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Kevin Karplus wrote:
| In article , illecebra wrote:
|
|Dorms have their good and bad points. I'm not saying there shouldn't be
|dorms, I'm saying that it should be a choice.
|
| I'm in agreement, at least in part. For many students, choices should
| be introduced gradually, rather than all at once. It makes sense for
| some kids to be required to live in a dorm for a year, as half-way
| step toward running their own household.

We're about half in agreement here, I guess. Yes, choices should be
introduced gradually, but if that doesn't start until the kid is a
college student living away from home, he/she isn't going to have the
tools to cope anyway.

I agree that dorms can provide a great half-way step in terms of not
having to make all one's own meals, having to maintain only one's own
room (or part of a room) because the common areas are kept clean by
staff, etc.

However, a lot of parents look upon dorm life as a more controlled
environment than living on one's own, without bothering to find out what
dorm life at a particular school is like. I have never found dorms to
be measurably safer or more controlled than living on one's own, except
for at some religious universities. Dorm life leaves the student with
very little control over how they live or who they live with.

I could give you tons of anecdotal evidence-- my year in the dorms was
interesting, especially considering that we had video of the RA
providing alchohol to underage residents, so he couldn't do much to
control anyone. However, it's just that: anecdotal evidence. In truth,
the dorm scene differs immensely from school to school, and sometimes
even between the various dormitories at the same school. Unfortunately,
too many parents see it as a cure-all when it isn't.

|| What the parents are comfortable with *is* important for many college
|| decisions, since the parents are usually footing the bill, which is
|| now substantial (Stanford costs about $41,000 a year for tuition,
|| room, and board, not counting books, supplies, computers, ...).
|
|Yes, it's a lot of money. I'll shell out whatever I can to help my son
|through college, if that's what he wants to do. However, I don't
|believe that that support should be conditional on him doing everything
|the way I would like him to.
|
|I've seen more young people flunk college, become clinically depressed,
|or worse, because they were doing as their parents wanted. A lot of
|parents care a lot more about what they are comfortable with than for
|what's good for their kids. Others are just totally out of touch with
|college life.
|
|I knew countless young men and women in college who majored in things
|they had no interest in and little talent for, who joined Fraternities
|and Sororities that put them through hell, who lived in dorms or society
|houses they hated, and all sorts of awful things... all because their
|parents threatened to pull the plug on their education. What's worse is
|that, until one turns 26 (or has 2 years of leases to prove they have
|been living on their own, dorms don't count), one is not able to even
|apply for financial aide without parental help and consent, and one's
|parents' income is still held against them when qualifying.
|
| I have seen students mae miserable trying to live their parents'
| expectations rather than their own dreams---how could I not as an
| engineering professor? Wise parents will give kids gentle guidance
| rather than force them to do things that they hate. I've also seen
| kids fail rather dramatically from being given more freedom than they
| had the maturity to cope with.

The thing is... if they can't handle being on their own, should they be
going away to college at all? If they haven't gotten the maturity and
basic life skills neede to live away from home by their late teens is
there a whole lot their parents can do about it anyway?

I just don't see a whole lot of ways for an adult to have any meaningful
amount of control over their child's life while that child is away at
college. Parents are pretty much left with guilt trips, threats, and
actually pulling the financing (be it financial help from the parents,
or the parents' participation in the student's financial aid program) so
that the student has to drop out of school.

|Yes, lots of young people screw up a little when living on their own for
|the first time. At least if the mistakes are theirs, they're more
|likely to learn from them than if they are forced to live as their
|parents choose. The ones who are used to having almost this much
|freedom at home (those whose parents have been dishing out
|responsibility a bit at a time since they were young) do a lot better
|than those who've been coddled.
|
| Some kids screw up more than a little. Deaths from suicide and from
| alcohol-related injuries are appallingly common (far more common than
| the bike accidents that so many parents fear so much for their kids).

Believe me, I know. I remember dragging my college roommate to the
urgent care center because her idiot friends (the ones her parents chose
for her) convinced her to drink far more than she could handle. She
wasn't a bad person, or a particularly wreckless one, she was just a
little dumb, quite a bit too trusting, and horribly afraid of not
fitting in.

| The hard thing for a parent is to know how much guidance to give and
| how much slack to leave so that the kids learn to make wise decisions.
| Both too much control and too little can have severe consequences, and
| the right amount is different for different kids. Luckily, the
| optimum is fairly broad, and most parents do well enough and the kids
| learn fast enough that things work out ok in the end.

Yep. I just get worried when parents start talking about what *they*
are comfortable with with regard to their adult children, with little or
no mention of what their adult children want. It makes me wonder when
they expect their kids to start acting like adults, and/or when they
will be willing to butt out enough that their kids can do so.

IMHO, America in general tries to prolong childhood far longer than is
healthy.

Susan
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