<p>What good could ever come from having access to your D/S college grades?</p>
<p>Would it be in place of not trusting your D/S to tell you what grades he/she got?
Would that grade knowledge be used to control your D/S?</p>
<p>It raises the question: If going off to college doesn’t allow a kid to grow up and face his/her own consequences, then when will it happen?</p>
<p>I tell my parents my grades. They are paying for college so they have the right to know the outcome each semester. I do not tell them every grade on every assignment, maybe the grade on big paper I had told them I was working on but that’s it. Midterms I keep to myself as well as the smaller assignments. </p>
<p>They do not have access to anything but the bill paying system. Everything else I have control over and i don’t think there’s a way for me to even authorize the to view the grades. </p>
<p>They’ll just have to trust me when I a) show them the final grades, b) show them the Dean’s List email, and c) tell them I want to go to a good law school so I’ll be keeping my GPA up there.</p>
<p>Your major procrastinator son could turn a corner in college. Mine did. The whole first year of college I noticed how relieved he was to be free from what was, for him, busy work. He tells us his grades at the end of the semester. Along the way, he volunteers grades on big papers because he’s either happy or mildly disappointed. It’s just part of our conversations. I know a parent who insists on having access to her student’s Blackboard account (using the student’s password), and I think that’s flat-out wrong. The details of everyday academic life are their business, not ours.</p>
<p>I have full access to the online student center, not guest access, only because guest access at my son’s school doesn’t give me the information I need to check the details of the bill (and the billing people have made mistakes). I don’t look at anything else. If I want to know his class schedule, for example, I ask him.</p>
<p>artloversplus, I am not going to micromanage S’s college grades. If he does not succeed because he does not apply himself, he knows he can come home, get a job and go to community college.</p>
<p>In high school, at some points he was bringing home a weekly grade report, it was that bad. But after touring colleges prior to his senior year, he seemed to see the light; hewas on the high honor roll the first 3 quarters, with a little senioritis the final quarter (slipped to the honor roll)</p>
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<p>I think your instincts are dead on. At some point (really, even in HS) you shouldn’t have to be prodding and poking a kid to do their work. Most of the time, I didn’t know what son had due unless another parent told me. I know some kids still need this kind of parental involvement in HS but college is a time to learn to be independent. I seriously doubt that all professors will post all assignments and weekly grades online anyway.</p>
<p>We, will, however, expect to see the final semester grades before we pay the next semester’s bill. Our son also has to maintain a 3.0 to keep his substantial merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Wow… My parents don’t even bother accessing my HS grades.</p>
<p>My husband asked our son to set things up so that we could see his college grades.</p>
<p>I thought this was unnecessary. Our son was an adult. If he wanted to share his grades, he would (and he always did, at least for end-of-semester grades). It’s just one of the things we talk about in our family. I was as pleased as he was when he somehow miraculously got a B instead of a C in the chemistry course from hell.</p>
<p>We do not have access to our daughter’s grades, but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which she would not want to share her end-of-semester grades with me. It’s just something that she always mentions. </p>
<p>I must admit, though, that my relaxed attitude has a lot to do with the fact that both of them earned good grades. My son graduated with a 3.8, and his sister has a GPA above 4.0 (which is possible because her college has A pluses). So why wouldn’t they be willing to talk about their grades?</p>
<p>If your auto insurance has a “good student discount,” you may need a copy of grades before you renew, even if you don’t look at them otherwise. (That’s our situation.)</p>
<p>Privacy laws prevail- even when college student is a minor. Ask and maybe you shall receive- our son is good at not telling us things, even when asked. Quit learning semester grades by his 4th year of college-“very well” for the how did it go question suffices, his life and we know he’ll have some less than A grades (better to take some electives for the knowledge than get an A). Unlike HS, our son had no trouble getting the work done. I worried about him getting up in time, etc, but he had no problems. The independence of college is a great motivator, unlike the frustrations of HS. We have learned that deadlines are just that- no sense expecting things ahead of time. It is best to not know too much.</p>
<p>It is hard for curious parents, but letting go and not knowing is better for everyone as our adult children mature (keep reminding myself of this). Semester grades are good to know the first years so we have a handle on their progress and can offer suggestions to them. By the time they are deep into a major they are likely to keep doing well and our advice becomes useless.</p>
<p>We have told our son we will not have access to his grades. We were standing over his shoulder all through high school, with full access. Sometimes that entailed both full access and full nagging… But now he’s off to college, with all the life transition that implies. We’re not going to treat him like a child anymore. </p>
<p>He is on a large merit scholarship and must maintain a certain grade-point average. But doing so is now his responsibility. We have been paying full freight for our daughter at MIT (the school provides no merit money), and have had the same policy for her. It doesn’t matter that we’re paying; the important thing, for us, is that she become a fully independent, mature adult.</p>
<p>My kids have given up access to their grades. It’s never been a problem for my kids because they happily share their grades with us. </p>
<p>When parents are paying and/or the child has a scholarship that needs a certain GPA, I think it’s a good idea for students to keep their parents informed so that they’re are no unhappy surprises. However, if you’d rather only know at the end of each term, make it clear to your child that the checkbook will close if a certain (reasonable) GPA is not maintained. And, that you won’t be making up any lost scholarships, either.</p>
<p>Same as Deja. Our DS will be a freshman next month and he is on an almost FULL RIDE. We have been very upfront with him. If he does not maintain the required 3.2 and loses the scholarship, then it’s back home to get a job and attend CC. The alternative just doesn’t sit well with him so he has a great incentive to be responsible and perform.</p>
<p>So no real need to monitor his grades.</p>
<p>At my orientation they kept stressing that students needed to sign a permission form for parents to see the grades. I asked my dad if he wanted to see my grades, because honestly I don’t care, and he didn’t either. His opinion was that if he wants to know my grades, he’ll ask. And I’ll tell him; honestly.
