I’m not talking about a new generation of students, but a transitioning generation of parents. Very soon, the so-called “Gen Xers,” those born between 1961 and 1981 will be the dominant group of college parents. That’s right, college parents.

Think about it and do the math. The oldest GenXers are turning 49 years old this year. Even if they waited until their 30s to have children, then those students are now becoming college-aged.

Over the past two years, the University of Minnesota has looked at the age range of its parents and saw a one-year jump from 14% Gen Xers to 24% Gen Xers. As that trend continues, and is felt on other college campuses, it won’t take long for these Gen Xers to be the dominant group of college parents.

Now, of course, in some ways baby-boomer parents have been doing a trial run for what colleges and universities may expect to see in GenX parents.

Baby boomers emerged from the wreckage of the 60s and 70s as the most college-educated generation themselves, and that raised their level of expectations when it comes to college for their children. These baby boomer (and I am one) parents were also largely left alone by their own parents, and that has resulted in a boomerang effect, with these neglected boomers holding on tight to their own children as they progressed from kindergarten through college.

Well, colleges are discovering that GenXers are even more college-educated than boomers and that they were even more left alone as children, becoming the core of what were known as the “latch-key kids.”

These strands of similarities, coupled with the differences that GenXers uniquely lay claim to, make for a compelling case that when it comes to involved parenting styles, colleges “ain’t seen nothing yet” when it comes to GenXers.

These GenX parents have been demanding accountability from the K-12 system for years, and now they will be doing the same of colleges.

These GenX parents have been closely monitoring the lives of their children for years, and it may be much harder for them to let go when it comes to college.

These GenX parents are embracing of new technology, so colleges won’t be able to send out a quarterly print newsletter or put items on their website that have already been made available through other channels.

GenX parents want news about their children delivered unvarnished and without delay. They are more disciplined than boomers, but also less forgiving. As one parent professional put it, they are not so much “helicoptering,” but rather they are “lurking.”

Are you a baby-boomer or a GenXer? If a boomer, what advice can you pass on to your GenX brethren? If a GenXer, what do you want to change about the way that colleges treat parents? Share your thoughts by commenting here.

That is a question that you should be grappling with, and beginning to answer, if you are the parent of an aspiring college student.

And, if you are the parent of a college freshman or upperclassman, then it is a question for which you should have formulated an answer.   You should also be thinking about how to communicate the thrust of that answer to your child and, if possible, to officials at the school your child attends or will be attending.

Heavy stuff, you may be thinking to yourself.

Important stuff, too, I say to you.

It’s important because the role that you can play as individual parents in defining accountability in higher education may be the most important collective role that we as a group can play over the next twenty years.

If we as parents decide that accountability in higher education means what it has for the past twenty years, then we have only ourselves to blame if costs continue to go up, if graduation rates remain spotty and if the meaning of an undergraduate degree starts to become marginalized in the career marketplace.

But if we as a group decide that accountability in higher education means that school finance offices must account for every dollar spent, that school academic affairs offices must explain every course taken and that school career planning offices must justify the return on investment of coursework and degree-granting programs, then we may have ourselves to thank for creating an atmosphere where the education our kids receive is as grounded in the real world as it is eye-opening to new worlds.

I am not suggesting some sort of groupthink, or that every parent should agree on some very narrow definition of accountability.  Yet I am suggesting that what has passed for accountability in the past, simply will not work in the future.

It is not accountability when colleges and universities graduate students who are financially illiterate, grammatically challenged and, in a flat world, linguistically limited or culturally unaware.

It is not accountability when the issuance of a some students’ diplomas are held up if campus parking tickets are unpaid, but expedited when a new degree-granting program needs examples of “results,” even though the curriculum behind such a program may be far from finished in its construction.

And it is not accountability when the constituents at the accountability-defining table include every component of the higher education family, except those who have molded the students into young adults and those who are paying a significant portion of the higher education bill, namely us. . .the parents.

It is accountability when. . .well, I’ve already shared some of my thoughts on the answer, but my views are not nearly as important as yours. Please share your comments on what  accountability should mean in higher education, as I look forward to receiving your views — from whatever angle you choose and from whatever vantage point you occupy.

They are your children. They are members of the generation that began to enter college at the Millennium and they are still entering college in record numbers, as far as the eye can see and as long our family budgets will allow.

