, Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations, Patricia Finstad explained that this change in administration was made after a great deal of careful planning, and was intended to give “priority for service (while retaining active academic linkages), to add a new indirect childcare resource and referral service available to all U of M families, and to commit financial resources for construction of a new, uniquely designed facility of which this University could be very proud.” In 1992, the UMCCC moved from the West Bank to its current location. With this move, the Center’s capacity doubled from about 75 to 140+.

The building is indeed unique architecturally. According to Nilgen Tuna, senior project manager at Roark Kramer Roscoe Design (Minneapolis), the building was “on the cutting edge as far as child care goes.”(10) The total budget for construction was $2,200,000. As of December 1992, over $30,000 had been raised from parent donations. At least $17,000 was raised from grants and corporate donations, and at least $35,000 through in-kind donations or fundraising activities.(11)

In 1993, less than a year after the UMCCC opened on Rollins Avenue, the question of its administrative home was raised again. Once again, the University questioned if the Center could be administered differently, with the goal of “more emphasis on teaching and research through closer and perhaps full integration with the College of Education.” In response to this, the UMCCC director (Finstad) argued that the Center could “continue to expand in both […] service and research and training functions” in its current administrative home, but to this end, needed “stable funding.” While Finstad didn’t oppose the administrative transfer of the UMCCC in principle, she asked: “If the University administration wishes to alter the purpose and/or the program integrity and quality reputation of the Child Care Center, such directives need to be stated clearly rather than through an abrupt administrative shift and financial strangulation.”(12)

Over the years, the UMCCC suffered from the lack of a continuous administrative home. In the 1990s, the UMCCC was re-placed under the auspices of the College of Education. Yet the 2009 CEHD Compact, “the College’s proposal to the University Provost for the direction and vision for the next few years,” recommended realigning the UMCCC with central administration. The Compact mentioned that Center’s “connection to CEHD is ‘an accident of history, not strategic positioning,’” and argued that the Center “would benefit from alignment with central administration.” At the same time, budget cuts were slated to affect the UMCCC’s hours of operation.(13)

Access to high-quality child care has continually been raised as a pressing issue by the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs (SCFA). A 2003 subcommittee report on child care at the University called on the University to increase availability of on-campus child care for faculty, staff and students. In 2004, the Chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee (FCC) forwarded the report to the President, urging the administration to “identify funding to help alleviate the shortage of high-quality child care for University faculty, staff, and students.” In 2007, the SCFA reviewed a report by the Office for University Women, and returned to its earlier recommendations, concluding that no progress had been made on increasing access to high-quality child care on campus. The SCFA’s concerns included:

• Lack of a centralized, authoritative entity (e.g., official campus committee or office) to directly oversee all campus-based child care centers at the University.
• Need for increased access to the UMCDC’s high-quality programming
• Absence of data on affordability for all lower-income populations (students and lower-income staff)

The SCFA reiterated the stakes of University commitment to high-quality child care, as outlined in the 2003 report: “We do not believe the University has made any progress on increasing child-care facilities on the Twin Cities campus. We believe that it should do so very soon if it is to achieve the goal of becoming a top-three public research university. Achieving that goal will be accomplished in significant part through the recruitment of stellar faculty, staff, and … graduate students.“

“It is unlikely the University will soon be able to compete on salaries, compared to the top 20 or 30 research universities, so it must be in a position to compete in other ways by providing benefits that prospective faculty, staff, and students will find attractive. It is our view that one of the benefits that will be most attractive is child care that is close and high-quality.”

In 2014, the SCFA passed a resolution on Faculty Caregiver Support, emphasizing the importance of “address[ing] the shortage of on-campus or near-campus childcare.”

Over the years, advocates for child care at the University faced numerous challenges. Since the 1970s, there have been multiple attempts to open additional centers, but these initiatives failed due to lack of financial support. In January 1974, childcare advocates were countered with the “unequal treatment” argument: i.e., as Paul Cashman, Vice-President for Student Affairs, argued, a pilot childcare project would result in unequal treatment because not all employees’ children could be accommodated.(14)

However, childcare advocates found support on campus, and explained the broader issues at stake. These issues affect the full spectrum of the University community: from students to staff to faculty. Among other things, child care became increasingly tied to recruiting and retaining students and faculty. As J. Trout Lowen wrote in Minnesota Daily in 1987, “76 percent of faculty and staff parents surveyed said they had missed anywhere from one to 20 hours of work in one quarter because of problems related to child care. Student parents report stress in trying to schedule classes around child care, finding time to study, taking fewer credits, and missing classes. About one third of undergraduate parents have considered dropping out of school because of childcare problems.”(15)

In March 2003, President Bruininks announced expansion plans for Baby’s Space, a childcare program in Minneapolis supported by the University of Minnesota. On this occasion, he declared: “Children are Minnesota’s most valuable resource, and even in tight financial times we need to invest in children. They are our future.” He also noted that “early investments pay off in the long run to the society and the individual. A society that fails to invest in its children is making a deliberate decision not to invest in its future.”