Posts
Parents are paying customers, not helicopters. The college should teach and the parents should parent. For the astronomical amounts that colleges charge, they should not expect parents to pay the bill and go away.
Little (big) Johnnie or Suzie might drop out after $40,000+ is spent with absolutely nothing to show for it. The presumption that the onus falls completely on the student is a cop-out. Johnnie or Suzie might deserve to flunk out, or it could be that the school takes their money and tosses them into the deep end of the pool.
Many parents would be more than happy to let their kids figure it out on their own after they hit 18, but not when it's costing them $40,000+ a year. And colleges should worry more about their flunk-out rate after a highly competitive application process. [ed.: exactly]
Most colleges aren't lowering their standards to recruit students. They get to pick the best for their school. Then they demand extraordinary amounts of money to teach the kids in a sink or swim environment. Then they want the parents to pay the bills and go away.
It won't happen. The problem isn't about growing up, it's about getting something for your money.
We know a family whose child may not make it through college; I believe the parent is in debt for at least $40,000.* Middle class income. When we look at colleges I'm going to want to know a school's college completion rate and success rate at placement in graduate programs. I don't want to pay $40,000 (make that borrow $40,000) for gatekeeping.
Paying $22,000/yr for gatekeeping in my middle & high school will be quite enough.
We've also been told that Cornell's entry-level science courses are particularly brutal. You send your science kid to Cornell, and by second semester freshman year he's majoring in sociology.
At least, that's what we've heard. Assuming it's true, C. won't be applying to Cornell.
Ed says NYU has a fantastic record getting its undergraduates into graduate programs, fyi. That's good to hear. Our big perk in life is that C. can attend NYU for free if he's accepted. We pay taxes on the tuition fee, but that's it.
On the other hand, although I've thought the helicopter parent meme was a crock ever since I heard the words, last weekend my sister-in-law, a professor in a nursing program, told me she has parents calling her up constantly to tell her their child is sick and can't come to clinic; can she give them a do-over; etc.
I find that bizarre.
Ed says he's never heard from a parent in his entire career. Of course, he did once hear from a psychiatrist that one of his students wanted to murder him along with a couple of other professors. (That's another story.)
His brother said Bryn Mawr hears from parents, but I have no sympathy for Bryn Mawr given what it's charging. Of course if parents are calling their kids in sick, my feeling is the kid better be in the hospital even with the $40,000 bill.
sheesh
accountability at the graduate level
Interestingly, graduate-level programs probably have quite a bit of accountability.
Ed is the head of the Institute of French Studies, which awards Ph.D.s. The university closely tracks placement of their graduates in assistant professorships. One year the statistics got messed up so it looked as if they hadn't placed their new Ph.Ds in jobs, and Ed heard from the administration right away.
I'm going to try to get him to look into what kinds of accountability exists for undergraduate education in general.
accountability in schools of design
Gosh, I wish I could remember the conversation Ed had with our friend who is an architect on the Ground Zero buildings....
He was talking about the point at which gatekeeping should begin.
I think he said that in the field of design, professor-as-gatekeeper should start in early graduate school. Assuming I'm remembering this correctly, I believe he said that by then a professor in a good school of design can easily distinguish different levels of talent and accomplishment, and that the job market in design is so competitive that it is an absolute waste of money to pusue an advanced degree in design if your professors don't think you can make it.
It's possible he said this about undergraduate programs like RISD's, but I don't think so. I have the distinct impression he put the gatekeeping function pretty far down the line. I definitely recall finding what he said both useful and commonsensical. It made sense to me both as a person who once attended graduate school and as a person who may one day be trying to pay for graduate school.
In any case, I dislike surrogate gatekeeping. Medical schools don't need Cornell to help them winnow out applicants.
speaking of medical schools
One of our administrators is friends with a high-level administrator at a medical school. (I think the friend may be a dean.)
He said that across the board the best colleges produce students with the best standardized test scores. This is true without fail.
None of this stuff is a mystery.
And no medical school needs undergraduate institutions to make their choices for them.
* In this case the problem is almost certainly that the student simply is not prepared for college level work. Of course, this raises the question of whether the college should be taking the parent's money, and I don't know the answer to that since I don't know what the student's scores and grades were.
12 comments:
When we look at colleges I'm going to want to know a school's college completion rate and success rate at placement in graduate programs.
I will add this to my list.
I wonder if the high school guidance counselor will bring this up? Our high school has been promoting the fact that graduates are increasingly gaining admission to the most competitive colleges. I must ask if they track completion rates for these students.
He said that across the board the best colleges produce students with the best standardized test scores. This is true without fail.
Do you mean SAT scores, or graduate school admission test scores? Or something else?
Our high school has been promoting the fact that graduates are increasingly gaining admission to the most competitive colleges. I must ask if they track completion rates for these students.
The fact that they're talking about getting kids into competitive schools is excellent, though.
We still have essentially none of this talk.
