Dive Brief:
- Tufts University is facing criticism for its plans to hand off the management of its long-running campus daycare center to a for-profit company.
- A growing number of colleges and universities that started their own day-care centers to recruit and retain students with children are now cutting those businesses to save money, the Boston Globe reports.
- For Tufts, critics are afraid that turning the Tufts Educational Day Care Center into the Bright Horizons Family Center on Sept. 1 will hurt the quality of the child care.
Dive Insight:
The Tufts program serves 80 children, from just under age 3 through kindergarten, most of whom are children of university staff. One parent told the Globe that it was like Tufts announcing to incoming freshman that it was turning over management to a for-profit college. The Tufts day-care tuition — $19,440 per year — will remain the same under Bright Horizons management, though parents who withdraw can get a refund. Earlier this year, Boston College and Regis College in Weston, MA, scrapped their own plans to merge and eliminate, respectively, their own childcare programs.