A mother in Salt Lake City flies to Cambridge, Mass., to argue with a Harvard University professor about her daughter's biology grade.

A father leaves the parent seminar at Saint Louis University to wake up his son, a college student, for a campus job interview.

A young woman at a college in the Northeast calls her dad in the South because it's snowing, and she wonders if classes will be canceled. He calls the school to find out.

These true stories illustrate the hyper-involvement of today's "helicopter parents," a term coined by university administrators to refer to those who hover over their young adult offspring and hinder their maturation. The mostly well-meaning baby boomers, raised to get their money's worth at any cost, are flexing their muscle around college administrators and pestering professors.

The meddling has become so acute that public universities are creating programs and hiring staff to deal with problem parents, something most private colleges have done for years.

"We live in a customer-service culture," says Jim Boyle, president of the Arlington, Va.-based College Parents of America, which lobbies Congress on financial matters on parents' behalf. "People expect to have their questions answered by institutions, whether it's the local department, the cable operator, or the school their son or daughter attends."

Universities are no strangers to overzealous parents.

Changes in transportation and technology, from cell phones — nicknamed "the world's longest umbilical cord" by one Georgia university administrator — to e-mail, give parents an almost split-second way to be involved.

Some helicopter parents even seek roommate changes for their kids — before their student has had the opportunity to meet the assigned roommate. Technology gets the blame for this, too: After getting their room assignments in early summer, many students check out their roommates on Face Book, an online social directory for high school and college kids. Parents catch wind of this and react from there, says Melissa Vito, dean of students at the University of Arizona.

Universities should use a firmer hand in insisting parents "let grow," not "let go," of their kids, says Helen E. Johnson, an author and parent-relations consultant to colleges and universities.

"My biggest pet peeve is the dean who says to the parents, 'Welcome to the family,' " she says. "There's no role for them to play in that family. It's like having your drunk uncle around at Thanksgiving: You can't tell him to go away, but you don't want him there, either."

Parents might not realize the damage they're doing to their kids by fighting their battles.

"These kids have never, almost ever, done anything on their own," Johnson says. "They have been surrounded by adult-supported, adult-scheduled, adult-originated activities all their lives, and to them, this is usual."

But it's not conducive to their becoming independent adults who make their own decisions, accept consequences and revel in their own successes. Hovering makes kids lazy, instills self-doubt and inhibits their ability to bounce back, Johnson says.

"If a child never learns how to be resilient, they'll have very little confidence in their ability to handle things," she says.

Parents should urge their children to resolve their own problems, offer suggestions for them to consider, and remind them of their love and support, Johnson says.

"Parents have to remain constant in their own approach — 'I will do whatever I can in this transition, but these are your decisions to make,' " she says.

Johnson says it is difficult to step back if a big part of a person's identity is being a mom or dad. "This is a loss of a role, but isn't it what we hope will happen? What have you been working for all these years? To get your child independent."

Boyle doesn't think universities have seen the worst of it.

"They need to seriously brace themselves for Gen X parents who don't have as rosy a view of their own educational experiences as baby boomers do, and their kids, who've grown up in a culture of measurement and accountability for schools," he says. "That same level of accountability will be asked of colleges and universities in the future. It will be a matter of doing business."