<p>I have S2s passwords to school e-mail, Blackboard (which has grades and financial info) and bank accounts. He has another personal e-mail he uses, and I have no reason to check his other one, but I do pay the tuition bill and occasionally check grades and degree progress. He would tell us, if asked. As someone said, he usually does comment on grades he’s pleased with or disappointed with. But there was never any ultimatum. </p>
<p>As a former college professor (H still is), we do not discuss students’ grades with anyone but the student him/herself, unless official permission is given. Not sure what the registrar’s office does once grades are posted.</p>
There’s a difference (I hope) in that you’re not ‘managing’ your kid and their college work as you would an employee. While I agree that if a parent is paying for the education they have a right to know things are on course, that doesn’t mean they’re actually managing it and likely don’t need to see much more than the end grades and even then the student s/b able to just tell them unless there’s a specific problem with the student. I don’t think the comparison of the student to managing an employee at work is a good one and is one most students would probably find offensive.</p>
<p>I really don’t see why it’s any different. I work at a start up which is funded by a venture capitalist. They do not micro manage us, but they want to see milestones - product development, revenue target by certain date. Yes, we would prefer if we didn’t have to answer to them, but unfortunately when we took their money we owed them something. I view my kids’ college education to be the same. I am footing the bill, it is a big investment, and I am owed progress report.</p>
<p>sseamom - there is a difference between micro management vs making sure milestones are met on schedule and not just waiting until there is a point of no return. I tell my next level of manager that it is their job to make sure their staff are not spinning wheels or going the wrong direction.</p>
<p>Your statement was making a comparison to your duties as a manager of your staff, not some venture capitalist protecting their investment. That’s what you wrote.</p>
<p>Many colleges use the strict interpretation of FERPA and will not release any protected information without student consent. I worked at a public U that would not discuss anything particular to the student without a written FERPA release. If the student wanted to allow the school to discuss things with parents if they called, a FERPA release had to be on file. If the student wanted the parent to have access to his/her grades, etc., the FERPA release had to be on file … and the student had to set up the particular access he/she was allowing.</p>
<p>I was able to see my D’s billing and financial aid info at her college. They sent grades to the house. S’s school allows me to see billing info & nothing more. I do not have access to financial aid info (at least I don’t think so … he only has a finaid account for a scholarship - we did not fill out FAFSA). Grades are not sent to the house.</p>
<p>No difference. As a manager, it is my job to protect my firm’s investment (resource), which is to make sure my staff are not wasting time and able to produce quality work.</p>
<p>kelsmom - I believe if a parent wanted to press and go with the strict interpretation of FERPA, a school would be obligate to give that information, unless there is a separate agreement between the school and parent.</p>
<p>Maybe no difference for you but there sure is for me. Managing MY staff and MY responsibilities at work is different than making sure my money isn’t wasted on my KID’s work and my KID’s responsibilities. </p>
<p>So what do you do - have weekly meetings with your D to make sure she did all her HW properly this week? Do you review the results of all her quizzes, HW assignments, etc., like you might a staff member at work? </p>
<p>I think knowing that the student who I’m paying for (which btw is different than an investment in something for me) is on a reasonable course by having an understanding of the grades on a semester basis is adequate. I can’t imaging getting more detailed than that unless there’s a serious issue with the student. Even then I don’t need to go online to check - my kids just tell me. I don’t even have to ask. If my kid had a lot of problems and I felt they were squandering the money and partying all the time rather than going to classes and doing the schoolwork I’d likely do things much differently, perhaps including not funding them at all, but otherwise I don’t need to treat them like staff at work and basically ‘supervise’ them.</p>
<p>That may be the case, but some schools go well beyond that to ensure they don’t incur lawsuits accusing them of violating FERPA…however meritless those suits may be. </p>
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<p>Giving out one’s school email/network password was certainly a violation of my LAC’s honor code as they clearly stated that such access was for the STUDENT ONLY and NO ONE ELSE. Especially considering giving out such info to anyone outside the immediate college community is a MAJOR SECURITY HAZARD. </p>
<p>It’s not too different from corporate employees giving corporate email/network access to their spouses or parents or attorneys/paralegals telling their parents/SOs about aspects of their job that are client/institution confidential.</p>
<p>Oldfort, if a parent’s relationship with their college-age student is such that s/he gets to the “point of no return” without the parent knowing, WITH or WITHOUT logging into their grades/emails etc. then it’s not a very healthy relationship. I can’t imagine a healthy, honest parent-child relationship in which I would feel the need to check grades, because my kids would be telling me anyway. If they WEREN’T telling me about their general progress or I couldn’t reach them semi-regularly or some other communication blocks were being thrown up, I would assume there were problems and take action. </p>
<p>Grades would be the LAST indicator of an issue-assuming I had mature kids who communicated with me. If they didn’t to begin with, the whole topic wouldn’t likely be coming up because they probably wouldn’t be in, or ready for, college, at least on my dime.</p>
<p>Does FERPA give me a right to see the education records of my son or daughter who is in college?
