<p>I suspect that if your DD were to ask for a refund that she should not expect to be rewarded full credit for the class.</p>
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<p>Credit hours aren’t only based on amount of hours one’s supposed to meet in class, but also include the approximate amount of work a given student is supposed to devote outside class meetings to work for the class in question. </p>
<p>An approximate rule of thumb I used to hear from some college Profs and older parents who worked in higher education was for every one hour of class there needs to be around a minimum of 2-3 hours devoted to work for that course outside of class time such as assigned readings, problem sets, research/writing up of papers, studying for quizzes/exams, etc. </p>
<p>For lower level undergrad courses, there’s more class time/sessions per week, more guidance from the Professor/instructor, and correspondingly less time expected for work outside of class time. </p>
<p>For more advanced undergrad/grad courses, especially colloquiums and seminars, they may be assigned same official amount of credit hours, but meet less frequently such as one 2+ hour class each week with classes mostly meeting only for the first half or slightly more of the term in question. </p>
<p>However, that’s offset by much more independently driven work outside of class such as a much greater assigned reading load and in the second portion of the term, plenty of hours spent on research, gathering and assessing expanding/whittling down of sources, time conducting oral interviews including traveling off-campus if applicable, going off-campus to libraries/public institutional archives for sources not available in college library/inter-library loan*, submitting term paper drafts to Prof via email/office hours, working with other Professors if applicable, etc. </p>
<p>A reason why especially for undergrads new to the advanced undergrad/grad level colloquium/seminar class format, it’s not a good idea to take more than 1 or 2 such courses in the same term as its often far more work despite the seeming lure of only 1 class meeting per week for the first half/slight more portion of the term. </p>
<p>Several unwary undergrad classmates learned that the hard way. </p>
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<li>I.e. Rare books, archives, and source materials which can only be accessed on site off-campus.</li>
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<p>Tenure can be removed for two main reasons: sexual harassment of students and not meeting classes. As a professor at a research university, I do miss classes for conferences, on average once a semester. The class time is made up with individual meetings, guest speakers, group project work in class, etc. </p>
<p>It is not normal or appropriate to cancel a month of classes. It is actionable.</p>
<p>Any opportunity for an on line or facetime type class temporarily, if need be?</p>
<p>The whole thing doesn’t sound right to me. D1 is in a Ph.D program, which is research based but includes the path to a M.S. as well. She is in her second year and it has been really demanding from the get go. I can’t imagine a scenario such as you have described, either in terms of the vigor of the program or the situation with the professor. </p>
<p>What to do about it? I don’t know. OP has said she has no plans to intervene. Perhaps the D could inquire about the possibility of some kind of tuition credit.</p>
<p>The PARENT should not complain to the department chair person. If this is an issue for the GRAD STUDENT, the STUDENT should do the complaining. The OP says it is not an issue for the daughter. That being the case…the OP should stay out of it, in my opinion. The daughter is a grad student and should be handling this herself…if she wants to.</p>
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<p>I don’t see how OP can intervene unless D gave a waiver allowing for that to her university. </p>
<p>And that would not only be highly unusual IME, but also possibly reflect badly on her with her advisor/Profs and peers as grad students IME are expected to deal with their Profs and other grad school issues without involving their parents barring something severe like a serious medical emergency.</p>
<p>If I were footing the bill for this, yes, I would be mightily annoyed.</p>
<p>But if I were footing the bill on behalf of my twenty-something, college-graduate daughter, I wouldn’t do anything about it.</p>
<p>I think in this case, MommaJ, you’re lacking standing, as they say in court. You aren’t the student, and the student is a grown-up. She’s the one whose got basis for a complaint. If she wants to make one–and from what you’ve described, I think one would be justified–she’ll make one. Apparently, she doesn’t want to.</p>
<p>From the university’s perspective, you’re a stranger to them. You may be paying her tuition for her–which, of course, is an incredibly generous gift–but that’s a gift to your daughter, and not to the university. It doesn’t give you any more connection to the university in their mind than I would have to your power company if I paid your electric bill. So if you complain, you’ll be seen as “meddling,” and your daughter will become known as “the woman with parents who can’t let go.” I just don’t see how anybody’s a winner there.</p>
<p>But, to answer your original question, heck yeah, I’d be annoyed!</p>
