Why Universities Avoid Responsibility When Things Go Wrong (And What Parents Can Actually Do)
The first time I called the student support office, I wasn’t expecting a miracle. My son was in his second year of university and had stopped going to lectures. He was still handing in some work, but not much, and he hadn’t told me until after the withdraw-by date had passed. I called the university to ask what could be done.
The woman on the phone was sympathetic. She said she understood how worried I must be. Then she explained that my son was an adult now, that university staff were not allowed to discuss his academic record with me unless he signed a release form, and that my son could visit the student support office any day between 9 and 4. I said he’d been sleeping through most of those hours. She paused, then said, “That’s something he would need to work on himself.”
She wasn’t being cruel. She was following a script, probably the same script she used with every parent who called. But what I heard was: we can’t help him, we can’t reach him, and we’re not going to try. Eventually we hung up. My son stayed enrolled, kept failing, and the university kept sending him emails about late assignments.
That was the first time I started wondering why universities seem to avoid responsibility for the students they admit. They have admissions offices, mental health services, academic advisors, tutoring labs, and course coordinators. But when a student actually falls apart, no one seems to be in charge.
I’m not talking about students who choose to party and skip class. I’m talking about students who want to succeed and can’t get anyone to look twice at them. My son was not a troublemaker. He was just depressed, overwhelmed, and too ashamed to walk into a counsellor’s office by himself. When I asked the university what would happen if he failed another semester, the answer was vague. “There is a review process. He would be contacted by his academic advisor.” When I asked who that advisor was, they said, “It changes depending on course enrolment.”
There it was. Nobody owned him. He was a number in a system built for hundreds of students, not for one specific, struggling person.
Part of the issue is structural. Universities are large organizations made up of many smaller departments, and each department has its own rules. The accommodation office doesn’t talk to the attendance office. The attendance office doesn’t talk to the counselling service. The counselling service has a waiting list. By the time anyone connects the dots, the semester is over, the transcripts are frozen, and the student is gone.
But there is something deeper too. Universities avoid accountability because they can. Not because they are evil, but because there is no one person who carries the responsibility for a student’s wellbeing. Academic advisors manage timetables and course choices. Lecturers manage content. Counsellors manage crisis. No one is looking at the whole picture. When a student fails, each department can honestly say it did its job. The system worked. It was the student who didn’t fit.
I remember sitting in on a meeting with my son after he signed a privacy release form. He, his academic advisor, and I talked about why he missed so many classes. The advisor took notes, asked gentle questions, and then said, “You need to start coming to class.” My son said he was sleeping badly and felt like he couldn’t leave his room. The advisor nodded and suggested he download a sleep tracking app. That was the entire plan. No referral. No follow-up. No one asking whether the university might change anything about how his courses were delivered. The burden was placed entirely on him to magically become more functional.
What could I do? I tried to complain formally. I learned that universities have complaints procedures, but they are mostly designed for disputes with grade appeals or harassment claims. There is no “my student is drowning” category. If I wanted to make a formal complaint, I had to identify which staff member was negligent. I couldn’t. No one had been negligent. Everyone had been powerless, including me.
People often say parents should stop fighting their kids’ battles. There is truth in that. But the bigger problem is that universities exploit that sentiment. When a student is drowning, the university says “he should self-advocate.” But who taught him how to do that? Where is the office that follows up when he sends four unanswered emails? Self-advocacy is a skill, not a personality trait. A student can be brave and still lost.
I started doing small, practical things. I kept a notebook with dates and names. Every time I called, I wrote down who I spoke to and what they said. When someone told me they couldn’t discuss my son without his consent, I got the consent. Then I asked again. I learned to ask one question that changed everything: “Can you name the one person on campus whose job it is to make sure my son doesn’t fall through the cracks?”
No one could answer it. Not one person in the entire university system.
So I tried another way. I stopped asking for someone to take responsibility and started asking for something smaller. “Can you show me where the university has written down what it will do if a student misses more than four weeks of classes?” That was a question they could answer, sort of. There was an attendance policy. But when I asked who monitored it, the answer was that lecturers were responsible for reporting. And when I asked what happened after a lecturer reported, the answer was that an email was sent to the student.
An email. That was the university’s safety net.
I don’t want to make this article sound like a complaint against every individual person working in higher education. There are caring lecturers and staff who go out of their way to help students. But the culture of the institution makes real accountability almost impossible. Universities admit students like my son, collect the tuition fees, promise them support services in glossy brochures, and then expect those students to navigate everything alone. When the student fails, it is described as his own responsibility. When the university fails, it is called an exception.
If you are a parent in this situation, there are a few things that made life a little less hopeless for us. First, always put something in writing. After any phone call, send a short email summarizing what was said. “Thank you for confirming that my son’s case will be reviewed by the academic advisor. Please let us know the timeline for this review.” It doesn’t force them to do anything, but it creates a record. Universities respond to paperwork better than they respond to distress.
Second, ask for named people. Not positions, just names. “Who specifically is responsible for my son’s academic progress this semester?” If the answer is “his academic advisor,” ask for their full name and direct email address. Then ask how often they meet. You would be surprised how much disorganization is exposed by such a simple question.
Third, consider attending a meeting with your student, with their written permission. You don’t have to speak for them or push them into doing things they don’t want. Just sit next to them and take notes. Your presence changes the dynamic. The university advisor knows someone else is watching. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is.
And fourth, if your student wants to stay at the university, help them find a single office that will take them as a case. Some universities have withdrawal or “at risk” processes. Many do not advertise them, but they exist. Ask: “Is my student flagged in any early alert system? If not, how can we get him flagged?” You are not asking for special treatment. You are asking the institution to use the tools it already has.
In the end, my son did not graduate from that university. He left after two years and started working. We are still paying off a year of tuition that didn’t lead to anything. When I look back, I am less angry than I used to be. I understand now that universities are not built to protect individual students. They are built to process them. The best protection a student can have is a parent or another adult who is willing to keep asking questions, to keep showing up, to annoy people just enough that they think twice.
I don’t have a clean ending to offer. My son is okay now, but he still doesn’t trust universities. I can’t tell you what would have saved his enrollment. But I can tell you that the first phone call would have gone nowhere if I hadn’t been pushy. Sometimes accountability has to be forced, one awkward question at a time, until the university realizes it has to at least pretend to answer.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Universities Avoid Responsibility When Things Go Wrong (And What Parents Can Actually Do)