3.3. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH HELICOPTER PARENTS

While more companies are starting to observe helicopter parents, colleges have been seeing them most frequently and have the greatest experience in dealing with them. Given the tragic student shootings at such schools as Northern Illinois University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, parents are expected to draw even closer to their college-age children and become more vocal about campus safety.

One clear sign of the continuing close parental connection is the growth both of college parent associations and advisory councils and of offices for parent relations. Such organizations and offices didn't exist when older generations attended college, but now they're fast becoming the norm.

College parent groups give mothers and fathers a much more powerful collective voice and keep them in the know about campus developments. "You get inside information and a feel for what's really going on at a university," says Canavan, the mother from Wrentham, Massachusetts. "Your kids tell you so little and just call you a busybody." She was a member of the parent advisory council at George Washington University when her older daughter was a student there, and she hopes to become a member of the parent organization at her younger daughter's school, Elon University. "I love doing parent outreach; dealing with the parents of freshmen is like helping a new mother who just joined your baby's play group," she explains. "You get questions and issues that parents are unhappy about and can take them to the administration. Parents are so frustrated because professors won't respond when they call them and refuse to talk about grades, citing confidentiality issues."

Canavan believes that college parent organizations are teaching their children important life lessons. "They see us involved and looking for accountability," she says. "In the future, our children will come across even more strongly, challenging things and demanding responsibility and accountability."

For their part, universities have established offices for parent relations to give mothers and fathers a central place to field their questions and air their grievances. Whether separate departments or part of alumni or student affairs, they are like customer service offices to keep the consumer happy. "Many schools would prefer that parents just write a check and go away, but they realize that isn't going to happen," says Boyle, the president of College Parents of America. "With these offices, they decided it's better to feed the beast and deal with parents in a proactive way rather than have them calling the college president to ask why their son failed his geography test."

College officials at both undergraduate and graduate schools have been startled by the level of involvement of parents in their children's education. Just ask any admissions or career services director and he will tick off a list of his own close encounters with parents. Kip Harrell, associate vice president for professional and career development at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona, sees more parents showing up at hospitality weekends for prospective M.B.A. students and asking very pointed questions about placement rates, salaries, and the companies that recruit there. "Sometimes," he says, "it's the parents asking all the questions."

Here are a couple of memorable helicopter parenting moments for Harrell. A father walked into his office, and before even introducing himself, he demanded to know, "Why haven't you found my son a job yet?" Then there was the student who called Harrell and announced, "I am conferencing my dad in on this call, as he has some questions for you."

Jeffrey Rice, head of M.B.A. career services at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, was taken aback when an applicant showed up for an admissions interview with his mother in tow. Rice invited the mother to sit in on the interview, but was relieved when she declined. "The applicant told me his mother was helping him decide which school to attend," Rice says. Not all parents are willing to sit in the waiting room. A Carnegie Mellon University admissions officer spent 30 minutes with a young man and his father, but it was the father who dominated the conversation. To her amazement, the father asked how his son had done in "the interview." She hardly considered it an interview.

Millennials don't bring only parents with them. An aunt accompanied one applicant to the admissions office at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He seemed delighted to have her input and told the admissions officer that she had always been intimately involved in his education.

Some college officials firmly tell pesky parents that they can deal only with the applicant and not Mom or Dad when it comes to interviews and questions about admission status. Rose Martinelli, associate dean for student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, recalls receiving a call from a father demanding to know why his daughter was still on the waiting list and how she could get admitted. "I told him that his daughter needed to call me, that I couldn't discuss the matter with him," she says. "Some parents, including donors to the school, get angry when they hear that."

Why can't parents simply advise their children from home and keep their campus visits and phone calls to a minimum? That's what some college administrators wonder. But many are coming to understand that parents are so anxious and so attentive because they view themselves as investors and hold schools accountable for a proper return on their money and their children's time. As college costs have skyrocketed, parents believe they would be irresponsible if they didn't monitor their child's education. Some students and parents have even tried to demand their money back because they didn't like a certain professor or teaching assistant at Queen's University in Ontario. "We tell them we're not Wal-Mart," says Brady, the registrar.

In the Hoverings blog on the College Parents of America Web site, several people posted comments tying their close connections with their children's universities to the huge financial investment they're making. One parent wrote, "I would guess that there is a direct correlation between the time that colleges started increasing tuition and other costs at two to five times the inflation rate every year and the rising involvement level of parents. I might not expect or demand as much out of a university if it were costing me $10,000 a year as I do when it is costing me $28,000 a year. I wouldn't put $28,000 in a stock and then walk away and not pay attention to the performance of the stock."

In another posting on the blog, a parent says he has tried to back away from his college daughter but is finding it difficult. By his estimates, he will have invested $380,000 in her by the time she finishes college. "I don't mean to sound cold," he wrote, "but that's a heck of a lot of bucks out there. If for no other reason, doesn't this give me some basis to keep tabs on her progress?"