Their name, the “millennials,” has been coined by two remarkable historians, Neil Howe and William Strauss, whose seminal book, Generations of American History, set the stage for several books to follow, including Millennials Go to College.

As their core thesis, Howe and Strauss argue that, since the American Revolution, each generation of Americans possesses certain characteristics which are not only shaped by, but which also serve to greatly influence, the time in which they live.

Much has been written by Tom Brokaw and others about the “greatest generation,” the group of people born between 1900 and the mid-1920s, who won freedom’s greatest victory in WWII, and laid the foundation for the prosperity of the last half of the 20th century.

Howe and Strauss are respectful of those accomplishments, but they have a different name for the “greatest generation.” They call it the “silent generation,” with one reason being how “silent” most members of this generation were about the college preparation, application and financing choices of their children.

We baby-boomers and Gen Xers are “making up” for this silence of our parents’ generation by becoming much more involved in the lives of our children. This involvement is not just at the K-12 level, but also earlier in our shared style of infant and toddler parenting and later in our fervent desire to have our children attend the institution of higher education that is best for them, and in our quest to stay more connected to our children’s college experience.

And our “millennial” children seem to like the attention they are receiving from us, as long as we don’t overdo it.

According to Howe and Strauss, millennials as a group are:

• optimistic about the future;
• realistic about the present;
• resilient and hard-working; and
• very much into setting goals and meeting those goals,

Probably rings familiar, doesn’t it? There are exceptions, of course, but these are indeed the general characteristics of our children and we, at College Parents of America, are dedicated to helping you to support, in productive and appropriate ways, these millennials in our midst.

Fortunately, according to Howe and Strauss, the millennials’ core values of civic duty, confidence, achievement and street smarts, all in the context of being cooperative team players who are accepting of authority, make them a pleasure to know and to serve. In short, the millennials want to be taught by passionate educators and to be loved by supportive parents.

What more could we want and how lucky can we be? The kids we are scrambling to rear through our busy lives are, at the end of the day, thankful for whatever we can do to make their road to college a little bit smoother, their application process for college a little less scary and their transition to college a step they can make with confidence.

So, let’s get to work. And let’s share our success stories at Hoverings: A Blog for Current and Future College Parents, located on the home page of www.collegeparents.org.

Yet until now, one of the most expensive purchases that parents make – the college tuition, fees and room & board for children – has not been “insurable,” unless the students in your family attend one of 180 mostly elite and very expensive private college and universities that offer what is usually called “tuition insurance” through the school’s enrollment contract process.

Now, thanks to a new policy that is embedded in College Parents of America membership, tuition insurance is available for the first time to all college parents.  No matter where your son or daughter goes to school – a four-year public or private, a two-year public or private, or any other institution that is accredited and eligible for federal funds – you are now able to purchase tuition insurance to protect that investment.

For $89, the price of a basic College Parents of America membership, you receive a certificate of coverage for up to $5,000 of “loss” that may result from tuition and all other non-refunded costs should your student need to withdraw for a valid medical reason.  Many schools will refund a portion of tuition expenses up to a certain point in the semester, but most do not refund commitments made – or already paid – for fees beyond tuition, nor for room & board expenses.

How does College Parents of America tuition insurance work and can you purchase additional coverage?  It’s fast and easy to enroll and yes, you can buy additional coverage.  This can be either $15,000 in coverage through a $299 premium College Parents of America membership, or even more, up to $50,000, based on a sliding scale with insurance price increases commensurate with the level of coverage.

Here are some additional benefits of College Parents of America tuition insurance:

• It may be purchased at any time during the year;
• The policy covers an entire family, not just one student;
• For medical withdrawal, loss coverage is 100% and for mental/emotional wellness withdrawal, the coverage of loss is 75%; and
• Markel Insurance, which is underwriting the insurance, has an “A” rating from A.M. Best, a company respected for its close study of insurance company balance sheets.

Your child’s college education is one of the biggest purchases you will make in your lifetime.  Whether it’s the average of $13,500 you may be spending on a public university in your state, or the $33,000 on average you may be bleeding for a private college clear across the country, that expenditure is a substantial drain on the family budget.

No doubt, you want to protect your substantial college investment from loss.  That’s where College Parents of America, the nation’s only membership group of current and future college parents – and now the provider of the only national group policy for tuition insurance – can help.  More information about the group – and the policy – can be found at www.collegeparents.org.

