@Himom @rhododendron : It was the daughter’s password. She is the one responsible for its use. The advisor might well have violated something or other by talking to you about it. I do not find that odd at all. Persnickety maybe and definitely bureaucratic red tape, but just someone trying to play within the rules.
Yes, @AboutTheSame, persnickety bureaucratic red tape. My post was meant as a heads-up that the full access may not be allowed.
Back to the original topic, I just looked through D’s school’s editing policy. The gist of it is that the school encourages asking for feedback from additional readers, specifically including professors, the writing center, other students and family members, as long as the feedback does not include any rewriting by the reader. The instructions specifically suggest that the reader circle grammatical and spelling mistakes and sections that are unclear. D has never asked me to proofread anything for college. Since that has always been my approach with my kids’ writing, it would not be a problem. H’s presentations and documents - just send me a copy, I’ll make most of the changes myself.
In a tangentially related topic: I noticed that you spelled advisor with an o, which is how I had initially spelled it before my spellcheck gave me the red squiggle. According to grammarist.com: Adviser and advisor are both accepted spellings of the noun meaning one who advises or counsels. There is no difference between them. But adviser, the older version, is listed as the primary spelling in most dictionaries, and it is about five times as common as advisor in current news publications from throughout the English-speaking world. In the U.S. and Canada, advisor is commonly used in official job titles, but adviser is still generally preferred over advisor in North America, and advisor is only marginally more common in American and Canadian English than in other varieties of English. I just added advisor to my spellcheck dictionary.
Private colleges may have their own privacy policy, but according to FERPA, as long as your kid is a dependent on your tax returns and you are responsible for their tuitions then you have the right to their academic information. I believe some schools like Colgate still send students’ grades to the parents.
You do not have the right, but a school is allowed to share with parents if they choose. FAQ from DOE website.:
- If I am a parent of a college student, do I have the right to see my child's education records, especially if I pay the bill? As noted above, the rights under FERPA transfer from the parents to the student, once the student turns 18 years old or enters a postsecondary institution at any age. However, although the rights under FERPA have now transferred to the student, a school may disclose information from an "eligible student's" education records to the parents of the student, without the student's consent, if the student is a dependent for tax purposes. Neither the age of the student nor the parent's status as a custodial parent is relevant. If a student is claimed as a dependent by either parent for tax purposes, then either parent may have access under this provision. (34 CFR § 99.31(a)(8).)
Here is an aspect that really gets to me.
I have the parent portal to pay tuition. Child one changes majors to one with fewer fees. When it comes time for refund they would only send the check to my child because I hadn’t set up an electronic account in case of refunds. I have since done that and they will now refund to the account the money came from
Child two, I now have the heads up. Pay tuition. Things change and I have a refund coming. School will not allow me to set up the electronic account for refunds from the same account from which the tuition was paid. Refund account must be in the child’s name. What???
They had no problem accepting money from me but refused to refund it to me. Had to go to child.
Interesting…I had a refund from my S’s college and they gave him the choice of location to send it as well as who to make the check out to. Of course, technically it was his choice (so still along the lines of them accepting money from me, but refunding him).
Apparently my middle of the night brain was confused last night. #41, the second two paragraphs were appropriate for the editing thread.
^^ I’ve had a college insist on a refund in the child’s name too, as if I hadn’t paid the original bills. Doctors’ offices have done the same thing when we were double charged.
I did set up daughter’s refunds to go to my account. We could elected for refunds to go to a bank card (but there was a service charge for using it), an ACH transfer, or a hard check. I picked the ACH transfer to my account,and it has worked out for the best as she has, a few times, received large refunds that usually had another payment required. First year she had to switch to the sorority meal plan, so I had to get the funds from my account and pay another bill for her. This year all her money came to me, and then I had to pay the study abroad program. She was already gone when the money came and the bill was due.
I have had all of my kids’ passwords. I pay the bills. With my D, I obsessively studied her grades every week her first semester. Now, with Techson17, his grades in HS are online and accessible but I never check them. I doubt I will when he is in college.
One thing I will do differently is give Techson17 a credit card. I didn’t give one to D and she was unable to get one on her own after she graduated. She had to get one jointly with me until she had built up a work record.
I don’t recall either kid signing a FERPA waiver. We pay tuition through a third party that spreads payments over 10 months to make them less painful. If they mess up, or there is an extra charge, the colleges send us an email.
I’ve never seen a transcript for either kid, but they tell us their grades. We don’t require this, however.
We required them to sign the HIPAA waiver for mental health reasons.