What Professors Wish Parents Knew about College

I cannot speak for every college professor, but teaching in higher education for the last twenty-four years gives me some credibility on the topic. In my career, I taught upper and lower division English courses for large public universities, community colleges, and small private liberal arts universities. Every Fall ushers in a new class of freshmen and every winter ushers out 25-50% of those same kids. I estimate roughly 5000 students have crossed my path, probably a few more. I personally flunked about 10% of those, maybe more.

It seems crazy in those terms. I flunked five hundred students. Most knew the end loomed because one cannot skip most classes and fail to turn in assignments and expect to pass. Some couldn’t make the leap from high school to college because they lacked the internal discipline to do their work. Without a parent bearing down, they succumbed to the lure of late nights, dorm parties, and too much free time. Still others attended only because their parents expected them to be there… and it didn’t take a psychic to see that rebellion and subsequent drop outs loomed in their future.

So here is my two cents on the college experience.

I wish I could give you a magic formula that would make your son or daughter successful in college, but see, in the end, it isn’t up to me, nor is it under your control.

So these principles are just that; principles. Hard and fast rules about human nature usually fail, so take these under advisement as you begin the process of handing your son or daughter off to an institution of higher learning.

Principle # 1: Their education does not belong to you. You may be paying for all or part of it, but their education stopped being about you somewhere in middle school, maybe earlier. I have so far taken six kids of my own through high school, three all the way through college, two still in college and one as far as her PhD. Each has different learning styles; some have ADHD, and some took longer than others to figure out what they wanted to do. If you have not turned over to them the basic responsibility for their own education by the time they graduate from high school, or if they failed to take on that responsibility for themselves, chances are they will not make it. If they do not possess the internal drive to get to class and get their work done, if they don’t have a desire to learn, they aren’t ready…yet. A year or two working for minimum wage imparts discipline and a desire for more. Taking a year between high school and college might save you and your kid thousands of dollars.

Principle #2: The moment you take it on yourself to complain to a professor about your adult son or daughter’s grade is the moment that the professor stops taking your child seriously. This is not high school or middle school anymore. Professors are under no obligation to discuss grades with you even if you have the FERPA agreement signed which gives you access to your kid’s grades. At least thirty times in twenty-four years parents come to me to argue about a grade. None of those encounters have proven successful for them. However, when students come to me asking for help or to redo a paper, I often agree. After all, I care about whether they learn. Their grade is something they earn. I don’t have a stake in their grade. I just calculate the numbers. They are adults. Let them act like it.

Principle #3: Helping your son or daughter with homework is now called cheating. My worst-case scenario was when a mother called about her son’s failing paper. He did not include a works cited page. She informed me that she had forgotten to include it when she wrote his paper and didn’t think he should be penalized for her mistake. Every college and university these days have free tutoring with people trained to help educate students. In middle school and high school, parents tend to be hands-on. Depending on the child, that may work or end in Junior always relying on others to complete his work. If you don’t let him or her stand on his or her own two feet now, when are you? So ante up the $11 a month for grammarly.com and refer them the Student Learning Center. They got this. And if they don’t, better to learn that sooner than later.

Principle #3: Education does not exist for the sole purpose of guaranteeing a career. This is unpopular to say right now. After all, a record number of college grads live at home with parents. This economic fact does not change, nor should it change, the basic purpose of attending a university, which is education. If you are sending them to college for a job, send them to tech school. They will get a job out of there because they exist in order to train people for specific jobs, but don’t mistake training for higher education. On the other hand, if Junior is artistic, or never stops reading, or is really into robots, he needs college. If Daisy constantly analyzes the news, loves tutoring kids, or dreams about being a doctor, she needs college. Higher education is about exposing minds to a great many disciplines and ideas, not so they can say they are educated.

Being educated means you have the ability to make connections between a wide range of subjects. Making new connections, i.e. having bona fide ideas, can change the world.

Principle #4: You’re fired. Ouch. The process of individuation is painful but absolutely necessary. It is a natural and crucial stage in the emotional and intellectual maturing of a young adult to stand apart from his or her parents in order to evaluate the belief system they grew up with. In college, we professors often call it ‘hitting the wall’. A young man or woman will go through an identity crisis as they separate out what they learned from their parents and feel panicked. They question what beliefs are theirs and which ones are their parent’s. Parents see this and are convinced that professors are the devil, seducing them with their seditious ideas. By senior year, belief systems are usually intact again, but this time those systems reside where they belong, in the hearts and minds of the students.

Carefully picking only schools or professors that agree with everything you agree with might postpone this maturing, but it will not prevent it. I am not saying that school choice is not important, merely that I observe this phenomenon every year at every type of school, whether liberal public university or small private Christian institution. Personally, I like small institutions because professors will take the time out to hash out this process with students, acting as mentors in the best sense.

But make no mistake, in order for a young man or woman to become everything they need to be, your role in their lives will change.

If you resist this, you risk alienation. Make the process easier by trusting them and trusting that the time and love you put into them will bear fruit.

So as you pack up everything they need for their dorms and feel a little weepy at the end of an era, remember that they still need you. The same pitfalls you worried about in high school exist in college at a higher level. Drugs, bad relationships, and foolish decisions still hover out there. Your kids need you now, but at a distance.

They need you to be the home base where they can come to recover from all the adversities out there.

Be there for them. Just don’t try to do it for them.

As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small commission at no cost to you.