TO AVOID SADDLING THEM WITH DEBT, more parents are footing the bill for MBA degrees. But the ingrates at the business schools still have a complaint:

While financial gifts from mom and dad may free up students to take less lucrative jobs after school, it also can give an extra incentive for helicopter parents to stay involved as their adult children choose among schools, courses and career paths. “It becomes more of a ‘we’ conversation the more parents are footing the bill,” says Marc Zawel, co-founder of AcceptU, a Boston-based admission consulting firm. In the three years that AcceptU has been working with M.B.A. program applicants, Mr. Zawel says he has gone from having almost no parental interactions to regularly hearing from parents with billing questions.

Well, if you don’t want parents involved, try setting tuition at levels where they don’t have to be. Actually, I’d like to see legal changes that remove “privacy” rules that keep paying parents out of the loop. As part of their price-discrimination scheme — “financial aid” is a misnomer — schools want to know everything about a parent’s finances, but parents have no right even to see their kids’ grades. Absurd.

UPDATE: From the comments: “It used to be that colleges were a place of free sex lots of drinking and free choices– as demanded by progressives. Progressive policies have now made colleges as a place to be afraid of sex and where drinking is criminal and parents make all the choices. Come the revolution and we will all be free from the tyranny of choices, comrades.”