When a student turns 18 years old or enters a postsecondary institution at any age, all rights afforded to you as a parent under FERPA transfer to the student (“eligible student”). However, FERPA provides ways in which a school may—but is not required to—share information from an eligible student’s education records with parents, without the student’s consent. For example:
• Schools may disclose education records to parents if the student is claimed as a dependent for tax purposes.
• Schools may disclose education records to parents if a health or safety emergency involves their son or daughter.
• Schools may inform parents if the student, if he or she is under age 21, has violated any law or policy concerning the use or possession of alcohol or a controlled substance.
• A school official may generally share with a parent information that is based on that official’s personal knowledge or observation of the student.</p>
<p>Okay? So, it is allowed but not required. This is defintely the “lite” version. You can see some confusing wording on p2 of the link. I believe that refers to pre-college or under-18 kids- but why do I have to guess? It’s not clear.</p>
<p>As to the ethics or other considerations, to each his own.</p>
<p>The college has a responsibility to the student, not to the parents or any other third party paying the bills. You do not own your adult children. You do not have any responsibilities for them either. You do not have the right to know anything about them. You can choose to pay for their costs- education, housing, meals et al. Unless you have a signed contract they have no obligations to you.</p>
<p>Hopefully you have a good relationship with your child and they will either tell you things or give you permission to access the information. Our son started college at 16- he was able to apply and enroll without our signature. The dorm did require our signature on his housing contract. We would have had to sign for medical treatment until he turned 18. We were not sent grade information and were not contacted by the school as was the case in HS. We had to get his permission to learn his grades and his expenditures on his student card (parents and others could always put money in an account online with his student number, but other info wasn’t accessible without his password).</p>
<p>Parents- you need to realize your child is now an adult and no longer under your control legally. Your relationship with the adult child you raised is different from the one you had before s/he was 18. Of course you can choose to kick your offspring out of the house and refuse to support him/her. There are a lot of unspoken rules and expectations you should clarify. One could be taking a certain number of credits per semester and getting grades above a certain level for you to continue to subsidize the education.</p>
<p>Best thing I ever did was not request to see my son’s grades in college. He had some trials and tribulations but worked it out on his own. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I was dealing with the death of my father, the care of my mother and breast cancer. We had a great conversation about his college years last summer. It was an eye-opener for me and I realized how important it was for him to “struggle on his own” and figure it all out with the careful guidance of those college professors and administrators. Get them to a good school and let them go. I am extremely proud of the man he has become.</p>
<p>sseamom - you like to define what is a parent/child healthy relationship for everyone. </p>
<p>I do ask my kids how they are doing in school, what kind of grades they have on their prelims, and I do require them to show me their final grades. We have minimum GPA for them to stay in school (3.0) and minimum to live in a sorority (3.5). </p>
<p>We have a very healthy and loving relationship with our kids, and they are also very mature and independent. They call us, they visit us, and we still go away together as a family whenever D1 could get away from work. D1 did gradudate with good GPA, has her dream job, and is able to afford an apartment on her own in one of the most expensive cities. We happen to live in the same city and have extra rooms for her, but we all decided it was best for her to be on her own. Now, if she didn’t graduate with 3.5+ GPA, it would be very unlikely that she could have gotten her job. She did hit a bit of a rocky spot in school initially, and we did help her to sort it out. She felt comfortable to come to us because we had open, honest, non-judgemental relationshipn. If some parents feel it is best to be hands off with their kids, more power to them, but don’t come around judging others. </p>
