The Cost of College

Kay Kimball Gruder

May 1, 2011

What does a family with a newborn have in common with a family who has a son or daughter entering college? 

This sounds like the beginning of a joke, but both have far more in common than most work/life balance programs have considered.  Employees with young children and employees with a son or daughter embarking on the college years share high levels of stress, uncertainty, financial changes, a long list of new expenditures, constant transitions, heightened worry, and changing family relationships.   The employees with the pre-college or college-enrolled child often additionally experience a sense of loss and anxious feelings around the shifting locus of their control.  So let me ask, “What percentage of your work/life initiatives provide a range of offerings and programs to employees who have a child either entering college or currently enrolled in college?” 

Societal Factors and Trends

Our society provides many more offerings and resources to parents who have young children than to parents of older children.   This pattern is also reflected in many work/life wellness programs, yet the teen through college years are high stake and high transition.   Maybe as a society we hope that parents have figured out how to successfully parent by the time children have entered their mid-teens, but parenting has one stepping into new or unknown territory at a steady pace.  

As a Parent Coaching InstituteCertified Parent Coach, with over 22 years in higher education as an advisor to students and families, I can share that my clients are your employees.   They are men and women from all job levels.   Some went to college decades ago and some have never set foot on a college campus.  Some clients have had one child already attend college, but most have not.   Some families are financially secure, but most are just getting by.   What they all have in common is that they share varying degrees of stress, worry, confusion, and distraction by virtue of parenting either a pre-college or college enrolled student.  Their list of parenting concerns spans from the college application process through to having their recent college graduate move back home.   In between they are parenting children who have lots of opportunities to make mistakes.  While it has always been true that college environment is fertile ground for errors in judgment, today the impacts are greater due to the cost of a college education.   When in history:

• has college cost so much;
• has a college education been essentially a mandatory next step for virtually every high school student;
• has parent involvement played such a significant role in the day-to-day decisions and the personal organization of a child’s life;
• has there been a time when young people are so insulated from experiencing risk and failure?

What We Already Know

Family-to-work interference makes concentration at work difficult, and we know that when people are preoccupied they are less focused – though there is ongoing debate and research about whether there is a systematic relationship between work/life balance and productivity.   We know that too much stress is bad for one’s psychosocial well-being and that stress-related illnesses raise medical costs, and that absenteeism comes at a price too.   We know that not everyone seeks or solely needs counseling to improve family-to-work interference, so to assume that employees will have their needs met by accessing mental health services is a narrow view.   In the wellness industry we recognize the value of preventative measures.   As with other physical and emotional life occurrences, families that are better prepared for the stressors associated with parenting a pre-college and college enrolled student, and who can anticipate the range of parenting challenges that they will likely encounter, have the greatest opportunity to more effectively handle stress and transitions with expanded skills and knowledge. 

What are businesses providing to parents of pre-college and college enrolled students?

The work/life balance initiatives that are available to parents of pre-college and college-enrolled students are uneven.   While there are now industry expectations for what great childcare looks like or what offerings make for a generous fitness program, the same is not true for work/life initiatives targeting parents of pre-college or college-enrolled students.   At one end of the spectrum you have companies like SAS which have an on-site Teen/College Resource Consultant as part of the Work/Life program staff. 

The Work/Life Center creates and delivers an annual "College Series" and invites experts in too, to share their knowledge about topics of interest to parents of teens and adolescents.   As Page Cvelich, the Teen/College Resource Consultant shares, the presentations not only address the nuts and bolts of things like saving for college, test prep, and the college selection and admission process, but offerings also consist of seminars designed “to help parents support their college-bound students as well as to parent more effectively” during this time in their child’s development.   Through evaluations of services, SAS employees report “feeling a reduction in stress and cared for by the company.”  In addition to a steady stream of parent education, Ms. Cvelich provides parents with resources, referrals, and parent coaching.   She also offers family programs and topics for the teens. 

