The majority of college students are pleased with the amount of help they get from parents while in college.
In a nationwide study called the Freshman Survey, released on Wednesday by the Higher Education Research Institute, statistics showed that the majority of students don’t mind having highly involved parents.
The survey is currently the longest running and most expansive survey of American college students and covers a range of topics including politics, diversity issues and lifestyle choices.
Some were surprised at the survey’s findings because of media coverage suggesting that parents are becoming too involved in their kids’ lives.
“I was surprised, because I’ve been hearing a great deal about helicopter parents being over involved,” said Mitchell Chang, an associate professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
The report shows that 77.5 percent of surveyed freshmen believe their parents are involved in their lives the right amount when it comes to dealing with college officials.
Almost a quarter of freshmen surveyed thought they were experiencing too little parental involvement in selecting college activities.
Jenny Low, a second-year international development studies student, was surprised to hear that most students didn’t feel their parents were too involved in their lives.
“I have a lot of friends who feel pressured by their parents, so I thought it would be just the opposite,” Low said.
While Low said that she doesn’t feel particularly pressured by her parents, she sees a lot of what she perceives to be over-involvement on behalf of parents.
“Parents are definitely more involved these days, but they seem to be involved at the level that students want them to be involved. I think that’s very interesting.” Chang said.
“Even more interesting is how student responses to these questions were varied by race,” he said.
Of the Latino students surveyed, 43.5 percent indicated too little involvement from their parents in selecting college courses, whereas only 18.6 white students felt their parents were not involved enough in this process.
Chang said that this is an indication of broader differences in the socioeconomic levels between white students and Latino students.
“This is a real concern, because Hispanics and Latinos historically have had the largest proportion of first-generation college students, and the process of applying to college is unfamiliar to these parents,” said Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Educational Research Institute, in a press release.
Chang agreed that a this could have a particular effect on students who are the first in their family to go to college.
“White students entering as freshmen tend to be of higher socioeconomic level than Latino students. Also, Latino students are much more likely to be what we call first generation students, whose parents didn’t go to college,” Chang said.
Low agreed that different cultural expectations play a role in how involved parents can be in the lives of their college students.
As a student of Chinese decent, she has experienced a high cultural emphasis on getting good grades, which leads to more proactive parents, she said.
Despite racial differences in the levels of parental involvement, Chang wonders whether increased parental involvement as a whole might cause problems for students in the future.
“What I worry about here, and what the surveys don’t make clear, is whether this involvement is the kind that helps to empower students to make their own decisions, or if parents are making decisions for the students,” Chang said.
Although a survey like this one can’t answer that question, Chang said that a more qualitative, interview-based study might one day help to provide an answer.