<p>We never have actually seen our older son’s grades, but they sent the letters notifying him that he was on the dean’s list to the house, so we can assume he’s not lying to us. Our sons grades and schedule are posted to a website which he can give us permission to access. (Which he did.)</p>
<p>Some schools, like Colgate, still send student’s grades home. FERPA DOES NOT prevent schools from giving student’s grades to parents as long as student is still a dependent. A school could choose not, but would not violate the law if it should choose to give parents the information. As far as health related issue, under FERPA school could notify parents and disclose a student’s condition if a student is taking illegal substance or is in danger of harming himself. I think it is the most misinterpreted law.</p>
<p>The law was very ambiguous when it first came out, then the clarified the law to say if a student is still a dependent then parents could have access to academic information. But many schools stuck with the original intepretation. According to my lawyer sister, she said if I really want to I could still demand to see the info without my daughter’s consent.</p>
<p>My history as a parent and a teacher is that when the grades are good they willingly share, when the grades are bad they just “don’t really know” what they are. My daughter knows that if her grades aren’t where they need to be to keep her scholarship we will be happy to take her to the local Air Force recruiter like her older brother. Fortunately she is harder on herself with grades than my husband and I could ever be.</p>
<p>Oh, gosh, proud-mom, that is too funny. My sister should have used that on my nephew.</p>
<p>We have a similar threat. It’s called LSU!</p>
<p>Thanks for the information oldfort.</p>
<p>“Fortunately she is harder on herself with grades than my husband and I could ever be.”</p>
<p>Sounds familiar. We never have had to ask for grades, even in high school you could read them on her face before getting the hard copy.</p>
<p>The silver lining, of course, is that now also I don’t have the privilege of copy editing the kid’s papers, either. She’s on her own with those comma splices and bizarre replacements that spellcheck puts in!</p>
<p>For our kids it is a non-issue. They know we will finance undergraduate expenses and in turn we have access to grades. D1 is at a flagship U that allows students to designate a parent or parents to have web access to certain things, including final grades, a class schedule, and the billing statements. I think there are a few others like nonofficial transcript and graduation check (what needs to be completed for graduation for the designated major). We have our own login and password and can get what we need. D2 just lets me sign on to pay the tuition, as there are no bills.</p>
<p>My kids’ college doesn’t send me bills either! They just send an email telling me that the bill has been sent to my kid. My kids have given me access to the part of the website that allows me to see their account/bills, but not to the part that would allow me to see grades. I’m okay with that - but just wanted to point out that it sounds different from some of what’s been said above.</p>
<p>My H had the unpleasant experience of dealing with a father whose son neglected to tell him he had failed to complete the coursework required for his degree. The whole famn damily was in town for commencement; you can imagine the scene.</p>
<p>I have my son’s user name and password for his entire school account and check it daily. After three semesters and two failing grades, believe me, he earned this level of oversight.</p>
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<p>My H’s parents paid for his medical school tuition; he was 23 - 26 during that time. He certainly wasn’t the only one fortunate enough to have parents paying for med school (or law school) tuition. What difference does it make to you?</p>
<p>We just stand over said student and ask them to open their account. If there is a grade lower than a C all expenses related to the course (tuition, books etc.) are transferred from their personal checking back to their college fund.
If he ever gets to the point where he ‘refuses’ to show the grades…we’ll assume he wants to foot the entire semesters expenses.</p>
<p>I gave up daily online checks during high school. It drove us both mad. I have passwords to everything else (bank, fb, etc.) so it’s not a privacy issue. I seriously don’t want that level of babysitting anymore. Would he be more likely to do well if I was looking at grades constantly? I have no idea, however the cost to our relationship is not worth it. It’s far more effective for him to write a check, as opposed to me nagging him. He’s 19. He can show me the grades or pay himself. It’s totally in his control. I refuse to go on his account.</p>
<p>The beauty is, for any class he’s done poorly in, he’s had to repay his college fund. When he is ready to do the work…the funds are there.</p>
<p>Because PizzaGirl it just allows the schools to artificially inflate the cost of the tuition. The tuition for 27 yo adult effectively just has become another tax to the uppermiddle class parents. This is going destroy the entire system because very soon the uppermiddle class will be unable to pay. The cost of the education needs to actually reflect the cost of the education not the cost of new blds and research.</p>
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<p>yikes! ^^That must have been quite a scene.</p>
<p>When I was in college–we picked up our mid term grades on campus, and a copy of those and the semester grades were mailed home “just in case” we misplaced them…</p>
<p>Since my parents paid for school–it never occurred to me that they woudn’t need to know/see them.
In fact-when I went to summer school or on an overseas summer porgram I paid for that…they were willing to foot the bill for 8 semesters. Period. If for any reason I needed more semesters etc, that tab was on me</p>
<p>I always appreciated that my parents never opened the envelope back when grades got mailed home. I respected them for that so do not “look” at my kids grades even though I could since I have access. I let them look first, digest then tell me. Rare it is, though, they my oldest doesn’t know what his grades are before they get posted. We’ll see with my newly minted freshman! I will always believe that the kids have a pretty good idea of how they are doing…they might not know if they have an A- or a B+ or some such borderline, but they certainly have some inkling of how they are doing.</p>
<p>We also have this system</p>
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<p>S1’s school said they are not allowed to disclose grades, but that they push the envelope by sending a letter to the parents of any child with 2 D’s after mid terms. I do not want to receive one of those letters!</p>
<p>I think it’s interesting how the parents of college students feel a need to validate their students grades by standing over their shoulder while they log in, requesting access to an online system, or other verifable way to be sure their kids are telling them the truth in the classes they take.</p>
<p>My parents instilled in me from the time I was little that it was a lot of fun to tell them my grades when they came in. We always went out to Dairy Queen when I was little, and then on through high school they were always interested in my grades and happy when I let them know. They weren’t just happy because my grades were good, they were sincerely happy just to have me tell them.</p>
<p>So of course through college I kept sharing my grades because they were always really excited to here. If I did well on an exam and e-mailed them, they always wrote back and let me know. And if I bombed an exam, I always knew I could let them know that too, and they wouldn’t be unhappy but reassuring like, “we all have tough exams, and hopefully the next one will be better.” </p>
<p>Because of this open communication, I always felt comfortable telling me parents honestly how things were going and they could always trust me to tell the truth. I don’t think they ever once verified my grades in college, just simply asked. Of course, we also had a lot of skin in the game, so they felt there was a certain amount of internal motivation to do well.</p>
<p>Even now at my age (30), I’m still taking occasional part time classes and they still get excited how I did at the end. It’s not because they expect me to get certain grades, they just enjoy hearing about it.</p>
<p>Now, if I can only do that with my kids…</p>
<p>Babyontheway- I think it’s interesting how someone without kids in college can pass judgement on how parents with college age students handle monitoring (or not) their grades. Believe it or not, these are generally not things we choose out of the blue. I have three very individual children. I treat them individually - imagine that! My oldest had a bad habit of not being honest with us in high school about his grades. In college we choose not to follow his grades online…it was his choice to succeed or not. If he didn’t earn an acceptable grade at the end of the semester he simply paid back his account…thus the ‘asking the student to log in and get grades’. You portray it in a different way (standing over his shoulder), but frankly it makes not difference. We give him the respect of making choices on his own and taking responsibility for them. Our home life, without the arguments is much, much better for it.
When our next student heads to school next year we may simply ask and leave it at that. We haven’t really discussed it. He is an individual and will be treated like one.
Let us know how all this works out for you when your kids get to school. K?</p>