More bad news for college officials who say too many parents are micromanaging their children’s lives: Most college-bound kids seem to welcome the involvement.
About three-quarters of this year’s college freshmen reported their parents were involved the “right amount” in a variety of activities related to choosing and enrolling in college, a survey released today says. The rest, meanwhile, were more likely to say their parents were involved too little than too much.
The survey, completed last fall by more than 272,000 entering freshmen on 356 four-year campuses nationwide, did not ask students to quantify the level of their parents’ involvement, nor did it measure whether that level has increased.
But college administrators have been wringing their hands in recent years over what to do about “helicopter parents,” so dubbed because they hover over their children’s lives. Last week, EducationDynamics, a company that works with colleges to retain students, noted a “dramatic increase” in helicopter parenting at the start of the second semester.
