Okay, this seems more reasonable. She gave you reason to be suspicious that she might be failing. But relax about the grade point average! Her performance as a student teacher and contacts she makes in that setting will be more important to securing a job.
Sure they could have. They’d just have to have the confrontation with their son rather than with the school.
I think that’s what this often comes down to. Parents aren’t willing to enforce their rules on their kids (it’s not fundamentally difficult to not write a check), so they want the school to enforce it for them.
FWIW, my parents didn’t ask to see my grades. I think my dad even said something like “You’re an adult. They’re your grades, not mine.” They provided significant financial support for college, and I would have certainly agreed to give them my grades if they had wanted to make their support conditional on that.
My university sends out a form every year which students can sign waiving this right. My parents asked me to sign it. I did. It’s not like I wouldn’t discuss grades with them anyway. If my grades suddenly dropped significantly I think they’d be concerned for my well-being more than anything else.
And of course I didn’t actually answer the OP. Since the kid is legally an adult, yes, it should be a right, but I think the option to waive the right is a good idea.
Well, magna cum laude just isn’t good enough for the babies of dopers!
In some divorce cases, a parent does NOT have the right to stop paying for college.
My parents were (are) old school Europeans. They footed the bill for university (with some contribution from myself). When the grades came in the mail, they thought nothing of opening the mail and looking at them. Since I wasn’t going to wait for the mailman everyday there was nothing for me to do except accept the situation.
Any assertion of my rights as a young adult on my part would have resulted in me bearing the entire cost of school. Not worth it.
That’s pretty much what I was thinking, too - from everything I’ve read, it sounds like Dinsdale is doing his best to raise thoughtful, productive members of society - sure, you’d love it if she kept at it right to the end, but she’s not a robot. I don’t think a little easing of the parental expectations at this point would do any damage. Judging from her being evasive and feeling guilty, I think it might even do some good.
I agree that you should lighten up about the GPA. While she’s not old enough for you to wash your hands of her, it’s time you quit judging her for what she could do vs. what she is doing. Do you care what your sister’s GPA is? You cowokers’? Your mailman’s? No. It’s their business.
Just make sure she’s not failing and quit worrying about the number. Be there to offer advice, not judgment. I think there needs to be some base level of performance that she needs to maintain in order to justify taking your money, but ISTM that she far exceeded that mark. So I don’t think she needed to apologize.
This actually changes my opinion. It sounds like her grades have been stellar, that she has clearly worked her butt off and been really, really committed to getting the most out of her college career. Furthermore, it’s her last semester of “regular” classes, so there is no worry about setting a precedent for the future.
Given all that, I think you were perfectly within your rights to demand she show you the grades, but I don’t think you should have done it. She knew she screwed up, you knew she screwed up, there was no need to make her embarrass herself with the details. It’s not like she needed advice on avoiding this in the future, or to be made aware of how disappointing it is. She knows exactly, and she knows she made this choice. She’s the one that will live with the consequences–if there are any.
It’s actually the federal government requiring that. There is such a thing as a dependecy override that let’s undergrads under 24 be considered independent for financial aid purposes, but it’s really hard to get one (less than 2% become independent this way). Neither parents merely refusing to provide financial assistance or the student already being sulf-supporting are not grounds for one. LGBT students who’s parents cut them off (or condition support on something totaly abhorrent like going into conversion “therapy”) can and do run into all kinds of problems getting aid; especially when their own college finacial aid administrator is less than helpful.
Years ago, a friend of mine was supposed to be going to the university her parents were paying for. They lived in the Philippines and she was here in Canada. She ended up working and still taking the money from her parents and didn’t tell them she’d dropped out.
Eventually they demanded to see her grades and she hung herself in the basement. My friend and I found her.
Because of that I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that if I had a child in university and I wanted to see their grades, I’d tread very lightly and make sure they knew that flunking out or quitting altogether were not the end of the world.
This is precisely what pisses me off about the whole situation. In the end, it becomes a bizarro world in which the students, parents, and school fill out forms as if the parent will pay and the student will not reveal their grades to their parents; knowing full well that no kid will get enough aid if their parent’s do not contribute and that the parents are going to see the grades.
For the record, starting this summer I will be paying for three kids in college, and yes, I expect to see their grades. They kind of laughed at the idea that they wouldn’t tell me. I also now a couple who twice paid tuition for their son, only to have him drop out and live off the money for a while.
Just recently here in California a girl faked her own kidnapping because she had flunked out of UCLA, never told her family, and now they were expecting to attend her graduation.
As usual, you’re way too hard on your kids! She’s going into teaching, so the most important thing on her resume will be her college professor’s recommendations and her internship/ student teaching experience, not her grades. Frankly, I’d be slightly concerned about her moving in with her boyfriend right before doing the most important thing she can do in undergrad - aka student teach. Of all of my newly-hired teacher friends, just one said that she was asked about her grades, and that was because she didn’t get an A in some class where she was observed. None had lower than a 3.2, but they ranged from 3.2 up to 3.9. So it really is largely about actual teaching performance.
I had a student teacher in high school (in physics no less) with an utterly horrible presence and speaking voice and an even worse lisp. We were told she was on track to be the valedictorian of her college’s teaching program :o.
ETA: I saw you said that she got some C’s. Could it be senioritis, or the boyfriend situation? Personally, I find it tough to believe that a previous academic would take such a dive for anything other other than some genuine personal reasons. You just don’t see that kind of dip because of senioritis.
No grade access, no money.
The problem is that it is quite difficult for a college student to get financial aid without the assumption that their parents will pay.
It isn’t a question of “no grade access, no money.”
It is “no grade access, no money, and you also can’t get financial aid elsewhere because it is assumed I will pay.”
I never got any money from my parents for college, and also never would have had a problem showing them my grades. But I don’t think parents have a “right” to the grades even if they are paying.
I agree that a person over 18 has the right to keep their college records private if that’s what they must do. But we’re talking apples and orange here. The whole “no lookee, no payee” thing isn’t a matter of demanding that the College provide the information.
People have an absolute right to place strings on their own money and if/how it’s spent. Therefore they have an absolute right to say, for instance, “I will pay for X portion of your tuition in return for a transcript at the end of each semester. If I do not get that transcript, or if your grades are not at X.0 level, I will withdraw part or all of my funding”.
Not a violation of a student’s privacy or rights. Though I’m sure that a student who was hoping to drink his way through at least his first semester may feel that way.
IANA college financial aide worker, but when I went to school, I was nearly 30, and was able to get financial aide with no parents in sight, so they aren’t necessary for financial aide.
You might be interested to know that this topic is covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. If I may summarize, adults attending educational institutions receiving federal money may not have their school records released without their permission. There are, of course, certain exceptions, and a student may waive this right.
Not when you are 30, no. I believe you have to be 24, but it keeps going up.
It is extremely difficult to be viewed as independent for financial aid if you are under 24.
Doesn’t matter if you have your own apartment, your parents hate you, and you pay all your own bills. Just the fact that your parents are alive means they are expected to pay, eliminating other sources of financial aid.