And it isn’t just knowing the student got a B in Intro to Psych, for example. The willingness to show grades speaks well, and a parent may or may not even look. Being permitted to see grades does not necessarily mean the parent is checking grades daily. Plus the knowledge that a parent might look could be an incentive to try harder.
We left it up to our son to decide, and he decided to let us have access (the portal only shows midterm and final grades). But he knows he has the ability to retract that access at any time if we misbehave and hover. So far we’ve managed to keep our distance, avoid helicoptering, and let him make (and solve) his own mistakes. We also let him set the pace for how and when to keep in touch.
I don’t look at the grades to be mean or withhold money. For one daughter,I didn’t look until way into the summer, and was pretty shocked to see she was not doing well in her major. When we talked about it, she said she was unhappy and wanted to change her major but that meant giving up her scholarship. She also needed to pick her classes very carefully because those underwhelming grades also meant she could lose her merit scholarship if she didn’t protect her gpa. Basically, she changed her entire schedule at the start of school, which meant she had no advantage for early registration.
Parents are still advisers to their kids. No one would suggest that a GC shouldn’t look at grades to advise. It is not like a parent portal in high school as profs aren’t posting grades daily. I don’t think I can see anything until the final grades are posted.
I have access to D14’s grades but have never checked.
Access is it all it is cracked up to be. At D2’s school, most of the grades don’t even get posted to the portal. Maybe 1-2 of 5 classes put all the grades in the portal. Some have department website outside the portal, some put comments on papers and repost them to the Dropbox on the portal (so you would have to download the paper to see the grade). Some post homework grades but not exam grades. Labs – who knows, but those grades are not on the portal. Final grades are posted, though.
- Who is paying for college?
- Are you a self-sufficient person, in terms of money?
- Are you helping your parents, financially?
- Do you see yourself as the head of your household, independent, strong, ready to help other members of your family?
If you are still a child, who lives on parent’s dime, who depends on the parental income, parental FAFSA, etc - how can you even think about “not giving access to MY grades”? They are not your grades, because your parents are paying for them. In legal terms, the client is the person who is paying legal fees. Just, IMHO.
Is there any other business in USA, where i may say “give me $50,000 per year, for 5 years, and do not dare to ask me, what am I doing with these money, because i am an adult, and i make my own choices?” If such place exists, please let me know, I would be happy to apply.
What do your parents expect? Both our children know that while we pay their bills we will see their grades.
I wish that I would not have access. Parents pay the bills for many students, and as you can read here, that does give them some rights. That seems sad to me. It would behoove parents to step back and allow their kids independence to make mistakes without scrutiny. At some point the helicopter rotors have to stop turning. Children need to be on their own. I paid my own way through college and my parents didn’t even look at my high school grades, not once. I was shocked to discover that my friends reported their grades to their parents. Independence is important–more important than one or two sorry grades. What do parents do with the grades anyway? Tell the student to do their homework? Correct their essays? Explain to them that doing well is important?
Don’t students know this already?
My feeling: Let them know that they get 4 years to finish. They will need to pay for any additional time. Then drop them off at school and kiss them good bye. Let them know that you trust they will make the best decisions they can at the moment. Mistakes can be corrected, even if they are premed. There are advisers, professors, and peers to help with that. Time for them to shine on their own.
There may be hiccups, but they will be fine.
If you’re that afraid of a child screwing up at college, maybe it’s best if the child take some time before attending. When he or she is ready to thrive independently, then off they go.
Well I just said what I did when I saw my DD’s grades - I talk to her about why she wasn’t getting higher grades in her major and learned she didn’t like it but felt she was tied to it. We discussed it, we talked about the money., we talked about the options. At the time, she was working at a camp, had already registered for fall, and was just ignoring her unhappiness. I saw the grades on the portal when I was looking for something else, and saw the issue. Why is this not a good thing for a parent to help with?
Would my parents have helped me? They didn’t even know what I was majoring in or what classes I took.
dustyf has accidentally confirmed what some feel here. If the student is independent, then no, the parents do not automatically get to see the grades. Though there are some freedoms, it isn’t independence if parents are paying the bill; in fact it is exactly the opposite- dependence.