The department has a work/life lending library and two electronic lists which facilitate a flow of information to parents of teens and parents of college students and beyond.   After students are at college, Ms. Cvelich is available as a point of contact to parents, providing suggestions about whom best at the college to act as a resource to their student in crisis.  The average age of SAS’s world-wide employee population is forty-five, which places many in the throws of parenting a pre-college or college enrolled child.  SAS presents a very comprehensive work/life program to parents of teens and college students.   A more common model is one by which a company contracts for services that focus largely on guiding parents and their student through the college admission process or helping employees to address financial concerns and needs associated with sending a child to college.   While these services are definitely meeting employee needs, they often lack a continuum of offerings and support that truly carry a parent through the teen and college years.  

The “best fit” for your company or organization should be determined through consultation with employees from all segments of your workforce.  As well, take a reading on whether your organization’s culture is open and ready for the benefits you intend to offer and whether you can respond to the demand if a new program or initiative is a huge success.   Remember too that parents may know that they are stressed and frustrated about various circumstances related to their pre-college or college enrolled student, but they might not recognize that the bulk of the stress comes from their inability to effectively parent their student through problems, crises and challenging situations.   Parents won’t come running to you expressing a need for a parenting class, though having new knowledge and expanded parenting tools and strategies leads to reduced stress and more confident parenting.   It is over time and through a continuum of offerings that parents can reach a comfortable and effective new parenting paradigm as they navigate their role with their emerging adult.

Recommendations That Won’t Break the Bank

If you historically have not offered work/life balance programs tailored to parents of pre-college and college enrolled students you can definitely test employee interest with relatively low-cost and low-risk pilot programs and services.   Consider the following:

•    If you have a work/life lending library consider adding and featuring books that guide parents in their parenting of pre-college and college enrolled students – not just the nuts and bolts of how to get into college, but books about experiencing transitions, making the most of college, and parenting a college student.

• Consider organizing a monthly discussion group that targets parents of college students or parents of high school seniors.
• Create a mentor program where parents with students already in college act as a sounding board for parents who are just embarking on this stage of parenting.
• Start a lunchtime book group that reads a range of parenting books or shorter articles of interest to parents of teens and college students.
• Contract with a provider to deliver live presentations or on-demand parenting webinars.
• Survey your parents and identify “hot topics” – then invite speakers in from different departments at area colleges to share information and to answer questions.
• Celebrate a student’s success by sending a company note when a student is on the Dean’s list, has graduated, or receives an athletic award, etc.  
• Create or deliver an electronic parent publication that is expressly for parents of college students. 
• Consider short-term flex time for employees who need to make a round of college visits with their child – that way they won’t call in sick or take vacation time for an experience that is anything but a vacation!

There are definitely other considerations to factor in as you learn about employee needs and interests.   For example, if you have employees who have children who will be the first generation to go to college you will likely want to tailor some offerings to address their questions and desire for information.   Additionally, if you have a global workforce you will find that there are very different norms elsewhere in the world for how involved parents are with their teen or college student.   You might also find that some of your global workforce desires to send their child to college in the U.S., and this too provides content for niche programming.   Exploring the right fit for your workforce might mean offering variations on a theme.   

As with any new initiative or program, the ROI for creating new or broadening your existing work/life offerings might be realized immediately or it might take more time for the intangibles to emerge.   Interestingly much of parent education revolves around improving parent communication skills which usually has a ripple effect on one’s personal and workplace interactions.   My clients often share that they find themselves applying the parenting strategies that they gained through parent education to other situations where they are faced with challenges, transitions, decisions, and difficult people. 

The cost of college to your workforce is more than just a financial commitment.   It comes at an emotional expense, complete with parenting confusion, unanticipated twists and turns, sleepless nights, and sometimes even weeks or more of worry.   As you evaluate older initiatives and cycle in the new, consider evaluating what you might offer to a potentially significant segment of your workforce.   Chances are that they will be both surprised and grateful – as much of one’s parenting of older children occurs without guidance or inspiration.  

About the Author

Kay Kimball Gruder, M.Ed.  and Parent Coaching Institute™ Certified Parent Coach® founded SuccessfulCollegeParenting.com and is also the College Parent Expert for CollegeParenting.com.  
Kay delivers on-site and webinar-based parent programming on topics that guide parents in their evolving relationship with their student.  She also provides individual and small group parent coaching.  She is the author of “Successful College Parenting Strategies”, a free electronic monthly newsletter.