<p>Rarely would what a parent does “reflect badly” on the student to their grad school faculty. People just dont commonly think that way. Barring the few outrageous examples of parents marching in to department heads offices to demand to know why their child wasn’t admitted to the program (this happened at… IUIC, I think, and the parent was a fellow faculty member), its probably a low frequency occurrence. anyway. And further, with the exception of some high profile scenario like the IUIC one, its unlikely peers would have any way of knowing what someone’s parents did. </p>
<p>Doubtful a Department head would send a memo to the grad students saying “Johnnies mother called and complained, so we are going to get an adjunct faculty to fill in for the next month”. Simply doesnt happen.</p>
<p>welcome to academia, couldn’t happen in the real world.</p>
<p>It happens in the real world all the time. My boss is MIA a good 3/4ths of the time.</p>
<p>actually happens in the real world all the time. I’ve got members of my team on maternity leave, folks who have flex time schedules to care for aging parents, etc. We don’t hire temps for professionals- the employee is responsible for either handing off projects to colleagues, working from home or what-not, or otherwise finding a way to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks.</p>
<p>Seems to me if enough students cared, they would sit down with the Department Chair and come up with a solution. If most of them are happy to have fewer instructional hours and don’t let the administration know there’s an issue, then the professor has probably calculated the students interest/disinterest correctly.</p>
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<p>If a parent intervened on a non-emergency matter like this, the advisor and faculty in the program/department will very likely perceive the D as highly immature to involve her parents in a matter she should have dealt with herself or a student with a helicopter parent. </p>
<p>Neither is likely to leave a good impression on faculty, especially considering plenty of them have complained/ranted about this very phenomenon among undergrad parents in Chronicle of Higher-Ed and Inside Higher-Ed. </p>
<p>The reaction isn’t too far removed from ones a few CC posters had recounted about parents of twenty-something college graduates going to their workplaces/them to inquire about the graduate’s performance review, lobbying for a raise/promotion, etc. </p>
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<p>I mentioned peers as many departments/programs are close-knit and small enough that unusual news about faculty and peer grad students does tend to get around.</p>
<p>As PG would say… and there we go. Pure conjecture and overgeneralizations from hearsay and supposed second hand comments. </p>
<p>How do you know what a faculty member would think? Have you been in this situation? Have you had contact form a student’s parent? Even if, for the sake of discussion, you had, why would you automatically assume that the student had their parent intervene for them? That is also conjecture. As is the assumption that the faculty would think the student is “immature”. A parents behavior is not reflective of the students behavior. The faculty would or at the very least should, base their opinion of a student on the direct interaction they have with that student., not on the behavior of a family member. </p>
<p>And when faculty “rant”, as you say, about parents involvement with undergrads, they are ranting about the parents, not the students.</p>
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<p>Not personally, but I have heard faculty/TA friends complain about this issue with undergrads while taking some grad classes at a couple of universities.</p>
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<p>It is not my assumption. It’s assumptions I’ve observed some faculty had when they complained about the issue on Chronicle and Inside-Higher Ed and IRL.</p>
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<p>In practice, they often rant about both parents and the students. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, some rants about the latter are based on their own unverified assumptions and sometimes have a “Get off my lawn” dynamic to them. Especially against millenials. </p>
<p>Especially unfortunate as the millenial undergrads I knew with helicopter parents never wanted their parents to be involved and were highly embarrassed about their behavior with their Profs/admins.</p>
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You can’t “observe” someone’s assumptions, Cobrat.</p>
<p>And you keep referring to undergrads. This discussion is about grad students.</p>
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<p>Mainly because if many faculty members already have negative perceptions about age appropriateness of parental intervention for undergrads, it’d probably be moreso for grad students as they tend to be older and thus expected to have greater maturity in handling everyday matters in grad school or life without parental intervention.</p>
<p>Some grad programs have no undergraduate equivalent or teaching responsibility, so these supposed preconceived notions of which you conjecture may be non existent. And regardless, this is a discussion about GRAD school. Undergrad issues are not relevant to this discussion.</p>
<p>Please PLEASE do NOT derail or hijack this thread. This is about the OP and her daughters experience.</p>
<p>jym626,</p>
<p>It is relevant because grad students are usually expected to be more independent and mature than undergraduates precisely because they are usually older. </p>
<p>I don’t understand how you seem to fail to understand what to many is an obvious connection between undergrad and grad school and age/maturity expectations.</p>
<p>Well at least now it’s cc posters who are being referenced instead of cousins.</p>