There is a new study being released in the American Sociological Review in February 2013 that has already received a lot of press, and may be causing college parents concern. The report, by University of California — Merced sociology professor Laura T. Hamilton is titled, More is More or More is Less? Parental Financial Investments During College.
The headlines in most of the articles about this report claim that the more that parents contribute financially to their student’s college education, the worse their student will do in school as measured by cumulative GPA (grade point average). Our concern is that some college parents may not have the opportunity to read beyond the headlines to Dr. Hamilton’s secondary finding and conclusion. This study also determined that students whose parents contribute to their education had a greater chance of completing college within five years. And the researcher’s conclusion is that student success may have less to do with the amount of the financial contribution and more to do with the communication between students and parents about responsibilities and expectations.
According to Hamilton, the negative effect of parental financial support on college GPA is modest, but students ”may be staying out of trouble but dialing down academic efforts.” In other words, students whose parents are paying for the majority of their expenses may not feel as vested in their education and may be willing to ”get by.” She adds, ”Children may direct more effort to school when they personally feel the economic costs of poor performance.” These findings seem surprising to many parents because they seem to counter the assumption that the more that parents do for their students, the better those students will do. Other sources of funding — grants, scholarships, or work-study — did not appear to affect GPA.