DC wants to Drop Out - What should I do?

[Anonymous]

DC is a STEM student at a top 10 LAC finishing junior year. Quite Bright but completely unmotivated and is absolutely hating the culture of the school. Grades have been on a steady decline since freshman year but DC has had great internships every summer and will be interning at a top tech firm this summer out west (think silicon valley/seattle firms like GOOG, MS, FB, Amazon).

DC has received great reviews/recs from internships but is doing horribly in school, will probably be put on academic probation after this semester ends. DC only needs one more semester to graduate (on path to graduating a semester early) with the bare minimum credits for the STEM major but does not want to go back. Many interns end up getting a full time offer from the tech firm DC is interning at but DC is going to ask if the offer can be acted on right after finishing the internship and start full time without coming back to school.

I am completely against this and want DC to come back to finish and graduate before starting fulltime at the firm out west. I know compared to other fields, tech has a fair share of successful drop outs but regardless of grades I feel that sticking it out for one more semester and finishing strong will provide a sense of security for DC in terms of being a college graduate and having the degree in case sometime in the future DC needs to fall back on it for some reason or another.

This past year DC has wanted to drop out but has stuck with it but now is really serious about it. The administration wants to see DC stay and graduate but that just makes DC want to leave even more because DC is very cynical and feels they just want the tuition money.

I'm at a loss on how to convince DC to come back and atleast do respectably well in the last semester. I feel since it is so close to the finish line, dropping out now is just asinine.

How would you guys handle this?

[Anonymous]

Question for you OP:

How was your DC's education financed? I had a similar conversation with my oldest who was going into senior year and decided that college was not her cup of tea and she wanted to work out of an internship.

Normally if a kid says that college is not for them, I am like "fine, let's not waste the money then." But like my DD, your DC is at the point where a lot has been invested. It does not make sense pratically or financially to drop out with a semester left.

I reminded my DD that her student loan clock would start ticking the second she dropped out. She did not have a lot of loans, but enough to pay attention. So the nice money she thought was going to make was going to be "touched" up by a loan payment. And it would be close to impossible to get another loan if she decided to go back before the current loan was paid off. As a half-serious additional incentive , I told her that since she would not finish and the expecation was that we were investing in a degree - she needed to pay us back 50% of the tuition payments that we had paid on her behalf. We explained that was money we could have invested elsewhere and made a return. With my DD, she understood the financial practicalities. An emotional plea would have made her just dig in. Fast forward, she did finish and ended up getting a job in her desired field that paid a bit more than the post internship position would have.

GL

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking the tech firm will not be pleased if DC does not have a degree in hand as planned. Even though they like to play it all cool, they are very big on creds. Can he take the last semester's worth of classes out where the tech firm is located?

[Anonymous]

I teach at a university and I have had this conversation with many students who are thinking about this step. I think it is a tipping point kind of thing. There is a point early in college where a student who drops out and takes time off and then returns to school when he or she is older and more focused gets a lot of benefit from waiting until he or she is ready to finish this level of schooling. But, there comes a point after which it is better to finish the degree and then go on to other things. If your son puts in this one last semester and finishes up his undergraduate degree, he can go into the workforce without having to go back to being an undergraduate at some point later. If in the future he decides to go back to school, he can apply to graduate school, switch fields, go in a more focused direction, etc. In job interviews, he will never have to answer questions about why he didn't finish and after the first few jobs, few jobs can about what your undergraduate grades were.

Maybe sit him down and explain to him the value in finishing this part of his life so that he can go on to other things that he enjoys more and he never has to go back to college.

[Anonymous]

If DC is paying for it himself and using loans then it is his decision to make. You can give your opinion and perspective and encourage him to stay in it but ultimately he decides.

If you are financing his education, then no he doesn't drop out and waste 3 years of tuition that you paid. Assuming your intentions were to pay for him to get a degree and not just paying for him to have the experience of college, I would tell him if he drops out, he owes you back the tuition you paid. Create a plan with monthly payments, a reasonable interest rate and let him decide if taking on that debt is worth dropping out or not.