<p>One thing students usually do when they are in trouble is they hide from their parents. They start not going to classes, sleeping too much, and sometime even give up because they think it is hopeless, when in fact by getting some tutoring or visits to school’s health center could take care some of those issues. I am for one, who would rather over step my boundary a bit so I could give me kid a hand. I would do that for my friends, why wouldn’t I do that for my own kids.</p>
<p>FERPA website is down at the moment, but it is pretty clear that parents do have the right to access the student’s academic record if he/she is an dependent. This has been discussed quite a few times on CC. From the government’s website, not interpretation by some third party:
<p>I do view paying for my kids’ college education as an investment, and there needs to be an agreed goals that we are reaching. In our case is decent GPA and graduating in 4 years. If my kid is going to deviate from that and may need additional funding in order to graduate, I need to know, and I don’t want to know at the last minute. My kids learned early on, there is no free money. If they were truly independent, they would be paying for their own college education.</p>
<p>When I give my employee a project, I ask for a project plan and design before he/she starts the project, then I’ll ask for regular update on the progress. One thing I do stress is not to tell me a project is going to be delayed right before it is suppose to go live. This is how I interact with my kids. I treat them like responsible adults.</p>
<p>We make separate guest accounts. To be honest, I have no idea what those accounts show because I’ve never made one. I’m not a dependent for tax proposes but I’ve never denied my parents access. They’ve never asked.</p>
<p>Good parents are involved on many levels and in many ways. They guide wisely, with an eye on their kids’ future independence and ability to navigate a tough world. There’s nothing magic about turning 18. It’s legally defined. Our responsibilites ebb and flow as they mature.</p>
<p>I’d guess that not wondering about grades represents a large symbol of trust to many. And yet, that the same parents still have many other family-related expectations of their kids, while they are still dependent. Think about it.</p>
<p>But, notice that Ferpa states “permits a school” or “may disclose” not “mandates.” There’s a large discussion on the .gov site about colleges misunderstanding the “exceptions” to the “eligible student” label- the exceptions in post 31, from a .gov document. As I understand it, Ferpa’s primary purpose was to limit wanton info sharing with outside parties, while expressing the rights of a host of categories to access it- law enforcement, per court order, school districts collecting data, sending transcripts, etc. The sections covering parents and education records are quite small, in comparison to the issue of PII/personally identifying info being disclosed to media, marketers or just any interested party.</p>
<p>Lf, I disagree with your universal characterization of “good parents”. Not every child needs a parent involved on many levels. A good parent parents to their child’s needs imo and not every child needs that.</p>
<p>We told the kids that if they want financial assistance from us, we get to see their grades. We leave the college out of it and the choice is 100% up to our child. So far they have opted to give us access to their grades :D. We’ve kept tabs on them early on, 1st semester freshman year, but once we saw they were doing ok, didn’t really check. We do have access to the financial stuff so we can make payments as needed. Mostly though we transfer money into their checking account and let them make the payment on campus.</p>
<p>Unless my child was incapacitated in someway, I would never call the school about attendance, grades, etc. We do occasionally have to respond to the financial aid office about a bill or whatever though.</p>
<p>Romani, not every child. A variety of potential ways. Some small, some apparent. It’s organic.</p>
<p>We have the ability to set up our own accounts- but I’ve always had both kids’ account info. I had one’s FB password for few years, too. Not to helicopter, but she thought it was the easiest way to share access to photos with me, at the time. We have the school ids because, 18 or not, I still do the Fafsa and CSS paperwork and usually need to see the financial details. 18 doesn’t spare me that.</p>