Do you believe it Is reasonable, or expected, that parents who are paying a full ride (tuition, food, accommodation, car&insurance, health insurance. spending $/phone) have end of semester/ end of year access to a student’s grades?
Yes.
Reasonable or expected? I have a reason for asking…!
I think it is reasonable, but the law says it is up to your kid to give you that access. The school CAN’T give you that access unless your child agrees to it.
You need to work it out with your kid. No access, no future payment.
My kids didn’t really care. They gave me access to their student portals to pay the bills, to make sure all the scholarships and grants were received by the schools, to make sure other things were received.
I also needed access to the billing page to do the taxes. Both my kids had scholarships and grants and the 1098Ts were NEVER correct. I had to go through the charges and payments to figure out their taxes which I had to do to do MY taxes and take the AOTC credits.
The schools usually have a way for parents to access the payments without accessing the grades, but for me it was easier to just have my kids give me their access.
I’ll say reasonable but not expected. I personally don’t agree with the idea that family pays 100% of needed expenses for the college experience - especially after year one.
In investment is an investment. If I’m only paying 50% am I less privy to info like grades? I don’t think so. So for me the answer would be more just “should parents have access to kids grades” across the board. To which my answer is still “reasonable but not expected” - and I only support this for the first year. If they prove a dedication to school (which does not mean all A’s only) then after the first year I would back off on the whole grade viewing - overall.
Uh, yes. It’s totally reasonable, and my kid knows to expect it.
If he told me to mind my own business, I’d tell him to fund his own education.
In the Thumper household, if we didn’t see the grades for a semester, we didn’t pay the bills.
We did not want access to their accounts to see ourselves, but when they came home, we all sat at the computer while they brought up their grades from the school portal.
And yes, I know the bill for that next term was paid already. Our “deal” with our kids was that they had to maintain their GPA to keep scholarships…and we were not paying for D grades (or F) or any retakes. If GPA fell below that needed for the scholarships, we would have withdrawn them and they would have enrolled at the local instate public.
Our kids understood the above and did as we asked.
We required access to the bursars account because we were paying the bills. And yes, we did need that access because mistakes were made. Our kids had no issue with this.
Thank you!!! That’s all we have asked for, and D is fighting tooth and nail that H is being a heliparent. As we are getting ready to pay her rent Sept. 1, and replace her dead car, well, I don’t think we are being unreasonable
Explain to your kid, how are you supposed to pay all the bills if you do not have access to the accounts?
My son didn’t give me his PWs for colleges, nor once he was in college. I’d ask for the transcript to receive the AAA discount, so I’d learn at the end of the year.
When he won a merit award, and when he was ill and withdrawing from classes, he’d Tell me. He remains private.
I don’t recall sharing grades with my parents.
We never saw grades but couldn’t even if our son wanted us to because Army. But then, we weren’t paying either.
Ditto @abasket’s response. I don’t think the fact you’re paying is the relevant issue.
We never had access to ds’s grades/student account. We just told him that we expected him to tell us what his grades were at the end of each quarter when they were posted. I trusted him to tell me the truth. He did, and that was confirmed when we did need a transcript a couple of times to get a good student discount on his auto insurance. What he had told us was exactly what was on the transcript.
However, I also told ds I would NOT be asking him about grades along the way during the quarter. I just needed to know the final grade. I didn’t want to bombard him with, “What did you get on your test/quiz/paper, “ all quarter long during our weekly phone chats. I told him if I asked about how a class was going, that did NOT mean grades - it meant, what was the professor like? What was he learning that was interesting? What was the rapport like in the class? Etc. Wanting to know a final grade is very different from micromanaging along the way.
So, maybe reassure your daughter you won’t bug her all semester long - you just need to know at the end.
And, dispassionately say that you won’t pay unless she complies with your request. Say it, and walk away. Don’t argue, don’t engage. If she wails/complains, shrug and say, “Your choice,” and walk away. Dispassionately.
This makes me wonder what the grade expectations are from parents.
@abasket the expectation for grades in the Thumper house…kids had to maintain a 3.0 GPA because that’s what it took to keep their scholarship money.
The expectation was a 2.5 because that was needed to maintain the 4 year 1/2 tuition scholarship.
My kids told me their grades, but I never told them they had to. I guess it just wouldn’t have occurred to them not to, and whether or not they “had to” show us never came up.
I don’t recall my parents ever asking about my grades in college. I don’t know how much I shared with them, although I am sure I told them more or less how I was doing.
My daughter was happy I was involved. She needed a 3.0 to keep her scholarship. At one point early on it fell to a 2.98 or something like that. She appealed on her own and they granted her another semester to bring it up.
Then I got involved and helped her pick a few classes where she’d be successful. In fact she changed her major and we figured out when to take the dreaded math class (took at another college in the summer and got an A - go figure).
Parents aren’t all horrible meanies. We can be helpful.
OP, it’s your call. If you want her to share her grades with you, make that a condition. Sept 1 is Tuesday.
We don’t have access to our child’s grades but she tells us. I know that we would get a little helicopter like if we had access and she’s pretty open with us anyway. Honestly, in our case our kiddo needs a little independence from us so we encourage it in anyway we can. But she’s pretty hard on herself grade-wise so I don’t think she needs us breathing down her back. This is definitely a situation where it’s going to vary family by family.
I believe it’s perfectly reasonable for the person paying many, many thousands of dollars each year to ask to see grades. Even recently, we’re seeing irresponsible behavior from a lot of students, so I think parents can’t be blamed for wanting to make sure their kids are on track.
OP, “expected” by whom? I assume you told your daughter your expectations when she went off to college? Who cares if it was expected or not by other people?
“You need to work it out with your kid. No access, no future payment.” It’s pretty simple.
Pushback from kids is pretty normal. You should have seen the pushback from our 25-year-old when we told him he would need to start paying rent after paying no rent for six months after graduating from college, and actually earning quite a bit of money taking care of his grandfather. You would have thought we were monsters. So yeah, I know we’re terrible parents. We stayed calm - “We understand you are unhappy, but these are our conditions for you to live at home.”
I expect to see final semester grades too. Expectations for GPA are a 3.0. Thankfully D happily shares but there isn’t a chance I would blindly pay tuition, R&B without knowing how the academics were going.