You or a parent you know just got a notification you hoped you'd never receive. Your college student is on academic probation or has even been suspended. Perhaps it was a complete surprise, or perhaps it wasn't. Either way, you quickly begin to ask a series of questions: How did this happen? And even more urgently, what kind of support will help our student get back on track? What should we do?
The right course of action will depend on your student's specific needs: academic guidance from an academic adviser, mental health support from a counselor, or subject-specific tutoring. Any one of these alone might address the central problem. Or perhaps more significant and previously unaddressed issues are just surfacing, and you don't know where to find help.
Every college has resources on campus designed to help students through challenging periods: counseling services, student success programs, tutoring centers, student affairs offices, among others. The first thing you can do as a parent is to find those offices and connect with people who can help guide your student. Most of these are easily found by searching the school's website.
Next, look carefully at your student's entire experience (academic, social, and emotional) to determine how the academic performance issues are related to other dimensions of the student's life. In my many years of working with students in academic difficulty I can't remember a time when a student in serious academic difficulty didn't also need support in some other area of life.
It is tempting, sometimes nearly irresistible, to rush in to fix your student's problem. I encourage you to resist that temptation. Instead, empower your student to do this outreach; it can be an important part of helping them discover that they have the agency to solve their own problems, and so finding their way back to a more successful path.
This is a time to encourage your student to develop and utilize their problem-solving skills. Even if you can see what steps need to be taken and your student can't (yet), help them work toward a solution themselves. They will be much more likely to execute on a plan if they have helped develop it.
Advocating for yourself is a life skill, and this is a time when college students often discover it. Encourage them to do this, while at the same time doing your own research so you can offer them concrete suggestions, if they need them.
And, above all, maintain a positive and supportive attitude toward your student. Avoid the tendency to criticize the choices they have made, even if it is obvious to you that they made bad ones. When students are struggling, they need our support more than ever. Giving them that support may be what they need more than anything else.