If you need to hang over your kids shoulder even in college and nag about the grades…or feel that you do, then I think there are bigger issues than poor grades. You’re letting them go away to college, so you’re trusting them to be on their own, but you don’t trust them to tell you their grades?
Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by trusting parents but I’m happy with it. I know that I need to keep a certain GPA in order to keep scholarships/get a good job and as an adult I’m going to make that happen.</p>
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<p>I had forgotten about that. </p>
<p>But the good student discount situation only applies to students who go to college fairly near home. My son had to provide transcripts so we could get that discount because his college was about 30 miles away from home. But my daughter, who goes to college 300 miles away from home, has never had to submit a transcript because we get an even bigger discount on the grounds of distance than we would have gotten on the grounds of good grades.</p>
<p>OP: short answer as to grades = No.</p>
<p>But both sons understand that we (parents) are funding one 4-year degree. No repeats, no additional credits, no summer sessions. If grades require additional classes/costs, they will be on their own. They also know that if graduate school is in their plans, then they must qualify and also must fund it.</p>
<p>S1 (rising senior) hasn’t shared a specific grade since first semester freshman year, but he does often discuss coursework and project work, so we know he’s acquiring knowledge.</p>
<p>We do expect to see (or hear about) D1’s grades at end of each quarter. She talks about grades on assigments during the quarter, so we have a good idea of where she is during the semester.</p>
<p>Probably the best skill that my daughter has developed in college is checking in with professors on a regular basis during their office hours. I would encourage anyone to have a discussion with college-bound students about adopting this practice. The profs know she is staying on task when she shows outlines for papers, asks for clarifications on assignments or requests help on something she doesn’t understand. This behavior may have been prompted by a prof who told the big lecture class on the first day of her first quarter that if the number of students in the lecture hall was more than or close to the number of students in their high school that he wanted to see them! She went up after class and took to heart his advice to see him on a regular basis. He always called her by name, and she has continued this practice with virtually all of her classes.</p>
<p>A colleague of mine recently told me about her son who had received a C in a class at his university (which is about the same size as the one my daugther attends), and when the student asked the prof about it, the prof said he hadn’t particpated during a group presentation to the class. The young man said he did and explained his portion of the assignment to the prof who still couldn’t remember him being there. I just feel like this wouldn’t have happened to my daughter.</p>
<p>End of term grades - absolutely. If I’m paying the bill, I see the results.</p>
<p>But ongoing grades during a term? No. If my kid is old enough to go to college and smart enough to get in, they’re old enough and smart enough to monitor their own grades. </p>
<p>At some point the kid has to take responsibility for themselves and their work. When the kid graduates, are you going to ask to see his work calendar so you can monitor whether he’s getting his work done on time too? He’s got to learn to handle his own stuff.</p>
<p>Sadly, our auto insurance (Amica in California) doesn’t offer any kind of discount just because our daughter is going to college 3000 miles away. Our choice is to leave her uninsured or pay the regular annual cost. So we do get to see those grades every now and then :-).</p>
<p>OP wrote:</p>
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Here are two common reasons you won’t have access to the daily stuff even if your son signs the FERPA paperwork that gives you automatic access to his semester course grades:</p>
<p>1) Many professors do NOT post all the daily assignments on line. They give these assignments out in class.</p>
<p>2) Many professors do routinely post assignments, but the class management software usually restricts access to the class web page to only those students who are registered for the class often to satisfy copyright conditions since professors who use these systems also will post copyrighted material for their students use after the appropriate copyright clearance has been obtained. And clearance is usually obtained not by the individual professor, but rather through the campus bookstore when they are putting so-called “course packs” together.</p>
<p>Nah. As long as we keep receiving those Honor Roll Certificates from the college, we’re good.</p>