There are three routes to becoming a daycare owner: start a program of your own, buy one that already exists, or buy into a franchise.
Whichever you choose, the same gatekeeper sits at the end of it — your state's child care licensing agency — and what you personally must qualify for depends on your state, the kind of program you run and the role you hold in it.
Here is how the three paths work, and how to choose between them.
What are the paths to owning a daycare?
People reach daycare ownership through three different doors, and each one starts a different clock.
Start a program from scratch. You pick the vehicle — a family child care home or a child care center — find the space, and apply to your state child care licensing agency.
In states that take part in the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program, the agency must inspect the operation before it licenses it, and at least once a year unannounced after that (45 CFR 98.42(b)(2)(i), the ACF rule).
Homes and centers are licensed as different categories, so which rulebook applies depends on which vehicle you pick — a distinction worth making before you sign a lease.
The home route is worth a hard look precisely because it thinned out in the federal count.
The federal Office of Child Care counted a 48% drop in licensed small family child care homes and a 21% drop in licensed large homes between 2005 and 2017, while licensed centers grew 2% — more than 97,000 licensed home closures over that stretch.
Fewer homes and barely more centers was the 2005–2017 trend, so check your state's current supply before you commit.
Buy an operating program. Instead of building, you acquire one — a center or a home already in operation.
The diligence list looks different: the facility, the staff's qualifications, the program's standing with the licensing agency, the books.
Whether the license transfers with the sale or the buyer must apply for a new one is set by the state's own rules — our research found no national rule on it — so the licensing agency, not the seller, is the authority on that question.
Buy a franchise. You open under an established brand and run its systems.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the arrangement plainly: at chains or franchises, the director must meet the parent organization's standards.
The brand's standards come on top of whatever your state requires.
Wherever you land, the job you are taking on is the one described in the childcare center owner overview — the day-to-day of running a program as a business.
Do owners need a degree or credential?
Daycare owner requirements are really two questions: what your state requires of the program's license, and what it requires of the people in named roles.
The state child care licensing agency answers both, and its rules attach to the roles a program names — director, lead teacher, caregiver — not only to whoever holds the deed.
Owner education requirements, in other words, can be role requirements in disguise: an owner who directs their own program steps into the director rules.
On the home route, the person applying for the license has to qualify too: Alabama, for example, requires family day care home applicants to hold a high school diploma or GED, be at least 18, submit current pediatric CPR and first aid, and complete 24 clock hours of child care training before initial licensing.
So what degree do you need to be a daycare owner?
There is no answer that covers the whole country, because qualification rules come from each state's rulebook — and the director rulebooks the researchers read allow non-degree routes: combinations of credentials, college credits and experience, not only degrees.
Texas is a worked example.
For a center licensed for 13 or more children, one of the director qualification routes in 26 TAC §746.1015 is a CDA or Certified Child-Care Professional credential, plus six college credit hours in management, plus at least two years of experience in a licensed child care center (Texas HHSC Child Care Regulation).
No bachelor's degree on that route — and each state's rulebook writes its own list.
Head Start runs on federal rules instead.
A Head Start director hired after November 7, 2016 must hold at least a baccalaureate degree plus experience in supervising staff, fiscal management and administration (45 CFR 1302.91(b), the Office of Head Start standard).
That qualification lives in the Program Performance Standards rather than the Head Start Act, and the August 2026 proposal to rescind and replace those standards would remove it — as of early October 2026 the rewrite is a proposal, not a final rule.
Beyond licensing, our research turned up two national credentials for the people who run programs.
Aim4Excellence, from the McCormick Institute, is an online National Director Credential of nine self-paced modules, accepted by 28 state professional development systems.
The National Administrator Credential (NAC), from NECPA, is a 45-hour course organized into 10 competency sections, delivered on-site in four to five days or online.
Whether either satisfies the requirement your state attaches to the role you hold is the state's call — our research did not verify how any state treats the two credentials for licensing purposes.
How state credentials work is its own subject: see what a childcare director credential is and the state-by-state daycare director requirements.
Confirm the rules where you will open
Should you direct first?
You do not have to direct first, but the job teaches the job.