Instead we're constantly regaled by tails of the Brilliant Few.
Even the new assistant superintendent had picked up on this meme by the time we saw her.
She said, "We have students who go straight through the school, get straight As, and are going to Ivy League schools."
That was a funny moment, because of course this is a tiny little town, and we know most of these people (or know who they are).
Number one, the number of kids going to Ivy League schools is TINY, and number two, quite a few of them are legacies (as is Christopher).
The head of personnel was present for the meeting, and when I said, "We don't have lots of students getting straight As and going to Ivy League schools; we know all these people" she started laughing.
In any case, I don't want to hear one word about the Brilliant Few.
That's ridiculous.
I went to Wellesley from a farm school; I was accepted by Stanford.
Ed went to Princeton from Levittown. (Now that was a good high school. They got zillions of kids into Ivy League schools - all of them middle class & doing it on their own, without tutors.)
Tex He was talking about the med school test - is it the M-CAT??
Not sure.
He and Ed both agreed, though, that the better the school the higher the SAT scores.
People throw smoke on this issue all the time, but it's bunk as far as I can tell.
When you talk to people off the record - and when you just use your own common sense and store of anecdotal evidence - you see at once that the SAT directly tracks achievement, competitiveness of school you're admitted to, etc.
All you have to do to find out why is sit down and take a sample test.
I took a sample SAT last fall, I think. The reading comprehension test is very high level. (Ed said so, too - and the only section he took was a historical passage.)
I thought the math test was challenging, too, but I think it's correct to say that the math portion is straightforward.
I don't think it has nonroutine problems.
What is a nonroutine problem, anyway?
oops - forgot to say: it's great that your school is talking about getting kids into competitive colleges.
But they DEFINITELY need to start collecting data on college completion rate.
I'm seeing kids go to college & then come back after one semester.
I know....at least 4 kids who've come back after one semester now.
I talked to the mom of one last night; her son is back at college now & doing fine.
Our district's current obsession is that students must "seek extra help."
That's the secret to success in college.
Be "willing" to "seek extra help."
This is a meme being peddled by the College Success people & enthusiastically embraced here.
Another important number to ask about is the retention rate for freshmen. But, this number doesn't exist in a vacuum. A large state-supported university may have a looser admissions policy when it comes to grades and standardized test scores. This, of course, is a function of supply and demand. For example, admission to the University of Illinois is highly competitive because there are vast quantities of college-bound students in Illinois.
Contrast this with states with smaller populations, such as Iowa or Kansas. Of course, you then have to throw into the equation the extent to which the state legislature is funding higher education.
Ultimately, the choice of a college comes down to a number of factors; some of them tangible and some of then intangible.
Our college-bound kid decided that a small college would be a better fit for her than a large school would, for a variety of reasons. The larger the school is, the harder it can be for some students to connect socially with other students. However, some kids want a Big 10 experience.
Other variables include the size of the town itself and the "personality" of the college; we visited a college that was located in a very small community in rural Indiana; it just didn't have the right feel. Another school had the reputation as a "preppy" school (not that there's anything wrong with that, unless that's not your personality.
I teach General Chemistry at a small, moderately selective liberal arts college. We provide a lot of support, but still every year have students flunk out. Often they have decent test scores and grades (in fact, the students who are accepted on probation almost never flunk out). Those who do get sent home often simply refuse to do any work. I have almost begged students to get me something that I can grade, including one person's senior thesis! (And at a big place, those students are just going to be allowed to disappear).
You also do need to be careful in comparing graduation rates -- ours aren't great, but most are students who choose to leave, often to save money or for a different social scene.
By the by, we do see helicopter parents, but these aren't parents with normal concerns. It is the person who calls me to ask when his daughter's final exams will be, or the person who calls an advisor asking where her child is right this minute. In other words, people who contact the professor when they should talk to their kid.
It is the person who calls me to ask when his daughter's final exams will be, or the person who calls an advisor asking where her child is right this minute.
Interesting.
I think that's what my sister-in-law was saying - only it went beyond this, as it involved grades, excuses for class absences, etc.
This was the first time I'd heard a "real" helicopter parent story.
THANKS!
I'm a student (biology) at Cornell, and I think you'll find that the classes here- at least for pre-meds- aren't much harder than your average Ivy. Cornell is huge, and often there are students admitted into a noncompetive major that want to be prem-ed. So, they enter as developmental sociology in the ag school to get into Cornell and then try to take classes. This results in a lot of people taking classes that perhaps shouldn't.
At any rate, I think you'll find that if your kid flunks out of a science course at Cornell, he would have flunked out anywhere. Yes, the curves are tough- but the material is the same anywhere, and college isn't supposed to be a peice of cake.
The kids that flunk out aren't stupid, they're unmotivated. Classes at any university requires work. I did horrible my freshman year, and took a year off. I took a class at a community college and did badly there too. It wasn't until I really decided that I needed to work hard that I started getting semesterly GPAs above 4.0.
Post a Comment