Life continues to be interesting and somewhat wacky, what with the political conventions, the opening of our schools’ fall semesters, and most significantly, the series of storms hitting the Gulf and East coasts. Dr. Phil Day has reached out to the regional presidents of SASFAA and SWASFAA and offered any assistance that NASFAA can provide. I also know that all of you will agree with me that our thoughts and prayers are with our colleagues and their families residing in those areas being hit by the storms.

Fall semester has begun – just where did summer go? Is it just me, or have you also experienced a significant increase in parents taking over their students’ processes (i.e., financial aid, registration, advising, etc.)? I half expect that when students seek personal counseling, the parent will show up to be counseled instead.

(Hmm, maybe not a bad idea!)

I know that helicopter parents have been hovering around us for a number of years now. But this year we are experiencing a discernable increase in hoverers. For example, one of my staff shared that she had a call from a parent who was stumped in answering a question during the on-line entrance interview. My staff member assumed that the student had asked the parent to call. But it turns out that the parent indicated that her son “doesn’t know a thing about loans, and she was doing it for him.”

So much for “personal responsibility,” which just happens to be one of the learning outcomes our financial aid office is being hard pressed to provide students this year.

My university is gearing up for its ten-year reaccreditation review. Heavy emphasis appears to now be on learning outcomes. In my annual report, I not only need to include what learning outcomes the financial aid office can assist students with, but I must tie it to the office’s goals for the next three to five years. Since many of the office’s goals focus on improving processes to better serve students, it’s difficult to match goals with learning outcomes.

I’m a little stumped in determining what learning outcomes the financial aid office can provide our students. Certainly we can try to teach personal responsibility by having them turn in their financial aid applications on-time and accurately. We can also teach them financial literacy through specific programs while they maneuver through the aid process. Beyond that, other learning outcomes appear to be a stretch.

So, please help! If any of you are already involved in the “learning outcomes” process at your institution, please share for me and others in the same predicament how you have approached this issue and what learning outcomes you have come up with. It seems that learning outcomes are the hot topic of the day and I’m afraid we will all have to face it square-on.

Now, back to the web to see if I can find a device to shoot down those pesky little helicopters that keep flying by my office.

Recently I read It’s Your Child’s Education, Not Yours in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Like many financial aid offices, our front line staff are responding more and more to parents, some affectionately dubbed “helicopter parents” because they’re always hovering over their children. We find ourselves balancing our obligation to provide courteous service to parents while simultaneously fostering the students’ responsibility to transition into adulthood and develop their own problem solving and critical thinking skills. The article’s author, Lynette S. Merriman, senior associate dean for student affairs at University of Southern California, offers wonderful advice.

“When a parent contacts me, the most important message I try to convey is that the student involved should contact me so I can better understand the issue and provide the most appropriate advice, information and options….. Our mantra should be that we help students to help themselves,” she writes.

Bravo!

But as many of us can attest, it becomes a different story when we send our own children off to college. Many of the things we know we shouldn’t do, …well … we do.

For example, when my cell phone rang as I boarded a plane with my wife to attend our son’s college graduation and he said “I got a ‘D’ in that class we talked about and I’m not sure I’m going to graduate,” I did not say “We’ll, son, how do you think you should handle this?”

Instead I screamed “Give me the dean’s phone number and go sit in his office till I get there!” (My son wound up straightening this out before the plane landed and his grandmother - my mom - could get her hands around his neck).

And if the truth be told, I do remember when the same son asked “How can I get me some of that financial aid?” … and later, how I screamed into the telephone “Don’t you DARE cash that check!” when he received in the mail a check for a $ 2,000 merit scholarship a few months into the semester that I thought had been sent to him by mistake. My son of course immediately rushed to bank and cashed it anyway!

I cried like a baby at his college graduation, and after I stopped thinking about how much money I had spent, I bought a sweatshirt that read “University of Central Florida Dad” that I proudly wear as often as I can.

In theory we want students to step up to their own responsibilities, but in practice I know how difficult it can for a parent to sit on the sidelines.

Is your office cultivating relationships with parents? Have you developed separate communication strategies with parents and have these been effective? What are you experiences with helicopter parents? What has been your experience with your own children when they were in college?