The BLS duties list for center directors reads like an owner-operator's week: supervising teachers and childcare workers, hiring and training staff, providing professional development, setting and communicating policies, developing educational programs, meeting with parents and staff about progress, and preparing budgets.
Those are the muscles ownership uses.
The owner-director combination is normal enough that BLS describes it in one line: at independently owned centers, directors follow the owner's guidelines — and sometimes the director is the owner.
In 2025, 72% of all preschool and childcare center directors worked in child daycare services and 6% were self-employed.
The employed director seats are where you would practice.
Directing is also the paid apprenticeship.
Directors earned a median of $59,300 a year nationally in the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (SOC 11-9031, education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare); inside the child care services industry (NAICS 6244) it was $58,090.
Owner income is a different animal, and a harder one to measure: our research found no national figure for family child care providers' earnings, and federal OEWS wage data excludes the self-employed, so no OEWS number describes an owner-operator.
The owner-side figures live on how much a daycare owner makes.
Two honest caveats before you treat directing as a layover.
The role is demanding in its hours: most preschool and childcare center directors work full time, some more than 40 hours a week, on site while the center is open, with early mornings and late evenings — large centers stagger directors and assistant directors so someone is always there.
And the field is not expanding: BLS projects director employment to decline 3% from 2025 to 2035, with about 5,200 openings a year, all from replacement needs — which is precisely the turnover a future owner can learn inside.
Before you commit to a lease, audit yourself against BLS's shortlist of director qualities: business, communication, interpersonal, leadership and organizational skills.
The employment ladder into the chair — and what each rung pays — is laid out in the childcare director career path.
Start vs buy vs franchise
Same destination, different risks, different bills.
Here is how the decision actually differs by path.
Starting buys you a blank page.
You choose the vehicle, the location and the program, then qualify all of it through the licensing agency — including the pre-licensure inspection and, in CCDF-participating states, comprehensive background checks for every child care staff member (45 CFR 98.43).
On cost, our research verified no national start-up figure for an independent center or home, so treat any single number you encounter with caution; the honest inputs are your local facility market and your state's process.
Buying trades the blank page for an audit.
You are underwriting someone else's facility, staff and reputation, and the licensing question changes shape: whether the license transfers with the sale or the buyer must apply for a new one is set by the state's own rules, so ask the agency early.
Franchising buys a system — and it is the only one of the three whose price tags our research could verify, because franchisors publish them themselves.
The Goddard School's franchise site lists an estimated initial investment of $1,003,500 to $1,503,000 on a build-to-suit lease, $1,736,500 to $5,032,000 on a retrofit lease, or $5,493,500 to $8,908,000 if you buy land and build, plus a $135,000 initial franchise fee and a 7% royalty.
Those are the franchisor's own figures, posted referencing its 2026 franchise disclosure document (FDD) — Item 7 of the current FDD is the authoritative version.
Goddard describes a network of over 665 schools.
Other brands post some figures of their own.
The Learning Experience's franchise page lists a $60,000 franchise fee, a $650k–$800k total investment and a 7% royalty; it uses a turnkey real-estate model, and our research did not confirm whether that range excludes real estate, so don't compare it directly with Goddard's.
Primrose states an $80,000 initial franchise fee.
Our research did not verify Primrose's or Kiddie Academy's total-investment ranges.
One operational question we could not confirm either way: whether franchisors require the owner to be on site.
That is an FDD-and-reference-calls question, and it matters most if you plan to hire a director and stay out of the building.
However you enter, someone will always be qualifying the program: the state, through licensing and inspection, and — on the franchise route — the brand, whose standards the director must meet on top of the state's.
Next steps: from decision to opening day
Which path you pick decides which checklist you run, and the operator's checklist — the licensing application, facility standards, staffing, background checks, the pre-licensure inspection — has a home of its own: our guide to how to start a daycare walks through the opening steps.
If the home-based route is the one pulling at you, the family child care provider guide covers that career directly.
Career information, not licensing or legal advice — qualification rules, licensing steps and franchise figures change. Confirm with the state child care licensing agency where you plan to operate, and with the current franchise disclosure document before you sign anything.