When should parents intervene in college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless you choose community college, the competition and vetting of professors is very solid.

It's actually the opposite - community college profs are often great. And if they aren't they are fired.

University professors have tenure. They cannot be fired and they are often forced to teach lower level classes against their will when they would rather be doing their own research. Incompetence and hatred for students ensues. This is the state school experience in a nutshell. If you survive the experience you are a much stronger person for it.

Those middling high cost schools such as American University are very much the opposite of this. So, if you want to save your kid from bad teachers and experiences get out your checkbook and send them there.

Otherwise tip off your kid that they should aggressively drop and add classes.

I had some of the worst and incompetent on purpose profs in the early engineering years at UMCP - it was actually abusive because young people have no say or control or choice. It's strange to take people's money and give them incompetent jerks and huge class sizes. It does teach one survival but I still resent the incompetence - it's like stealing money from the state of Maryland. If you don't want to do your job, don't draw your salary.

[Anonymous]

At most decent universities, 75% of the "job" is research and publishing/grant writing. teaching is only a small portion of the job and one the schools often care least about.

It's no secret what kind of school a university is. Choose one that focuses on teaching if you want consistently good teaching profs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Academically? Never.

The place for parents to intervene is if there are concerns about their child's mental or physical health.

NP . I agree with this post overall; however, academic problems can be a sign of mental or physical ones. A student I know felt certain professors were "out to get" him and the issue in the end wasn't academic; it was a mental health issue. This is a very fine line for parents to walk sometimes, and it's hard to tell from a distance whether an issue is a case of just advising (if asked) a young adult who is navigating a professor-student interaction, or if it's a case of an academic problem being part of a larger problem. I just offer that as something to consider.

[Anonymous]

Let them know how to use Rate my Professor. My DC picks all his classes that way. Very occasionally there isn’t a choice but you go in with open eyes.

The only time we’ve intervened is when DC was hospitalized during the semester and needed some extensions. I had to coordinate with the Deans office because DC wasn’t able to and the Deans office took care of direct communication with the professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got talking with a friend today - our kids are both freshmen - about our new relationship with our kids now that they've (mostly) flown the nest. Given the cost of college today, what is the line between helicoptering and legitimate intervention at the college level?

As anyone who has been through college knows, some professors are simply incompetent or complete and total dirtbags. I'm not talking about professors who are tough and challenging, but those where no learning takes place. Or worse grading is arbitrary and capricious with no relation to the work performed. So you can stick the class out and hope you pass or drop it and spend another semester/summer retaking the class, hopefully with a decent professor.

On the one side of the argument, college students are adults and should fight their own battles, and that they have to learn that sometimes life isn't fair and to deal with it. And that is a good argument.

On the other side however, college has become almost prohibitively expensive. If no learning is taking place, that money is wasted and sets the student up for problems in follow on classes. If dropping adds an extra semester, that's a big cost. And of course the college has no problem encouraging kids to drop classes and add a semester or year = more money.

And that sets the stage for the dilemma: As a parent you want your kids to deal with their own issues. But also as a parent (and taxpayer in the case of public colleges) you don't want to waste thousands/tens of thousands due to professor Dinghead.

To me, this where as a parent you intervene but not with the professor but with your own child.

You explain that this happens in college and the decision is for them as a student to decide to continue the class if they can get a decent grade or drop it to not effect GPA.

For freshman especially, parents need to be involved in looking at their child's school calendar and proactively noting the drop/add dates and class withdraw dates and explaining how this works to their child and how to evaluate classes and whether to stay in or drop. Freshman do not automatically know how to deal with these issues.

It's easy to say that they are adults and can figure it out but when the cost is coming back to you as the parent then you have a vested interest in staying on top of it. You also have to be honest with your child and let them know that financially as long as you are responsible that these are decisions they have to run by you.

[Anonymous]

Let your student do the talking. If a college student has a grading issue with a professor, then let them talk to the professor about it.

Is your child slacking off? Partying too much? Not taking a few classes seriously? Not attending an 8 a.m. class often enough? Relying on a fellow student's notes instead of actually going to class? Waiting until the last minute to write a midterm paper?

Learning to advocate on your own behalf is a big part of growing up. Let your adult child fight his or her own battles. This isn't a cost issue; it's a maturity issue.

[Anonymous]

Bad grades.
Mental health issues.
Substance abuse.
Indiscriminate, irresponsible and risky behavior.
Unlawful behavior.
Abusive relationships.
Lack of direction.

[Anonymous]

The parents don't. It is up to the child to decide whether it is more important to take the class or to drop the class and take it again later. The parents, even if they are footing the bill, are not involved. You can advise your child what to do, but it is up to the child to decide what to do.

The only time that a parent should intervene when the child goes to college is if there is something that is threatening your child's health, mental, emotional or physical. Some issue where your child may not be completely able to handle the situation due to circumstances. For example, getting injured and needing assistance. A violent event happened on campus and your child is coming home, but due to emotional stress, may not be thinking particularly coherently, such that as a less experienced traveler, they may not be able to handle detailed travel arrangements while distracted. Otherwise, the point of college is for young adults to gain some maturity while learning skills and knowledge that will be helpful later in life. Parents stepping in to babysit them through their coursework or worse, intervene over a bad class, are not doing their child any favors and in fact contribute to the entire helpless millennial syndrome that is rampant these days.

