[rsfern]

I disagree with you. It's your choice to engage financially with the university, and you should do so knowing that if you want to know how it's going, you need to talk to the student, not the university -- we have laws like FERPA for a reason.

[aianus]

It's not a choice. In Canada at least you are disqualified from financial aid (including loans) based on your parents' tax returns. The law expects you to pay for your kids' school if you earn a middle class income or more.

[aidenn0]

Same in the US; I had a friend who was estranged from her parents, and so they refused to sign a FAFSA form, which made her unable to qualify for pretty much all financial aid. The college president had to step in to have an exception made for her, since all need-based scholarships provided by that college (and most others) are based upon FAFSA.

[rsfern]

Ok, I can see it from that perspective -- we have similar financial aid limits in the U.S. I still think it's a choice, even if it's one that's structurally difficult for many people to make.

However, this is mostly orthogonal to the issue that most university students are adults, and the university has no business sharing their personal information on their behalf (without their explicit consent of course).

[sulam]

He told the university to disclose grades to me. No laws are being broken. This is his choice, just like it's my choice to send them a crapton of money.

[dcole2929]

He told the school to disclose grades to you. Not his personal conduct. Most parent's accept that their kids are going to drink, and have sex, and maybe do some drugs in college. They probably aren't happy about it but they know it's going to happen to some degree or another. That is a huge difference from having your only communication with the school be basically a PSA that your kid is living in some sort of college sponsored hippie, drug den that's going to cause them to fail out. That's what people are taking issues with.

Maybe they were right to contact parents. I've never been to Senior House and don't know the ins and outs what went on there. But as someone who has worked in ResLife and been responsible for kids, I can say without a doubt MIT took the nuclear option. At most colleges, you can be put on academic probation, and even kicked out without the university notifying your parents directly.

[sulam]

As I said above, I don't endorse MIT's behavior. However, there is a spectrum here. It sounds like you think it's ok for him and I to make an agreement that the school will disclose his grades to me in return for getting a free (to him) education.

If I'd taken this further, and asked him to disclose his personal conduct, and he agreed, would you have a problem?

Keep in mind I actually don't care about his personal conduct. I care whether or not he's taking school seriously, and I am using grades as a proxy for that. I take the money seriously, and if he's not going to take the benefits the money is purchasing seriously, then I have the option to stop paying for it.

The problem I see is that this is a slippery slope. Suppose your kid gets into two schools -- say a cheap(er) in-state school and MIT. Either way you're paying for it, and you know the kid will get a perfectly good CS education at either school. However, having MIT on their resume will be worth something, as will the relationships they make. Perhaps it's even worth the huge additional expense, assuming they take full advantage of it. At what point does the additional value beyond the curriculum, which the school is happy to charge for, give me some interest (both intellectual and legal) in how all of that is going?

I ask not to argue that MIT is correct here, but to try and illustrate some of the complexity. I am not an ethicist but it seems like an interesting question to me.

[mikeash]

Then you should expect the school to tell you these things because the student asked them to, not because you're paying for it. The first and second halves of your first sentence are unrelated to each other.

[rsfern]

Ok, that's a bit different than how I read your earlier post, I thought you were saying that parents/relatives should be entitled to that info solely on the basis of footing the bill.

[fhood]

I agree. If you finance something, you are allowed to exercise some degree of control over it.

[mikeash]

You are. The control you're allowed is the right to decide to stop paying.