By ASHLEY KINDERGAN, STAFF WRITER
Do college students benefit when parents have access to their grades online?
Federal law generally restricts colleges and universities from releasing educational records without a student’s written permission.
Colleges handle that restriction in different ways. Some schools hand parents waivers during orientation for their children to sign. Other schools, such as Rutgers and William Paterson universities, give out waivers only when requested and assume that students and parents will share information on their own.
Experts say students benefit when parents take interest in their academic progress, but others warn that too much involvement can prevent students from taking responsibility for their own achievement.
PRO:
Sharing grades is usually a non-issue because both parents and students expect that parents will want to see them, administrators said.
“A significant number of students are not opposed to their parents being involved,” said Pamela Bischoff, vice president of student affairs at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where parents get waiver forms at orientation. “I think many of them have the expectation of sharing [grades] because the parents are often contributing significantly financially.”
Pattie Oliver of Middletown asked for and received the password to access her 21-year-old son Jason’s grades online. Oliver said the family talked about sharing information when Jason started at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and she tells her son before she checks his grades.
“He fully expected that I was paying his tuition, and I would be entitled to get his grades,” Oliver said. “If you have that conversation right off the bat, it’s not that big a deal.”
Parents who look at grades can suggest ways struggling students can improve.
“Grades can be an early warning sign that something is awry,” said James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Milton Fuentes, associate professor of psychology and director of Latin-American and Latino Studies at Montclair State University, said culture can play a role in how much monitoring is too much.
“All too often, from an American core culture, we perceive other cultures as being overbearing, whereas in their culture, it’s not an overbearing thing at all,” Fuentes said. “If the parent is good- natured and wants to support their child and monitor them to see how they can be helpful, I think that’s healthy.”
CON:
But parents who watch grades too closely or try to intervene with professors may hinder students from taking full responsibility.
“The pressure parents can put on students by constantly monitoring grades, or when a parent calls up with the student’s consent or not to argue about a grade, strikes me as defeating the whole purpose of asking them to act like adults,” said Dan Bronson, chairman of the English department at Montclair State University.
In a worst-case scenario, students are more worried about pleasing their parents than their own ambitions.
“I hear sometimes, ‘My mother is going to be so mad at me if I fail,’ said Irwin Badin, a psychology professor at Montclair State, who also coordinates advising for the department. “Because mom and dad’s feelings are so large, they don’t have to think about how they feel. You don’t want to go into adulthood with that as your guide.”
Parents should also talk to students about low grades to make sure they understand the back story, Boyle said.
“The parent who is used to the grade inflation of most high schools may be unnecessarily alarmed by the fact that, suddenly, their son or daughter is getting B’s and C’s,” Boyle said.
Azizza Scordo, a senior at William Paterson University, said her mother asks for a printout of her grades every semester. But the Saddle Brook native said she does not give her parents her online password, which would allow access to her campus e-mail along with her grades.
“College is not high school,” Scordo said. “It is now the student who must interact with professors and discuss any concerns they may have, instead of parental oversight over a bad paper grade or an unfair homework assignment.”
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(c) 2008 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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