Trust, but Verify

There are a lot of parents of college students who pay for their loved one to go to college.  If you do that, you have a right to request to see your young adults’ grades.  There are privacy laws that exist that protect your student, unless they’ve signed for you to have access.  Even if they do that, you still want to have your young adult show you their grades.  This becomes a business arrangement.  You pay for their education, but in exchange they show you their transcript at the end of each semester. 

Trust, but verify.

– Ronald Reagan

Trust what they tell you they earned and verify that they did in fact earn them.  This may not have been what Ronald Reagan was referencing, however the quote fits well with this topic.  And, it’s important to share because blindly trusting is a financial gamble that not every parent is willing to make.

Having worked in higher education, students often inflate their grades.  Or more common, they aren’t self-aware that they can’t dig themselves out of a hole they’ve created.  This cognitive distortion thinking is a blind optimism that can’t get a student out of receiving a D or a F for a class.  If parents are paying for education and a student isn’t doing well, there can be a lot of shame associated with their performance.  The students who I encountered often associated their performance as a reflection of who they were as a person.  The last thing they ever wanted was to look anything less than perfect in their parents’ eyes.  And once a student starts struggling academically and lying about their performance, it’s hard to dig themselves out.

Students will not share that they’re on academic probation, or they won’t let a parent know they have been academically suspended.  They never shared that they weren’t going to class, and instead of withdrawing they just hid in their dorm room all semester.  That’s a lot of money that was spent with nothing to show.  The only way to ensure it never gets to this point without a parent having a pulse on the situation is to verify grades at the end of each semester.  If you are paying for tuition, being able to view grades after the semester is through is confirmation that you’re investing in the future of your child.  If you aren’t seeing the grades for yourself, you are investing in the hope that your young adult is telling the truth about their performance.  By verifying, you are saying you still trust your kid and you’re also saying you need to see if it for yourself to continue writing that tuition check.  That’s it.

Don’t get caught in a situation where you show up for your young adult’s college graduation only to find out that they were academically suspended several semesters ago (yes, this is a real situation!).  Invest in your kids’ future and ensure that your investment is money well spent.  There is nothing wrong with verifying that they are doing well academically.  If anything, it’s a validation of your financial investment in their professional future.

For questions or comments contact Joanna.