Hawkeye Childcare Disparity Scholarships

Hawkeye serves many students who face greater than normal obstacles in pursuing and achieving their educational goals. For many low-income students, the cost of child care poses an insurmountable obstacle to completing their education. Hawkeye Community College strives to carefully balance the expense of providing quality child care with the need for affordable access. One key strategy to meet student child care needs has been to leverage scholarships to mitigate the disparity between cost of service and students’ ability to pay. Degreed staff provide high quality care using developmentally appropriate practices for the way children progress and learn. Enrolled children receive significant benefits from research-based early education curriculum and interventions. Hawkeye’s disparity scholarships benefit both generations, giving women access to higher education to improve their earning power and their children a solid educational foundation for continued learning and growth. A sliding fee scale based on EFC, which is a measure of a family’s financial strength, determines child care fees. Disparity scholarships pay the rest.