After DD1 committed to Boston University in 2011, we went to the freshman orientation weekend. 300 parents were in the room when the Dean of Students lit a bomb under the parents by saying that legally, they are not allowed to disclose grades, enrollment, or finances to the parents UNLESS the student agrees and signs a waiver. 300 heads simultaneously exploded: “Are you telling me that my 18 year old has to be responsible for tracking and paying tuition payments, and I don’t even get to know if he is atttending class??” “Yes”. It was clear that this reaction was expected: it was actually a little amusing to watch him step back and allow the explosion to occur. I knew this from reading CC, so I raised my hand and said “This surprised me too. We simply went to our daughter, and informed her that if she signed a waiver we would pay the bills. If she didn’t, we would not. It was completely her choice. It was not a matter of not trusting her: it was simply a method of tracking that our large checks were being credited appropriately, and there were no bureaucratic snags.”
We only required grades for the first semester. She did so well that we never asked for grades again, but did insist that she continue to sign the waiver so we could see her financial status and her enrollment status. By the senior year, we didn’t even do that, as we had made her responsible for writing the checks for her education. Worked out well for us.
One more (small) piece of advice for kids who are accepting a school that requires flights. The minute DD accepted BU, we researched which carrier had the best flights. It turned out that Jet Blue was the best choice. We started using a JetBlue credit card for EVERYTHING, and built up those mileage points. She did fly Southwest the first part of freshman year as they allowed us to carry luggage free.
I never asked my kids to sign a waiver allowing me access. I do however require that they show me an unofficial transcript of the past semester’s grades before I write the check for the coming semester. They are also good at proactively discussing course selection with me, not because I want to stipulate what they take (zero interest in that) but we all want to ensure that they are on track to graduate in 4 years to avoid unnecessary and expensive extra payments.
For my oldest DD, I didn’t ask for a waiver but did ask to see Grades after every semester, which she showed me.
For my youngest DD, she requested more help during the application/onboarding process and let me have her login for access to grades etc. I dont really look at them but I could.
@doschicos, I approach it the same way you do. I will admit though, I was very frustrated when after my S graduated, and I needed him to get some financial info. For some reason, saw money had been wasted on late fees BC he failed to stay on top of things. I HATE wasting money on things like late fees. But that phase of life is over with that kid now.
Both of our kids signed the grades waver. We paid for everything, and we expected to be informed about performance. They also informed us of which courses they were planning to take, but we didn’t make any input into this.
Health and healthcare was a different matter; we considered that to be within a zone of privacy that the kids needn’t disclose unless they needed help of some kind.
“One more (small) piece of advice for kids who are accepting a school that requires flights…”
We signed up for the frequent flier program on the appropriate airline as soon as my daughter applied (it would be the same flights to the same airport for 3 of the 5 that she applied to, and the same airline for a fourth). We also made sure that she was aware of “ease of getting there” as one of many things to consider in deciding where to go.
We also visited her top choices again after she was accepted. One reason is to get another view of the campus when she knows for sure that she could go there if she wanted to. Another reason is to have it fresh in her mind how long it will take to get there.
I remember my freshman son warning me that the next quarterly room and board bill would include an extra charge because he had lost his room key and needed a new one. His U made it easy for parents to pay without any information waivers. I think there was something about where to send bills and we had them sent to our home address. His meal plan was pay as you go with money deposited to an account- the timing and amount determined by choice. Anyone could put money into his account without accessing it. A couple of times he had to pay the higher cash prices because he forgot to ask us to put more money in.
Later on we allowed him access to our credit card- especially for GRE et al online payments (one way to find out where your kid applies to grad schools is to check charges…). He heard about any Subway charges! After the first year or so we never found out his grades but he must have done okay to get his honors in his major… Our son was very uncommunicative. He is also frugal still so wasting money (even though plenty) was not an issue.
