Editor’s Note: Joelle Renstrom (@couldthishappen) teaches at Boston University and is the author of “Closing the Book: Travels in Life, Loss, and Literature.” Her work has appeared in Slate, The Guardian, the Washington Post, Aeon, and elsewhere. The views expressed here are hers. Read more opinion on CNN.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on concierge services emerging on college campuses around the US. These services combine the services of a hotel front desk with the infantilizing touches of a helicopter parent. These so-called “rent-a-moms” — there to help students with everything from laundry to wake-up-calls — may exist to help with problems adjusting to college, but they also risk facilitating arrested development in countless young adults.
Going off to college — or sending a child off to college — is undoubtedly scary, especially for students coming from other cultures and countries. I understand being nervous about sending teenagers away from home in a world that is constantly reminding us how unsafe we all are.
Student mental health was already a problem before Covid-19, and the pandemic wreaked havoc on teenagers especially, many of whom struggle with unprecedented levels of stress, anxiety and depression. It makes sense to provide resources, including professional, academic or community transition services, especially for at-risk, international or first-generation students struggling to acclimate to the college environment. Most universities provide these services, and all schools should do their utmost to ensure that students have access to them.
But the emergence of college concierge services is a stark reminder that no service can — or should — remove all the challenges and fears from the experience of going to college. If they do, they’ll also inhibit students’ growth and undermine the purpose of going to school in the first place.
When my university resumed all in-person classes in 2022, students struggled to get themselves physically to places on time. Used to a 10-second commute from their bed to their desk, waiting for a bus or walking in cold weather seemed unthinkable. Students showed up late constantly, sometimes catching only the last five minutes of a lecture.
Students still seem unsure how to act in the classroom or how to follow instructions. I get emails asking if I cancel class when it rains, if students from the South are excused when it snows, if I can provide a mini-version of a missed class during office hours, if I can help students find quiet places to study, if I can bump up a grade because a student never got less than an A in high school and other requests that demonstrate how much practice students need with managing boundaries, academic expectations and professional communication and behavior.
Going to college, like growing up in general, means trying new things and gaining independence. Like adulthood itself, it also means being afraid and failing sometimes. It’s often not comfortable. Students don’t need someone to come do their laundry or shopping. Instead, they should figure out how to get quarters for laundry, to make meals in a hot pot, to set three different alarms if they have an early class.
These are a few of the so-called soft skills students build when they’re in college. Despite the minimizing moniker and the fact that these skills can’t be deduced via Scantrons or graded in an exam, students can’t succeed in college or in life without them. Soft skills include organization, emotional intelligence, willpower, critical thinking and problem-solving. Honing these skills can be painful. But isn’t that life? And isn’t that what students are in college to learn?
Being independent means being able to wake, feed and clothe oneself and to make it to work or school on time. It does not, however, mean knowing all the answers or being able to solve all of one’s own problems on the first try. Independence and maturity also involve determining when one needs help and where to go to get it. Calling a rent-a-mom — as demeaning and telling as that name for it even is — undermines that process.
These services, which range in price from $49 per month to $10,000 a year, offer everything from accompaniment to a doctor’s appointment to help booking spa sessions or getting a 21st birthday beer cake. It’s problematic to lump those tasks together as though they’re equally challenging, important, or equally appropriate to outsource. Such distinctions are also part of growing up and developing a sense of priority.
Some concierge programs provide services that overlap with what universities offer, such as tutoring, writing help and course selection assistance. But students can use official (and often free) services at their university, which makes more sense when it comes to course selection for a tricky double-major or the specifics of an assignment.
Students who are afraid of coming to my office hours are almost always the ones who most need to attend. It’s important for students to figure out when and how to access university resources, especially if doing so feels challenging. Parents should encourage that process, rather than pay someone to help their student circumvent it.
The effects of the pandemic — along with the side effects of being a teenager — mean that first-year college students are all over the place. Academic and behavioral standards evaporated during Zoom classes when students could attend class from bed and remain on video and audio mute.
While remaining supportive, parents should give students the space to acclimate to college expectations, which will help them gain the skills they need to adjust to other new situations. It’s important to be empathetic to a population that has experienced as much as Gen Z has, but empathy shouldn’t eclipse responsibility, especially because it rarely does in the “real world” for which they’re preparing.
In addition to perpetuating sexist stereotypes (these companies don’t rent out dads) and undermining the importance of the many moms who don’t get paid, paying a stranger to play mom confuses boundaries and delays the maturation and self-reliance students need now more than ever.
If they’re going to be successful humans, not just successful students, first-year college students need to learn how to get to class on time and the consequences if they don’t. They need to learn how to maintain a (somewhat) healthy diet and daily routines and how to cope with setbacks. They need to learn who they can ask for help and when.
Figuring out who to ask for help, when, and how, isn’t a “soft” skill — it’s a life skill. And it shouldn’t involve paying someone so a teenager never has to figure it out.