“There’s a mom on the phone for you” is not a sentence most college administrators or professors are usually eager to hear. We get immediate visions of “helicopter” or “lawnmower” parents swooping in to “fix” their progeny’s latest complaint. A decade ago I heard the term “B-52” used to describe parents who escalate relatively minor matters to the level of carpet-bombing threats (e.g., “I’m going to get you fired for the ’C’ you gave my son.”). It’s no wonder that a commonplace of campus culture has been that parents should be neither seen nor heard, except on move-in day or at commencement.
But times and the world have changed. As a modern campus leader, especially if there is an outward-facing component to your role — such as chair or dean — you should appreciate that:
- For parents, their child’s college education is their most valued and worried-about investment.
- Today’s college students are connected to parents much more than were previous generations. So while college should be a maturation agent, we cannot expect modern parents to just “drop off” their kids as ours did.
- Student success in recent years has been threatened by a global pandemic and its attendant financial and mental-health crises. We can’t ignore the families in helping the students.
- Parents play a vital role in recruiting and retaining college students — and that role may be even more influential among various communities of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, wealth, and even region.
- Parental fears for their children’s future — and commensurate concerns about safety, engagement, grades, and employability — are wholly reasonable.
- Many parents are unaware of how the academic system works and so may be forgiven for not pursuing the correct channels for resolving a question or dispute.
In this series David D. Perlmutter writes about pursuing a career in academic administration and about surviving and thriving as a leader – whether you are a chair a dean a provost and or any of the positions in between and beyond.
In these unsettling times, we must seize the initiative and work with parents — not keep them at arm’s length or resent their “interference.” So here are some best practices for engaging parents to everyone’s benefit:
Offer compelling answers to the “why college matters” and “why choose our institution/major” questions. The GI Bill helped my father to become the first in his family to go to college. At that time, a college degree did not really need to be “sold” to boomers yearning for better lives after the traumas of the Great Depression and World War II. “Going to college” was seen as the pathway to middle-class prosperity encapsulated in the American dream.
By contrast, in a trend that accelerated in 2008 and is now, well, endemic, parents ask us directly:
- If I give you my daughter and lots of money, what will be the outcome? Will she end up in my basement with tons of debt and no prospects?
- Why should she go to your university instead of the 10 others making similar pitches and offering comparable scholarships?
- What is the value of your major to her welfare and security?
As an administrator, part of your job now is to be able to explain — clearly and carefully, with data if necessary — why parents should trust you with the future of their child.
Here’s how we’ve tried to make that case in the communications college that I oversee: First, we’ve explicitly sought to reassure parents and students that we are going to empower the latter and leverage them for life and career success. Our unofficial slogan, trite as it may seem to faculty ears, makes sense to our intended audience: “We will teach your child the latest and the greatest, the tried and the true.” We pledge to update the curriculum regularly and prepare students to understand and thrive in the constantly changing world of media technologies, techniques, and tactics, as well as industries and positions. Our basic marketing and branding strategy is to promise students and parents a safe, life-long return on their investment.
In sum, begin your relationship with potential students and their families with a detailed, evidence-based case that your value is real and that they can trust you.
Aggressively preach to families in middle and secondary schools. A fundamental lesson of brand marketing: It’s not enough to have a persuasive message that appeals to a target audience — you must also creatively, authentically, and repeatedly deliver it to them by all means necessary, physical and digital. What that means in practice:
- Create many kinds of digital materials, from websites to social-media offerings to pithy infographics, and get them in front of high schoolers (and now, increasingly, middle schoolers), guidance counselors, principals, teachers, and, yes, extended family members.
- Don’t just rely on digital marketing. Make your case face to face (safety protocols permitting), working with your campus recruiting and admissions staff members. Build relationships with high schools and visit with delegations of administrators, staff and faculty members, and local alumni. Hold workshops, receptions, and small get-togethers. At my institution, we do so in English and in Spanish because of the regions from which we mostly recruit.
- When families visit your campus, offer them more than just a tour. Make sure they meet staff and faculty members relevant to the student’s interests.