[Anonymous]

He may not need the degree now to get a job, but IT folks often move around over the years and that degree will come in handy in negotiations for future jobs down the road. He may also at some point decide he wants out of IT and having a degree gives him far more options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach at a university and I have had this conversation with many students who are thinking about this step. I think it is a tipping point kind of thing. There is a point early in college where a student who drops out and takes time off and then returns to school when he or she is older and more focused gets a lot of benefit from waiting until he or she is ready to finish this level of schooling. But, there comes a point after which it is better to finish the degree and then go on to other things. If your son puts in this one last semester and finishes up his undergraduate degree, he can go into the workforce without having to go back to being an undergraduate at some point later. If in the future he decides to go back to school, he can apply to graduate school, switch fields, go in a more focused direction, etc. In job interviews, he will never have to answer questions about why he didn't finish and after the first few jobs, few jobs can about what your undergraduate grades were.

Maybe sit him down and explain to him the value in finishing this part of his life so that he can go on to other things that he enjoys more and he never has to go back to college.

I'm another college instructor and I agree with all of this. Obviously, as a parent you can't MAKE DC finish, but DC is so close. That degree might not matter now, but it will matter at some point.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Thanks for all of your answers. To answer a few points, we've paid for all of DC's schooling in cash. We received roughly 8-10% of the total cost via need based grant and the rest we covered out of pocket.

To add to the hurt, We have a much older child of higher book intelligence but very introverted and a poor networker/social skills compared to DC. We spent less on the older child by far by sending to a public in-state.

DC who is 10 years younger uses the older child as an example of how useless college is because the older child has two degrees (grad degree from a Georgetown/Emory/JHU level school in a somewhat practical field) yet has been jobless for a very extended period of time.

DC would probably be happier finishing up credits at a school out west near where work is but it just wont match up with the LAC curriculum so that is not a practical solution.

I am hoping that going out west for 3 months will put DC in a better mindstate and will help in relieving any issues DC has with school.

If not it looks like the financial piece is something we have to discuss with DC even though we hate talking about it.

[Anonymous]

He has to pay you back for all the college tuition if he wants to drop out. He has one year to do it. Good luck, kid!

[Anonymous]

Can he work out a way to keep working remotely on some projects a part-time basis for the Silicon Valley outfit, so that he can stay motivated/connected to the "real world," even as he serves out his last 4 months of time on the college campus? Might help...

[Anonymous]

If your DC hates the school, can he visit another school for his last semester? I know people who have done this with study abroad. Maybe he can go close to his internship and do that part time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your DC hates the school, can he visit another school for his last semester? I know people who have done this with study abroad. Maybe he can go close to his internship and do that part time.

This is a good compromise. Perhaps his current school will accept the credits from elsewhere and he can just cross the finish line where he wants.

Ultimately, you can't control this. Its hard, but he's going to have to figure it out on his own.

[Anonymous]

Another Professor here, and one who works on labor issues, and you should really try to get him to finish. Not having a college degree could be a real problem down the line that may be difficult to fix. I would also think the school might be willing to work with him to find a way to complete the necessary credits -- sometimes you can do it as a Visiting student, but there usually has to be a reason, or there might be classes that will work for better him, even possibly some online courses depending on the school. But at this point, not finishing would be extreme and highly risky in the long-term.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If DC is paying for it himself and using loans then it is his decision to make. You can give your opinion and perspective and encourage him to stay in it but ultimately he decides.

If you are financing his education, then no he doesn't drop out and waste 3 years of tuition that you paid. Assuming your intentions were to pay for him to get a degree and not just paying for him to have the experience of college, I would tell him if he drops out, he owes you back the tuition you paid. Create a plan with monthly payments, a reasonable interest rate and let him decide if taking on that debt is worth dropping out or not.

How would OP enforce the "monthly payment plan"? It's not a legal contract?

[Anonymous]

OP- is your son depressed? Would he benefit from a visit to a psychiatrist to check this out?