Some students need a push to get help if they are struggling, as has been expressed in many threads about academic probation, and worse. Some parents/students have negotiated a deal with student about conditional payments.
As a parent, I enjoy the freedom of not having access to grades during the semester. When both my children were in high school and I was constantly being emailed their grades, it was annoying, especially if things did not look good. I would feel obliged to mention something to my kids out of concern, and this was a lot like helicoptering and micromanaging. Now, in college, they both keep me generally apprised of the situation, and so far this has worked a lot better. Fortunately they are working hard, acting responsibly and taking their school work seriously.
We have access to our college kids grades, but the only time we check it is to print off the report card for our car insurance. As others have stated, the grades that are posted on college accounts are vastly different to what parents could view in high school. Really, it is updated at midterm and then again at the end of the semester–and only the grade for that period shows (ie, there is not detail like in HS as to what you got on each test, paper, etc). The reality of it is–we are paying for college. To me, that carries with it an understanding that if we do need access to their grades (for insurance, or if I did suspect things were “going south”) it is not unreasonable to provide us with that access. I don’t feel it is holding our kids hostage to the financials of the situation. Instead, I think it is sort of a lesson in reality: if you don’t want to potentially answer to other people–pay for it yourself.
You sound like a smart person who thinks things through. Good luck to you in college, I am sure you will do well!
We have access but only use it for the car insurance . We ask occasionally how things are going just to make sure the merit scholarships won’t be lost but that’s about it. I’m pretty sure I was the only parent in our K-12 system that never checked the parent portal and had no idea of my log in. I expect the kids to keep me generally informed of how they’re doing, and they have no problem doing that since they all are very aware of who’s footing the bill.
Most importantly, discuss this all with them.
Even if you give your parents access to your college grades, it’s not going to be like PowerSchool in high school where they can see how you’ve done on all your assessments in real time. They will only be be able to see the cumulative grade reported to the registrar at the end of the semester (or maybe the midterm estimate if your college does those, and not all do). That information is not enough for parents to be able to micromanage or microcritique a college student’s work, or even to know if things are really going off the rails before it’s too late to intervene.
I think parents have a right to know if a student is making satisfactory academic progress semester by semester, if they’re paying for it. But they don’t need to know if you got a B or a B- on that test or paper, any more than they would need to know your sales figures at work.
Coincidentally, there’s another post in this thread with the title “Can my mom find out that I flunked out of college by contacting the school?”
You don’t want to be that kid. Ever.
College is different than high school and no matter how well you did before, there’s a possibility that you could run into problems at college.
Your course grades won’t be posted until the end of the term (quarter or semester) – so you don’t have to worry about parental nagging along the way. Your parents won’t know if you flubbed a midterm or missed turning in assignments unless you tell them.
But overall your parents want to help and you may benefit from having that help.
And of course if you parents are paying, they really have a right to know, at least to confirm that you are completing the coursework they are paying for.
So yes – give your parents access. Do discuss with your parents in advance what their expectations are. If they are going to question you about every B… that could be a problem. But I think that’s a case of your learning to manage parental expectations.
I guess I am ok with seeing end of semester grades. I seriously can’t take any more of the Parent Portal To Hell. We’ll use the “we need it to get the insurance discounts” because I really don’t want them to think they have me nagging them as a safety net to remember to do their homework or study harder.
Today my daughter sent text asking me to register her for fall classes. She’s doing an internship and has horrible Internet connections in her room. Phone is also bad, texts work. So she sent me her registration code, and I got in through her portal and signed her up. Just a benefit of my having access.
I knew someone from my HS who dropped out of college and didn’t tell his dad. His dad was giving him the money and not asking to see grades, and the kid partied for a whole year on dad’s dime in his college town until dad caught him. Even if you are getting the bills, your kid could be on academic probation, and you wouldn’t know it. Or not on track to graduate in four years. Given the cost of college today, if parents are paying I think they have a right to see final grades. It can help avoid the issues above if parents are paying attention.
I have full access to my daughter’s college portal. I look at final grades. I have no interest in checking interim or individual grades. She had no problem with giving me access, so I never had to pull the “we’re paying for college, we’re entitled to the information” card. I probably would have if I needed to, though.