During that call, Dr. and Mrs. Schewe learned that their daughter Sara, a junior at Georgetown University, had been killed in a charter bus accident on a treacherous road in India. The bus was transporting students and chaperones from the Semester at Sea program for a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Taj Mahal. Meeting their untimely death along with Sara were two tour guides, one chaperone and four other students.

Since that fateful day nearly 14 years ago, the Schewes have thought countless times about what might have been when it comes to their daughter. Sara would be in her mid-30s now, and she was described as a loving and vibrant person, just as are her parents, whom I had the pleasure to meet a few weeks ago. There is no denying that the Schewes have grieved considerably, and there is probably not a day that has gone for them by without a subtle reminder of Sara’s presence.

But from my conversation with Dr. and Mrs. Schewe, and from my review of the work they have done in the wake of their daughter’s death, I can also attest that the Schewes have not been overcome by grief, but instead have been moved to act meaningfully in their daughter’s memory.

What have the Schewe’s done and what do they have in the works? The answers are quite a bit and a whole lot more.

First, to meet their goal of saving lives, the Schewes created Sara’s Wish Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to enhance travel safety around the world and to honor Sara’s memory.

Take a look at the group’s Web site, www.saraswish.org, where a new video on travel safety abroad is displayed prominently on the home page. This video was produced in collaboration with some of the leading organizations, domestic and international, which are concerned with road safety.

One of those organizations, the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT), is dedicated to improving global road safety through education and advocacy. Working under the premise that road crashes are predictable and preventable, ASIRT’s mission is to inform travelers, especially those studying abroad, of existing road risks, thereby saving lives and minimizing crash-related injuries.

Please visit www.asirt.org to learn more about that group’s safe travel resources, including “A Global Road Safety Toolbox for the Study Abroad Community,” a 100-page manual for study-abroad professionals, which offers information to plan safe itineraries and prepare students to make safe, informed travel choices while traveling abroad.

Since 1996, thanks to the efforts of Charles and Anne Schewe, ASIRT and others, there have been a number of advances in the materials and information available to students and their parents. These advances have helped to minimize safety issues for students traveling abroad, but more remains to be done.

Please share your comments and suggestions on Student Safety When Traveling Abroad in Hoverings: A Blog for Current and Future College Parents, located on the home page of www.collegeparents.org. And, if you are moved to make a contribution to the cause of Charles and Anne Schewe, I am sure that they would welcome your tax-deductible donations to:

Sara’s Wish Foundation
23 Ash Lane
Amherst, MA 01002

So it’s only natural, therefore, for those of us who are parents of would-be college athletes, to dream they can beat the odds and win a college scholarship.

Do you happen to know just how long those odds are?

I’ve done some research and they are very long. While stats are not available for every sport, the NCAA Web site (www.ncaa.org) has an interesting page that shows the odds of a high school athlete getting a college scholarship in men’s and women’s basketball, football, baseball, football, men’s ice hockey and men’s soccer. The same page also gives the odds of that same high school athlete being drafted as a pro in each of those sports.

The challenge is daunting to say the least. So, even if you are convinced that your child is the next Drew Brees, or the next Lisa Leslie, I strongly recommend a plan B.

I happen to have two sons who are playing high school ice hockey, where the odds of a college scholarship, and subsequent pro career, are the best that I’ve seen. However, my wife and I have asked our sons: have you ever heard of a NHL player from the District of Columbia (where they play) or Virginia (where we live)? (They haven’t, because there has never been one from either place.)

So what are those ice hockey stats? Partly because high school participation rates are so low compared to other sports, one in nine of boy high school hockey players, or 11%, go on to play in college and 0.31%, continue to play in the pros.

From there the odds for every other sport (where stats are available) get much longer.

Football, which has the most widespread participation of any high school sport, is in the middle of the pack odds-wise in terms of the chances of attaining a college scholarship. One in 17 high school football players, or 5.8%, go on to earn a college scholarship and one in 1,200 of those same high school gridiron greats make it to the NFL.

Another way to look at it: there are eleven players on each side in a football game and most players these days specialize in offense or defense. Scan the local paper on a Saturday morning, and count 52 game scores from contests played under the Friday night lights. Out of all of the starters in all of those games, 52 games X 22 players, the odds are that exactly one of those young men will make it the NFL – the real version that is, though Madden 2010 is another matter.