- Offer peer-to-peer marketing: A 17-year-old wants to get the scoop from a 19-year-old. So arrange for high-school visitors to get personal tours and testimonials from your current undergraduates, preferably those in a “student ambassador” program of your own creation and design.
Take nothing for granted. In every venue and setting, show and tell why you are a good selection and a mutual fit.
Encourage “preproblem” contact. If your only interaction with a student’s family is when there is trouble (real or perceived), then you have not established a supportive, trusting relationship. Great marketing is not about selling your goods as much as identifying which needs in an audience you can fulfill. Students are looking for the “right” campus and major for them. Their success (academically, mentally, socially) is an ongoing project.
As administrators we work hard to retain students, with increasingly elaborate software tracking and expert support personnel. But often our systems — while they deal with the financial, emotional, and academic sides of a student’s situation — ignore the all-important family dimension.
If you are recruiting the family and not just the student, you should be retaining the family and not just the student. Here are some useful tactics to that end:
- Most institutions have a parents’ association, and it’s usually willing to work with different academic departments and colleges. Seek out that group’s help whenever your unit is planning a meeting, social-media campaign, or even a tailgate with families.
- Some majors have created parents’ councils or advisory groups. Listening to their questions, concerns, and expectations can help you serve students better. In turn, you can provide information and practical help, like simple study tips, to make both the student’s and the instructor’s life easier.
- Engage parents outside of bureaucratic channels. Have some administrators, faculty members, and undergraduate representatives monitor parent groups on Facebook and other social media, and Reddit pages associated with your campus. Jump in and offer advice, get into conversations, and distribute information. The message you want to send is “we can help students succeed while spurring their maturity through the college experience.”
Aid such a process rather than leave it to chance. By building a bridge of trust to parents, when a concern does arise, the goodwill you’ve established will make it easier to resolve the problem and head off escalation.
What to do when an outraged parent calls. As a dean, 95 percent of my interactions with parents have been positive. They need information, clarification, help, advice. And we provide it — within the limits of Ferpa.
Then there’s the other 5 percent.
Almost always, a negative interaction has gone sour before I talk to the parents. They are unhappy, even furious, about something that happened (or allegedly happened) to their child and want immediate action — often the specific action they have already formulated in their minds.
As an administrator, I follow a best-practices script:
- Ascertain the facts of the issue, as the parents see it. Even if something doesn’t sound right or if they are asking for an impossibility, don’t render an opinion too quickly. Hear them out. Make sure they know that someone is appreciating their concerns.
- Conduct your own investigation. Unless it’s an actual emergency, politely say some version of, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Let me look into it, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.” Sometimes resolution comes quickly: The parent says his son is failing a class because of “only a few absences,” but the attendance records show the young man missed three weeks of class. Other times you have to dig deep.
- Explore scenarios for a solution. Obviously, there are cases where you have to tell a parent, “I think there may be some miscommunication. Cody never attended the following sessions of class. … ” Other times, working with the instructor and with staff members, you can work with the instructor to find a pathway to resolution: “Cody can still manage the B he needs for his scholarship if he completes all the extra-credit assignments and gets an A on his final.”
Please note: It is not your job to “fix” anything and everything. Some academic holes are too hard to dig out of. But many problems that families (parents, guardians, students) confront can be resolved. I have gotten calls about missing commencement because of not having enough money for a gown, or about not graduating on time because a certain class was not offered, or about needing a campus job to pay the rent. In all of those cases, someone at your institution can at least attempt to help. Your two goals are to try, and to never lose your cool.
As a parent and an educator, I feel college is the transition zone between the home and an increasingly scary and ruthless world. Yes, some kids grow up sheltered from harsh reality and others have childhoods already full of challenges, including illness, poverty, and abuse. We owe them all a passage to mental and professional readiness for the future.
Their progression to responsible adulthood will take time. But it will happen more smoothly if we collaborate with their families to produce resilient, competent, career-ready citizens of the republic.
