Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents

A number of colleges and universities are having to assign full-time staffers or forming entire new departments to field parents’ calls and email. Others hold separate orientations for parents, partly to keep them occupied and away from student sessions.

The University of Vermont employs “parent bouncers,” students trained to divert moms and dads who try to attend registration and explain diplomatically that they’re not invited. At one parent-student orientation session in June, more parents than students attended, swamping the meeting hall, says Jill Hoppenjans, the university’s assistant director of orientation.

At the University of Georgia, students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cellphone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying, “Here, talk to my mom,” says Richard Mullendore, a University of Georgia professor and former vice president, student affairs, at the universities of Georgia and Mississippi. The cellphone, he says, has become “the world’s longest umbilical cord.” —Sue ShellenbargerColleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents (Career Journal)

This year, SHU has separate orientation schedules for parents and students. The parents are welcome at a general Q and A session (where I made a promising contact with a parent who works for ABC News). Then the students come for one-on-one advising sessions.

In the past, I think my ability to advise has occasionally benefited from the fact that I had actually seen some parental pressuring going on during the advising session.

Reading this article has made me reflect. Am I too quick to blame high school teachers when new freshmen show up in class expecting me to hand then the “right answers” on a silver platter? It’s not just the teachers who are carefully scrubbing all conflict and uncertainty out of their lives.

At SHU we get a high percentage of students who are the first in their families ever to go to college. This means that the parents may simply not know how important it is for their children to get things done themselves.

2 thoughts on “Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents

  1. I recall a time last year when I wanted to (for lack of better expressions) “tear one of my peers a new one” in my STW for blowing off the class discussions, but fortunately for me I didn’t have to. You see, I had a great teacher who would not put up with negative attitudes toward his class. The student was thrown out before midterms.

    And, you know what? Good. Why should one negative person have the right to ruin everyone else’s educational experience? I am not paying three arms, a leg, and my first-born so that people can stifle my learning. Most hard-working under-privileged kids would die to be able to go to college. But, I believe that this “entitlement culture” has much to do with privilege as well.

    If you’ve been handed everything from money to grades, you’re going to expect this dynamic to continue. And there are many high-achieving, under-privileged students who are denied entrance to big-name schools because of legacy students. To me, that is just wrong. It’s just begging for more entitlement issues.

  2. I personally don’t think your too quick to blame them, Dr. Jerz. A lot of High School teachers just don’t care and will give out answers randomly, not really caring about what their doing to the students.

    That goes the same with the parents. My mom, a woman who NEVER went to college, thinks she knows EVERYTHING. I keep trying to explain to her that things are different at SHU.

    But I will also say this, if it wasn’t for 2 of my 12th grade teachers, as well as my mother, I never would have gotten to SHU.

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