Well, I concede that some places are going to offer higher value for what you pay (and there are plenty of places to do the research about that). My point is just that people are often too quick to dismiss the cost of staffing. All the hugely lucrative businesses of the last few decades became lucrative by figuring out how to reduce labor cost, either by automation, offshoring, or in some cases off-loading the work to the consumer (no white glove attendants to fill your gas tank, right?).
I would not want to be in the business of running a university. The only ones running a large profit are scams that offer worthless certificates.
When our oldest went to public flagship, we all went (we are just a 4 person family) to help with move in. The transition to #1 going away and leaving younger brother at home was a big change for the family dynamic and it felt right for all of us to be part of it. That was the last time more than one parent drove to help with move in/move out, and kid took care of several moves on his own. We never ever spoke to a professor or administrator or anyone else at his public flagship.
Second kid moved into LAC early for fall sports pre-season training, and with team obligations starting right away, we arrived night before so he could move in right away and be ready for team meetings by mid-morning. After year 1, some combination of parent and older brother went because there were no elevators, it was always hot, and the roommate wasn’t there yet bc wasn’t on the same team. We never spoke to a professor or administrator unless kid introduced us to them while passing by on campus.
For both kids, I would certainly offer advice or strategies if they asked for thoughts about how to handle specific challenges, but I wasn’t otherwise involved in the details of their lives.
Yep, the posts I see go something like this: “My student had straight “A’s” through high school, and they got a 14% on the chem test. This is absolutely ridiculous; for what I’m paying, they should be getting better professors. The professor isn’t teaching; I’m emailing the Department Head, Provost, Dean…” I went back through FB posts; usually it’s with classes like Calc for Engineers, Stats and Dynamics, Chem for Eng/Bio Chem or organic chem. Each post has 30+ responses of similar calls-to-action. Digging a little deeper it usually boiled down to one of 4 things: 1) they didn’t do the work (per my D20’s observation of classmates), 2) they didn’t read the syllabus and professor emails, 3) they were never exposed to student/self led teaching styles in high school and haven’t yet developed the necessary organization and study skills, or 4) it’s just a freakin’ hard @$$ class. Nothing new, but the organized groups of parents sending admins emails must be getting a bit overwhelming for colleges. I don’t think it’s a majority of parents, just a very vocal minority on the FB parent pages.
There was a petition set up for parents to sign for the university to fire a tenured chemistry professor, and so many signed! It helped me to be able to let my daughter know that her 65 was a top grade, it would be curved, but to attend all office hours, and take all practice exams, and hire a tutor for the next semester. She learned how to self teach in those classes, a skill that was necessary when everything went online. Not everything learned in college is out of a book. He retired after her second semester.
Our S made a 71% on what he described as the hardest test at Stanford. The class was also the most highly attended class taught by high-visibility professor. Simply getting a “passing” grade was considered a badge of honor. He still has the graded test.
The typical metrics would be higher retention and lower time to graduation. Those in turn will correlate to better student engagement on campus, better GPA’s, better exit plans and a more robust alumnae relationship but let’s just stick to the easy metrics of retention and time to grad. It should be a no-brainer that those students with families who eagerly attend the programming that colleges provide are revealed to be more supportive of their child’s college journey at that school than families who are indifferent, non-supportive or who request them to take time off for whatever reason. Family programming attracts those very families to the school. They know that college decisions aren’t made in a vacuum and that parents are a huge source of emotional as well as financial support for their student. And if sibs are along for the ride - so much the better. Colleges love it when siblings apply, although at that point the financial benefits start to kick in LOL.
Colleges can set boundaries. They are in the business of education, so parents who participate in webinars and info sessions and speaker series aren’t necessarily helicoptering but are partaking of the benefits that the institutions have to offer for further education. Parents who attend Move-In and Orientation but then leave when they are supposed to and only show up again when they are supposed to (concert performance, Move-Out, Graduation) are probably just there to support their kid. From what I’ve observed, parents do a lot more helicoptering off-site than on.
Summer before my daughter’s senior year of high school, the AP Physics C teacher retired. District had to find a replacement so they brought in someone with a decent amount of teaching experience (tho not as much as they teacher who retired) but a lot of science experience. Had a masters and PhD in some combo of physics and chemistry. Masters in education too. And industry experience as well.
Talked with him at the open house at the beginning of the school year and he was incredibly bright and knew his science stuff. He made it known to the kids in the class that if you got an A in his class, you would get a 5 on the AP exam. If you got a B in his class, you would get a 4 on the AP exam. C would be a 3. Sounded reasonable to me.
My daughter got a B on the first exam. I talked with her and said she needed to figure out what she didn’t understand which would require more work on her part. She got As on the remaining exams and an A for the first quarter. But several of the all/mostly As kids got Bs or Cs in that first quarter. Wasn’t acceptable to those kids or their parents. Study more? Work harder? No. They pressured the district to fire the teacher.
So the district brings in another teacher who gives all of those kids As for the next quarter and As on semester final for As for the semster and As for the second semester. Parents can breath a big sigh of relief that the ineffective teacher was removed. LOL Those kids all proceeded to get 2s and 3s on the AP exam. Couple of those kids will/have graduated this spring from the T20 schools the “elite or bust” people here crave so much.
This happened this year with AP macroeconomics, but the great teacher retired (my 3 oldest had him fir macro and micro and he was a favorite teacher, and got 4’s/5’s on the exams). My daughter took the AP exam yesterday knowing she wasn’t taught what she needed to know by the new teacher, she has an A in the class but says she really didn’t learn anything.