With the thread title I thought this was to be about all of the start up expenses for college. There are tons of one time only purchases for setting up life away from home. Bedding, shower caddy…
Wow, I guess I’m an outlier. I didn’t ask my kids to sign a waiver. I didn’t ask to see their grades. My parents gave me that privacy, and I gave it to my kids as well.
@katliamom you’re not alone. If I so distrusted my student to keep me informed about grades that I needed full access to their portals, I’d think that they might not actually be ready to go away to college. D knows what her GPA must be to keep her scholarship (she’s well above it), and as in HS, regularly checks her grades and lets us know. Her college has a parents portal for payment purposes.
My kids’ schools both have a parent portal to pay bills from. (Yes, the kids have to give permission for us to access it, but really why wouldn’t they? It’s how we pay tuition!)
As for grades, I never thought about “demanding” to see them, nor have they ever thought of preventing me from knowing them. They always share them with us as a matter of normal discussion of what is going on in our lives.
That said, if they did try to prevent me from seeing them, I would probably take some kind of action.
I had them sign the waiver because I needed access to their bills and to be able to discuss them with the FA office. I spent much more time making sure everything was applied to their accounts than they did. One daughter has to change her password every 4-5 months and I never set up a parent account, so she just gives me the new password. She ‘threatened’ not to give it to me and I said fine, then she would have to do all the financial stuff herself and that included her taxes. Oh no, she didn’t want that.
I can look at their grades but does it really matter? They are already in the books.
Same issue goes for health care stuff in addition to grades and tuition bills.
We had it set up so we could get to everything if needed, even though we rarely did. If you do have a situation come up where you need to get access to something or make a decision about something, the last thing you need in such situation is to get the institutional B.S. that you are unauthorized and only your kid is instead.
Simplest way to handle this stuff is to just ask your kid to give you the passwords for the college online systems. My kids had no problem doing that – that’s not like asking to see their personal social media activities. It is just so you can keep tabs on the admin stuff.
“I can look at their grades but does it really matter? They are already in the books.”
It would matter if a problem developed, yes. Better to discuss it, if it existed to 1) make sure any problem didn’t slide into the next semester and 2) know whether it would result in needing to take step to prevent graduation date from slipping. Being a full pay parent of kids attending private schools, I’m not looking to pay beyond 4 years barring medical reasons.
The privacy thing isn’t new. It existed in the 90’s when I was in college. I remember it being one of the reasons I was glad no family members of mine were paying for my college. That threat just feels like such a power play. I never signed permission for my parents to have any information, mostly because of the parents I overheard being obnoxious about it.
Mine never asked and I also showed them all of my grades.
I won’t threaten my kids into signing permission but it would be pretty out of character if they didn’t jump to volunteer to sign it just for convenience. I mean, they often text me to ask me to check their emails and grades (high school/middle school) when they don’t have immediate internet access. They’ve never felt they needed to hide anything and I’ve never felt I need to exert my authority over their information. I don’t see why that would change with college.
Our kids tell us without our even asking. No invasion of privacy bc they like to talk about school.
Fwiw, in order for them to qualify for the good student discount on our car insurance, I have to give a copy of their unofficial transcript to our insurance company. I’d see their grades anyway.
D had to authorize me to open an account that would allow me to receive and pay her Dartmouth bills. Needless to say, that was not an issue on which we had a difference of opinion, and it was a one-time thing that covered all four years. I think first quarter grades might have arrived without a waiver, but we never asked for one or needed to, since she was always pleased to share how she was doing. Health insurance required a yearly waiver to stick with our Blue Shield in lieu of the college’s plan, but the confidentiality there was handled within the HMO and had nothing to do with the college.
As far as waivers are concerned, I will add the advice from some prior threads that you consider getting a power of attorney and/or a health care directive, God forbid that something drastic would happen, but it can and has, and having those documents can greatly simplify your access to doctors and medical information and give you the right to make decisions without needing to deal with hospital red tape (very legitimate and well-meaning red tape, but red tape nonetheless) at a time of stress. You can search the forum for “power of attorney” to find the (many) prior threads and some very telling personal experiences.