The odds of a high school soccer player attaining a scholarship are almost identical to football, as are the odds of such a youngster, no matter how talented, making it in the MLS.

Baseball is slightly better when it comes to odds of attaining a college scholarship – one in 17, or 6.4%, will do so – but the chances of getting drafted to the pros is better than either football or soccer, with a whopping one in 225, or 0.44%, being chosen. However, there are many more draftees in baseball – and more levels of “professional” – than any other sport, so the odds of actually making it to the MLB are still highly stacked against any youngster.

And speaking of odds, the sport of basketball is the toughest of all, not only for boys and their chances of a college scholarship, but also for girls, though it must be noted that this sport is the only one where statistics for female athletes are readily available.

Of all the girls who participate in high school basketball, only 3.4%, attain a college basketball scholarship and only one in 5000, or 0.02%, eventually make it to the WNBA.

The odds of a male basketball player making it to college hoops or the pros are even longer. Only 3.1% go on from high school to play in the college game and, of all the high school basketball players in the U.S., only one in 3300, or 0.03%, make it to the NBA. Picturing that figure in team terms, only one fortunate and talented young man out of every seven high school starting fives will receive a college basketball scholarship. And only one incredibly gifted and determined young man out of every 660 starting fives will play in the pros.

So, as Super Bowl Sunday approaches, and America’s focus turns to sports, enjoy yourself watching the game and encourage the young people in your family to pursue their athletic dreams. As they do so, however, temper your own enthusiasm for how far such dreams may take your own children, as the odds are much greater that Super Bowls down the road will find them on the couch battling you for the remote, as opposed to on the field battling for victory.

Before you settle down on that couch, here are some stories of interest from Inside Higher Ed, the leading online publication covering the world of colleges and universities. As per our weekly custom, these several stories below follow the trends and developments in higher education that IHE editors and I think will be of interest to parents. Read, learn and enjoy yourself, then forward this column to friends who you think may also be interested in empowering themselves to best support their children on the path to and through college.

There is ample evidence that Americans gain economic and personal benefits from every extra year of higher education.  The career earnings of someone with a bachelor’s degree approach nearly $1 million more than that of someone with only a high school diploma. The college-goer also makes life-long friendships and and enters into
countless other networking relationships that are personally beneficial.

While most Americans see education beyond high school as a prerequisite to a successful economic and personal life, there is also evidence that a post-secondary education contributes to significant societal benefits.  These benefits include:

• a recognition that the U.S. is increasingly reliant on knowledge workers and that much of the innovation they accelerate through their efforts actually emerges first from research conducted in the nation’s universities;
• a growing body of research that shows that people with more education are more likely to vote, to participate actively in civic affairs, and to perform more community service; and
• more parental involvement in K-12 education, which in turn leads to leads to a virtuous circle of greater high school completion rates and a more pronounced tendency for individuals to want to pursue a college degree.

For all these reasons, a strong national commitment to access and opportunity for college is critical to America’s future.  Many organizations and entities support this goal, of course, but College Parents of America has the potential to stand alone in demonstrating to our varied constituencies that access and opportunity mean more than just “getting in” to college.

With your support, College Parents of America can show that true access must mean opening the door to a college experience that is appropriate for a student’s aspirations, preparation and abilities. College Parents of America is also committed to working with schools and other partners to show that real opportunity will only come from an effective postsecondary system that helps students to get started on the right track and to follow through, with a successful college experience being defined and measured differently for each individual.

America’s higher education system remains the envy of the world, remarkable for its variety and vitality.  But it has not met the long-standing goal of an equitable and efficient system that provides a successful college education to all qualified students.  Through the promotion of an active agenda of a fair college deal for all, College Parents of America has the opportunity to play a critical role in positioning the U.S. to better compete in the global economy.  Please join us in our efforts and tell your family and friends about our site and our Facebook Fan Page.  Thank you.

Reflecting upon that insight is a worthy way for each of us to spend at least part of our MLK Day holiday.  As you think of your own children’s educations, are they learning both to concentrate and to put the power of that concentration to good use?  What can all of us who care about the education of our children do better in order to see Dr. King’s early dream become reality?

Share your views at Hoverings, A Blog for Current and Future College Parents at www.collegeparents.org.  Thank you and enjoy the holiday.