My parents did not accompany me to college but my dad and I did drive my car out to grad school. As a former academic he was very curious to see my university and we arrived a day early and toured the campus which was fun. He also left that night after I was settled in - well before my own orientation and meeting my classmates and so forth. My dad also did my accepted student tours with me and I believe he did for my sibs as well. I enjoyed trading perceptions with him and found it useful in helping me form a good judgement on which school to attend.
I have friends who sent their kid to do her own accepted students’ visits, so this 17 year old was flying all over the country and figuring this out totally on her own. However, once she was settled on her college they were a constant fixture there for four years! (and they lived several hours away by plane . . . ). Then, her entire family turned her first summer study abroad into a family vacay, and her 2nd one into a trip for mom and mom’s friend. The mom would also post a ton of pics on her FB page from her daughters’ college - all with other moms of other kids. They were like a clique on campus. SMH - I would have transferred.
Part of the problem may be that the parents are just genuinely thrilled for their kids. Perhaps that translates into a bit of vicarious living for some of them. After all, college today is just better than it was in my generation - better res halls, advising, career help, study abroad, etc.
There’re consequences for HS grade inflation. If the kid didn’t test well, there must be something wrong with the test. If s/he didn’t get good grades in college, there must be something wrong with the professors. Too many had inflated grades in HS and too many think they went to “very competitive” HSs. The fact of the matter is most HSs in US are too easy and give out As like candies.
Did anyone point out that in the OP thread, the parents seem to be idealized because they treated the OP as an independent rather than a child EXCEPT for the monthly $100 allowance that is now worth well over $400 in today’s dollars? LOL - that’s an interesting kind of autonomy from parents. It is cheaper for the rest of us to stay and help make the bed.
Sharing with permission so that others may be helped is laudable. But the instances I recall involve a mom freaking out about her “isolated” kid (kid was fine - my kid shared a house and discreetly checked on him) and another who posted name and pics of her kid with all sorts of personal info. I just think it’s wrong to do that. I realize these parents are feeling anxious and looking for support. Just not sure they are going about getting that the correct way.
The most “involved” parents we know, who seem to visit their D at least 3-4 times each semester, and attend lots of sorority events etc (even though the college is a 2 hour flight away) openly admit that they are living vicariously through her, because neither of them went to college.
Basically more like college grading standards. Probably on average, A students in high school become A to B students in college, and B students in high school become B to C students in college.
So of a teacher in an AP course gave grades by reasonable high school standards, A students would get 4-5 scores on the AP test, B students would get 3-4 scores, and C students would get 2-3 scores, on average.
I always knew (assumed?) that a 3 on your AP translated to a C (passing grade) as far as the college was concerned, a 4 to a B and a 5 to an A. That was why most colleges wouldn’t take anything less than a 3. My AP teachers at the time graded this way and in those days they wouldn’t accept anyone into the class who wasn’t expected to get at least a 3 on the test. My AP Euro teacher would advise those who didn’t do well in the course not to take the test. It was almost a badge of shame so was handled very discreetly. This was 1981, long before AP became so popular and the disconnect between grades and AP scores so pronounced.
My kids’ high school had an English Lang/Lit instructor who wouldn’t have them read “canon” for the test because he wouldn’t teach to it. He wanted the students to acquire the proper skills for real, which he believed would serve them well not on just on the AP test but in college as well. He was known for being a very tough grader; but my kids were able to double up on their non-STEM gen ed in college with little difficulty thanks to him. His grading scale definitely mapped an A to a 5, a B to a 4, etc.
Back in prehistoric times, I remember my AP chemistry teacher warning students that the class probably wouldn’t prepare them for the AP exam, though maybe there was some kind of qualification like unless you put in extra work. Actually, I didn’t do very well in that course, but took the AP exam anyway and somehow got a 4. It was a surprise to me. There were large parts where I am sure I choked. There was one problem on buffer solutions and I thought “OMG! This is one I know how to do!” (it’s just algebra) so I imagine that helped. I got a 3 on the AP French exam, again to my very pleasant surprise. It could have been a 1 as far as I knew. Oddly, the credits I got for APs were in reverse order of score. My only 5 was Calculus AB and that was worth only one course. French knocked out having any foreign language requirement at all in college.
Every family is different and everyone has to do what is best for them and their family. I think we are focusing too much on extremes here. Yes, I’ve seen some way over the top helicopter parents, but I’d say they’re the exception and not the rule. I’d also say some parents are really helicoptary (made up word) and overprotective about certain things, but not about others. I see plenty of parents who don’t let their kids get anything less then an A, but they don’t care if their kid isn’t a nice person or if their kid does drugs…
When I went to college back in the day, my parents came along to help me move in. They even stayed in a hotel nearby, but that was because my dad didn’t want to turn right back around and drive home. After they helped me move into my dorm, they went to their hotel and did their own thing and headed home the next morning. My parents were not overprotective, but they were always there if I needed anything. Also, I was paying the majority of my college expenses, like many of my peers…maybe that is the difference?
With my kids we helped them both move in and we stayed in a hotel nearby. S came along when we moved D in, he had nowhere else to go and it’s handy to have one extra person to help with move in!
Wow! 3-4 times each semester? That’s a lot! Our kids were both 8 hours away by car. We couldn’t afford to fly out that frequently and I wouldn’t want to do the 8 hour drive that much. And hotel stays certainly add up too!
Yikes! I hope that’s not common. I used to try to push my kids more though I never berated them for bad grades (they internalized it anyway). Neither of them seem interested in drugs. I mean, I don’t think they even approve when I have a drink. Neither of them shows the slightest interest in it. (Maybe that’s the key: be such a dad about it that drinking isn’t even cool.) And yeah, I think they’re both “nice” kids. If I ever thought they were bullying anyone or showing elitism, I’d have something to say about that. I worry more that I might say things that sound judgmental about our neighbors and it could rub off on them.