Leg.

For student-parents like second-year law student Edward Fleming, child care costs add enormous expenses to already tight budgets. The University’s Professional Student Government is working to ease the financial strain many graduate student-parents face by asking state legislators to expand an existing Minnesota Office of Higher Education child care grant to include graduate students. Currently, the OHE grant which gives out an average of about $2,000 a year per student only covers undergraduate students’ child care expenses. Murid Amini, an expecting father and second-year Master of Business Administration student at Carlson School of Management, testified that the additional support would make going to school easier and would help students enter the workforce more quickly. Since graduate students take fewer classes than undergraduates, the grant would provide enough support to cover child care costs during graduate students’ class time.