For all the talk about helicopter parents who can’t let their kids grow up, college students in a UCLA survey welcomed parental involvement. Some students — especially those who are the first in their family to college — wanted their parents to be more involved.
Citing a Chronicle of Higher Education story (requires registration), Quick and the Ed’s Kevin Carey says helicopter parenting has become a media-defined problem because press coverage of higher education is filtered “through the sensibility of the top 10 percent of college students and institutions, clustered on the coasts and big cities, people who make up a disproportionate share of the consumers of elite media and an overwhelming percentage of the producers of elite media.”
Helicopter parents aren’t prevalent and problematic, they’re rare and beneficial. The biggest problem facing typical college-bound high school students isn’t too much pressure to cram lots of activities and college prep classes into their schedule, it’s not enough preparation for the academic rigors higher education. Similarly, college isn’t actually a break and a let-down after the hard work of running the admisssions gantlet; for much students it’s a lot more work than they experienced in high school, which often leads to academic struggles and dropping out. The biggest problem facing most college bound students isn’t getting into college, since anyone can get into college, it’s paying for it once they get there. While growth in private school endowments get a lot of attention, many public universities are gearing up for another set of state budget cutbacks. And so on.
Nearly all important higher ed policy issues concern the non-elite college students, he writes.
Elite institutions and the people who attend them are fine–more than fine–and don’t need any help. It’s the students attending community college and relatively open access four-year institutions — i.e., most students — who deserve resources and attention, but they don’t get it because everyone’s worried about whether Little Jenny will get into Dartmouth or Smith.
An earlier study also found ‘coptered students to be happier and more engaged with learning than those with less parental attention.
I’m not sure what helicopter parents could do at a university. We are prohibited by law from discussing their kids’ performance or grades with them. What could they do? We did a few years ago have a mother who insisted on coming to classes with her daughter, and having parents sit in from time to time isn’t a problem, but most universities have strict policies requiring regular attendees to at least audit, if not register for, a course, and the mother stopped coming.
And this sounds like more infantalization. Going to college is supposed to be, in part, about becoming an adult. You’re not progressing past childhood if your parents are hovering over your shoulder.
To reply to rightwingprof: I’ve had colleagues who got phone calls from parents about their kids’ grades. (Usually begging/demanding a higher grade, and usually the kid put them up to it).
In one case he told the mom how many times her son had been absent, and then sat back and heard her go “Whaaaaat? Whaaaaat?” to her son over the phone (not unlike the scene from A Christmas Story where Ralphie’s mom calls the other kid’s mom over Ralphie having said the f-word).
I don’t know; I think I’d feel a bit ganged-up-on if a 20 year old student’s parents wanted to discuss their kid’s grade with me. By 20, a person should be able to sink or swim on their own, at least in that situation.
I talked with my parents twice a week when I was a college student and I shared a lot with them, but I would have been aghast at the thought of them calling one of my profs on my behalf. (As would they, I suspect.)
I worked at a state university in Idaho, and we had three students who signed FERPA waivers to allow us to discuss their academic records with their parents. All three of these students were marginal high school students who really weren’t prepared for the rigor of mechanical engineering coursework. Their parents tried to push and prod them through college, as I assume they had done throughout high school. This approach worked to some extent during their freshmen year, but I doubt that it will work for the 5-6 years* it would take them to finish a degree.
*Due to lack of preparation for calculus and/or reduced course load from the 4 year plan (usually 18 credits per semester)
I hate to say this, but a lot of the problem with the non-elite pupils is that a sizeable proportion of them shouldn’t be in college at all. A lot of material at non-elite schools is remedial high school. And a lot of students have neither the background, aptitude, attitudes, nor study habits that would make for a good, higher ed learning experience. They waste resources and discourage those around them who do come to learn. If we had a national exam that determined the minimal things that a college kid has to know, and refused to recognize the degree of anyone who couldn’t make this low cutoff, schools would be greatly improved.
I’m not against anyone going to school and studying whatever they feel like. I’m against dignifying a bachelor’s degree for many of the bottom students as meaning the same thing as degrees for the average. It is a feature, not a bug, that respectable mid tier colleges fail so many students who never should have been admitted in the first place.
“A lot of material at non-elite schools is remedial high school.”
That’s true, but does that material count toward graduation? The CC where I occasionally take classes offers several levels of remedial classes in English, math and ESL. These classes are prerequisites for classes at a college level, but don’t count toward a college degree.
I was under the impression that remedial classes at most colleges were treated that way.
I teach at an inner city high school where we definitely do not have helicopter parents, sometimes wish we did…however, I have to agree with many of the replies regarding students not being prepared for college rigor. I see this all the time in our school where students complain about the least amount of work and almost refuse to read. Yet, they SAY they are planning to attend college. Most will try to attend the local community college, find they cannot get the classes they want or need, that the cost is prohibitive, and will drop out. By age 27 they figure out they need an education if they ever plan to earn more than minimum wage and will come back and ask me for a letter of recommendation to get back into school. They always agree that they should have listened to me when they were in high school.
‘Copter parents have no business hovering over their kid in college. Let go.
Of course, that depends on what view of college you have. Has college become nothing more than an extension from high school? If so, let the parents coddle their kid. If not, back off and let them grow up.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
Cardinal Fang-
While I know there are “remedial” tags for some courses and schools may not count those towards a degree, I do know that some schools essentially offer remediation through the standard undergraduate courses - the professors dumb down the courses to improve the class grades.
You’d better hover over your kids in college…you’re buying.