<p>I can always see the grades when I make tuition payments.</p>
<p>I love how collegeās treat parents as nonentities (except apparently Harvard which has continued the quaint practice of sending grade reports) unless the issue is tuition - then the parent must bare all as the institutions consider what they will charge their ADULT children. For all financial purposes, the students are infants. Other than that, they are fully independent agents. Ahhh . . . hypocracy.</p>
<p>Actually, Harvard bills the students. Of course, the student can set up an authorized payer ā¦</p>
<p>Sewhappy is soo spot-on. The students are dependents when it comes to Financial Aid, medical bills, until age 24 or so, but privileged adults when it comes to medical records, grades, discipline records. </p>
<p>GADad- didnāt the students sign a waiver so we could receive grade reports? I vaguely remember āurgingā my daughter to sign it. (Perhaps it was just med. records.)</p>
<p>Ronsard-Merciā¦Matisse et moi, bien surā¦</p>
<p>I never saw a waiver for grade reports or medical reports. I would have liked one for medical, for sure. In an emergency, a hospital wonāt even report a condition to a parent. Scary.</p>
<p>^ yes - that happened to us and it was quite harrowing.</p>
<p>" For all financial purposes, the students are infants. Other than that, they are fully independent agents. Ahhh . . . hypocracy."</p>
<p>And whatās really interesting is that for financial aid purposes, HMS never treats the students as fully independent.</p>
<p>Harvard is the wrong target for complaints about FERPA and other privacy issues. Universities are also the wrong target for complaints about the financing of higher education in this country. Try the American taxpayers, Congress and the Fed.</p>
<p>Well thatās all well and good but why am I considered financially responsible for my kidās medical education until the day I die?</p>
<p>Itās not an entitlement. Wanna play? gotta pay. Someone does. If not your kid, then you.
If you want the government to pay for it, then letās raise taxes. Did I hear an agreement? No? Then pray that some billionaire makes it possible for all deserving aspiring doctors to attend HMS entirely free. Of course, since that money could have gone to provide health care for the poor, there will be plenty of scope for those HMS grads to practice their freely acquired skills.</p>
<p>No, Harvard can provide loans that every medical student is required to pay back that are not based on parental income.</p>
<p>Very disappointed to hear that this viewing the child through the lens of the parent for all financial matters continues into medical school.</p>
<p>Both federal policy, such as FERPA, and case law tend to draw a distinction between high school students as minors and college students as adults. Since a HS student who heads straight to college is unlikely to have had any opportunity to have built financial resources itās not realistic to expect them to be the sole stakeholders in their financial matters, but in case law college students have often been held to a higher level of maturity than younger HS students. One case that I recall from several years back involved a 17-year-old college student who was injured by tripping over a floor mat and falling through a glass door. The court held that while an 18-year-old HS student may have prevailed under the contention that the HS should have noticed that the mat was curled, a college student regardless of age is expected to have the degree of personal accountability that would enable them to avoid such hazards.</p>
<p>A similar premise is behind FERPA, which protects studentsā educational records unless the student signs a waiver to have them shared. Harvard must have had their students sign a waiver at some point, though it would be entirely inappropriate to force unwilling students to sign (itās perfectly appropriate however, for tuition-paying parents to force their unwilling students to sign waivers 
). Colleges, by the way, often get as irritated at FERPA as studentsā parents do.</p>
<p>Thereās a news item about a Harvard undergrad whoād gone missing in Latin America but was now found. We know sheās a Harvard undergrad because her mom says so. Harvard cited privacy law and refused to say.</p>
<p>DocT: Why should Harvard provide loans? Is Harvard a bank?
Sewhappy: If your 18 or 22 year old child wants to buy a shiny new car and goes to the dealer, what do you expect the dealer to say except: How are you going to pay for the car?
If parents want their children to have that shiny new car or that great education, they better be willing to pay for it one way or the other, either directly or through increased taxes (see how this one flies with the electorate). Neither a car nor higher education, especially not post-graduate education is a vested right.</p>
<p>Okay, Marite, Iāll play.</p>
<p>If the 18-year-old goes to the car dealer and picks out the shiny new sports car, the dealer looks at the 18-year-oldās income, liabilities, credit rating and then decides whether or not to grant the 18-year-old the loan for the car. The dealer DOES NOT demand to see the 18-year-oldās parentās income statements, liabilities, assets, etc. in determining what PRICE to charge the 18-year-old kid. </p>
<p>I enjoy this game but I think you need to come up with a new annalogy.</p>
<p>And in case I havenāt been crystal clear: I do not advocate the perspective that anyone should have a vested right in an elite college education.</p>
<p>The issue for sewhappy isnāt that she is paying full-fare for her child, itās that someone else isnāt. If the car dealer decided to give a car to a low-income 18-year-old or discount the price for an 18-year-old, sewhappy would be complaining that her kid should get a free car or a discounted-price car, too.</p>
<p>But if the car dealer chooses to be generous, the car dealer gets to make the rules as to who benefits from his generousity, NOT sewhappy. If your child (or you) are not happy with the deal offered, donāt take it. Go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Then donāt provide any money for anybody! To award financial aid to adults (> 21 years old) based on parental income is ridiculous. Why should one adult end up with 300k worth of debt and another nothing when their future earning power is identical. Neither has been disadvantaged because both have graduated and been successful enough to be admitted into medical school.</p>
<p>But itās Harvardās ā or the car dealerās ā money, not yours. Why should you be able to tell them how they spend it? Can I ā or the government ā tell you that if you are going to make a generous donation to your favorite charity, you have to make one to mine, too?</p>
<p>No its not completely their money - theyāve received various tax advantages.</p>
<p>No one is dictating to Harvard how they should spend their money. But it is quite reasonable to question how Harvard and all FA-granting colleges compute differential prices for their customers (ADULT students) based on mommy and daddyās income.</p>
<p>I have certainly not made an exhaustive study of the financing of higher education in our country. I suspect that if they tried hard they could charge a single price to all their students that would be manageable through work and judicious loans. That would be treating their students like what they are suppose to actually be ā ADULTS. And that would be accomplishing their professed goal of becoming completely inclusive of every economic strata within their matriculated student body.</p>