[Anonymous]

+1 on the list. BTW - The best thing your kid can do if they're already at college is befriend a together older classmate. Despite parents best intentions most are not clued in enough to give good advice other than an initial talk about drop/change strategies if trouble comes calling. And for families in the application process, this is the type of issue that comes up if a school is only selected based on prestige. Some of the best known brands are great at research but terrible at handling undergraduates. If you do not have a kid that can catch on quick and navigate solo, it will be an expensive waste of 4 really important years.

[Anonymous]

Agree with 9:48 that interventions are with your kid (vs university or prof) and that workload management, add/drop, tutoring and other academic resources are all legit topics of conversation, if necessary, between parents and college-aged kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you choose community college, the competition and vetting of professors is very solid.

It's actually the opposite - community college profs are often great. And if they aren't they are fired.

University professors have tenure. They cannot be fired and they are often forced to teach lower level classes against their will when they would rather be doing their own research. Incompetence and hatred for students ensues. This is the state school experience in a nutshell. If you survive the experience you are a much stronger person for it.

Those middling high cost schools such as American University are very much the opposite of this. So, if you want to save your kid from bad teachers and experiences get out your checkbook and send them there.

Otherwise tip off your kid that they should aggressively drop and add classes.

I had some of the worst and incompetent on purpose profs in the early engineering years at UMCP - it was actually abusive because young people have no say or control or choice. It's strange to take people's money and give them incompetent jerks and huge class sizes. It does teach one survival but I still resent the incompetence - it's like stealing money from the state of Maryland. If you don't want to do your job, don't draw your salary.

1. "It's actually the opposite - community college profs are often great. And if they aren't they are fired." This is not true. Some community college profs are excellent, but there is a greater percentage of mediocre or unmotivated (can't/isn't interested in keeping up/publishing) profs in cc.

2. "University professors have tenure. They cannot be fired and they are often forced to teach lower level classes against their will when they would rather be doing their own research." Many of your child's profs are assistant profs (tenure track, but not tenured yet). Profs are closely monitored, and student feedback DOES matter. A prof who receives consistently poor feedback is never going to get tenure, so the profs who end up teaching the lower level courses (usually these are assistant profs or grad students) are very invested in ensuring that their instruction is of top quality. The best tenured profs are teaching upper level courses in their specialty, and their expertise and interest in discussing their area usually ensures a pretty solid student experience.

You don't know much about university administration, and you are clearly not a college professor yourself.

And, OP, you will make not only yourself, but also your child, look foolish and unhinged if you try to intervene at the college level. If your child is telling you her grades are poor because her prof is incompetent, this probably means your child let the ball drop and messed up by missing too many classes/not keeping up with work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you choose community college, the competition and vetting of professors is very solid.

It's actually the opposite - community college profs are often great. And if they aren't they are fired.

Community college professors and adjuncts live and die by their student evaluations (either written evaluations or implied evaluations indicated by course enrollments). Professors learn that Job 1 is to make students happy by giving them the grades that want, not to ones they earn.

[Anonymous]

Parents shouldn't create or add to an environment of stress where one or a few dropped classes is a travesty.

[Anonymous]

So I was at a parent orientation session when one of my kids was entering college. A man got up and gave the speech about allowing your adult sons and daughters to navigate their own way, this is a learning experience, they should advocate for themselves and so on. No one can disagree with that. Then he said he'd seen two generations of freshman classes come through, and this was the first time they had to create a "parent liaison" office to deal with parents who helicopter and want to do their kids stuff for them.

So a dad in the audience said maybe it's because colleges have stopped being reasonable, and students are sometimes unable to get results with their reasonable requests, and so parents have more and more had to use their stronger voices of authority to right wrongs. You could have heard a pin drop. Because yeah. If reasonable student requests were respected, parents (who usually don't want to get involved, frankly) wouldn't have to step in.

I stepped in a couple times, interestingly, for computer glitches that happened and the university acknowledged my son's schedule was dumped accidentally, and another son was removed from the choice dorm and placed in the worst dorm (oops, sorry, we see he did register and pay the deposit on the first day the registration opened, and through a computer glitch he and the other first 20 students to register were also dumped. We can try to work him in after school starts. Um no, actually, that's not going to work).

So yeah. After my kids tried and hit closed doors advocating for themselves, I did it. Because I was listened to.

"Well, it sounds like you won't be able to resolve this issue. Please transfer me to someone who can". Done.

Had the universities in these cases treated my kids like the adults they were, I wouldn't have had to step up and demand they be treated fairly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you choose community college, the competition and vetting of professors is very solid.

It's actually the opposite - community college profs are often great. And if they aren't they are fired.

Community college professors and adjuncts live and die by their student evaluations (either written evaluations or implied evaluations indicated by course enrollments). Professors learn that Job 1 is to make students happy by giving them the grades that want, not to ones they earn.

I don't think you can paint the professors with a broad brush like that. From what I've seen, CC professors often do a great job of not only breaking down and teaching the material but making themselves available for help during their office hours. I'm sure that isn't true of "all" CC professors, but it is often true of them.

When I was in college some of my favorite professors taught large Intro classes in lecture halls filled with 100s of people. I also had professors in upper level courses that knew their material inside and out - the passion for their subject was evident. Some of my worst experiences were with grad student teachers but that may have just been my bad luck.

At any rate, I think you have to go in with an open mind and be prepared to adapt yourself to different teaching styles that is for sure.