<p>I was shocked to find out that a friend’s kid pretended to go to college for 2 yrs and lived off the money they were giving him for tuition ! How often does this occur?</p>
<p>Seems rather odd to me. As a parent, we sent the payments directly to the college. Further, wouldn’t a kid who was in the early years of college be living in a dorm?</p>
<p>Classic case:</p>
<p>[That</a> Fake Stanford Student - SFist](<a href=“http://sfist.com/2007/05/25/that_fake_stanf.php]That”>http://sfist.com/2007/05/25/that_fake_stanf.php)</p>
<p>This woman invented a fake kidnapping to avoid revealing that she had been lying about attending UCLA for the past 2 years:
[Woman</a> invented kidnap hoax to avoid telling parents she would not graduate from UCLA, police say | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times](<a href=“Archive blogs”>Archive blogs)</p>
<p>We also paid the college ourselves. If we hadn’t been paying the bills, to be honest, we would not have cared if our kid was IN or OUT of college. AND part of our deal…to get the next term’s bills paid, we had to see the GRADES from the term completed. No grades…we would not have paid the bills.</p>
<p>These kids must have some weird stuff going on with their parents for them to want to do this . . .</p>
<p>I don’t know how they kept it up for two years. I do know of a girl who dropped out without telling her parents. In GA, the HOPE scholarship pays tuition, and this girl was living off campus. So her parents paid her rent. They found out part way through the semester, when she turned up pregnant, and uninsured, since she wasn’t a full-time student.l</p>
<p>And I have a relative who is extremely good about lying to his parents. But I think it is because they are content to have the wool pulled over their eyes. His mother tends to take the ostrich position on parenting; if I don’t know about it, I don’t have to deal with it.</p>
<p>The son of a friend’s co-worker did this…When he came out of the closet, he confessed that he and his boyfriend were living in the condo mom and dad had bought for him and living off the tuition money. I’m sure that when the boy tells his “coming out of the closet” story, he’ll portray his parents as reacting very badly - but they were reacting very badly to the not enrolled in college part.</p>
<p>I think it’s more difficult to do now, when the payments are usually done electronically, but a friend’s son did this. His dad wrote a check to the college for tuition, sent it to the son, who sold it to another kid to pay that kid’s tuition. Worked for a year.</p>
<p>Yep, that’s what happens when Mommy and Daddy foot you every penny for the cost of life…</p>
<p>Wouldn’t happen with a helicopter parent.</p>
<p>Medwell wrote:
</p>
<p>In my view, this is a ridiculous inference from this situation. We paid for our kids to go to college. We surely knew where they were though. We paid directly to the college and moved them directly into the dorms. The bills were sent to our house as well as current statements, etc. I think we are in the majority in this way, in terms of how payments were made and what we knew of our kids, etc. for parents who do pay for a college education and related expenses.</p>
<p>(this is not to mention many other ways we would know…such as visiting them, receiving lots of mail from the college at our home, seeing grade reports, etc)</p>
<p>A friend of mine’s son did this the last two semesters of college. I don’t know all the details but I know he never graduated. They were stunned. I have since heard of another case.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would be odd if a parent paid tuition and the kid never really went to classes, etc. </p>
<p>What I think is odd is parents giving the tuition checks to the kid and the kid cashing them in and never enrolling.</p>
<p>I agree with Soozviet…our kids’ college bills were paid by us…but the arrangement was this…direct deposit into MY account…auto withdrawal by the college. AND we had to see the grades from the previous term.</p>
<p>We also had our kids sign the FERPA release so WE could talk to the Bursar’s office if necessary…since WE were paying the bills. The kids didn’t want to field financial issues questions anyway. If our kids had not signed that release, we would not have paid their bills either. Since WE were paying, we felt it was essential that WE be able to communicate with the bursar if necessary.</p>
<p>My sister did this for one and only semester. We all lived at home while in school. She just went out and worked while she was supposed to be in classes. She never graduated from college.</p>
<p>As a parent and taxpayer, I look for the 1098-T form that provides me with a $2,500 tax credit per kid in college. I don’t know how you would miss those come tax time.</p>
<p>There is a difference between parents who paid tuition and the student never attends and the OP’s story about a student who cashed in the tuition checks and never enrolled.</p>
<p>I guess it’s possible. I know my parents sent me the check for my last semester of grad school. I paid them from my account - they gave me credit, but then never cashed the check. I remember spending the entire semester wondering when that $3000 was going to go away! (Part of the reason they did it was that they were stationed in Uganda at the time and the mail wasn’t that reliable.)</p>
<p>Here’s a story-- couple years ago, at the college I work at, a students’ parents dropped her off at the building where the students signed in and lined up for graduation, with a bag in her hand to hold the gown. They parked, got seats at the graduation. Noticed her name was not in the program. Figured it was a mistake. Watched the whole graduation, no daughter. Notified campus admin, searched the place, no kid. Apparently, she’d gone in the sign-in building, then taken off the minute parents drove away (never was a gown in the bag). Didn’t want to admit she wasn’t graduating (she really was a student; in fact I taught her one semester.)</p>
<p>Can you imagine what those poor folks went through. So much easier in the long run if she’d just told them the truth.</p>