Thanks, @SDCounty3Mom! The relief is palpable in our house. I think you’re right about the cheating, too. Just rumors and likely exaggeration. Geesh is right!
Do you feel psychology was the right path for you, or do you feel the loss of anthropology? Or both
@bjscheel, is your daughter interested in living in NYC or the NYC metro area? Lots of amazing theater/debate programs in public schools here and the taxpayers are passionate about keeping them strong. Middle school and HS.
@mom2twogirls, hope that AP Chem final is going well–three days, yikes!
There are testing protocols in place @3SailAway . If you feel like they were not followed then report as you see necessary. My point was once there has been a complaint made to the school, it has to be reported and there may be a negative outcome for all students , not just the ones suspected of cheating.
@3SailAway I regret getting a PhD in experimental psychology, and would never suggest to anyone that they get a PhD in a social science or humanities field with the possible exception of a clinical psychology degree. After I had children I worked as an adjunct professor for a decade. The adjunct gig was fun and fulfilling, but is notoriously poorly paid. That’s actually a statistic I’d love to see about any college or university – what percent of the faculty are full-time tenure-track. Schools have been relying too much on adjuncts, which serves only the bottom line and not the adjunct or the students.
Psychology is not a bad major for a good background in research methods and critical thinking, but it does require that a student have a plan for what’s coming next. I’m not sure anthropology would’ve been much better, but I was enchanted by the idea of being a curator at a museum. A friend actually did anthro and then a museum studies masters. She worked at a tiny regional museum where she made almost no money, then worked in a library in an exhibits-creating role, then landed a coveted job in an urban cultural museum but the working conditions were poor so now she’s shifted gears and is working for a nonprofit in domestic violence prevention.
Which brings up another point – one thing I want my kids to understand is that their career journeys will be long and unpredictable, just like life in general. When I was in high school, saying you wanted a career in “broadcast journalism” was a bit of a fad. I had three classmates go to journalism schools. One quickly got into PR for high tech clients and has done that all the way through. Another took an admin job with Americorps and continuing in service management until shifting gears to join the Foreign Service in her 30s. The third? Actually does have a career in broadcast journalism. I was once on vacation and we turned on the TV in our hotel and there she was. I was flabbergasted. Point being: you have to be flexible. You might continue in your planned field or you might not at all.
I don’t regret getting my PhD in linguistics, but yeah, I would also never suggest that someone get a PhD with very, very rare exceptions (comp sci, electrical engineering, finance, accounting, maybe clinical psych, definitely econ, and of course educational administration if that’s what’s required for becoming a principal in your district). Especially don’t get a PhD with the intent of becoming a professor—even in fields (like mine) that weathered the first couple rounds of academic job market crashes, the low chance of breaking into tenure-track academia isn’t worth the opportunity cost anymore.
I’d add math and theoretical physics as potentially good subjects to get PhDs in, especially at top universities, as they open up many lucrative opportunities for quant jobs in finance and consulting (if you are interested in that sort of thing). And I’ve seen some computational linguistics PhDs in demand within leading tech companies.
My D11 intended to major in cognitive science, close to psychology. But she switched to CS after taking a CS course required for cognitive science major.
@SDCounty3Mom I agree. Careers are unpredictable. I was a political science major and just shy of a double major in econ (spent my first year and a half as a biomedical engineering major so it was hard to double major with only 2.5 years left). My first job was an analyst at an investment bank. Shoot me now. My last job was a regional marketing manager for a major athletic apparel/footwear company. Bounced around a lot in between. Did I use any of my political science knowledge in any of those jobs. Nope. But I was a sound writer, I had a strong analytical background, and I could make a mean presentation. All of the rest I learned on the job. And now I’m back to my original math and science background tutoring high school kids.
I think it’s great if kids know what they want to study, but it’s true that something like 70 percent change their major. I think parents might want to keep that in mind when looking at schools. Had I been at a college that was mostly engineering students, I would have had to transfer. Engineering is a huge weed out situation at most bigger schools and lots of kids drop out of the programs. They hit organic chem and start to question themselves. Not unlike the pre-med kids. S19’s friends who are interested in engineering do not even know what it is. They know they are strong in math and physics and people tell them they should be engineers. Some of them are going to summer engineering camps to make sure they are interested before they start applying to schools. Our high school does offer pre-engineering and engineering classes but the top 10% of the class don’t take those classes since they don’t have room in their schedules.
Heh. I entered college thinking I was going to be a computer scientist, veered into medieval history as a major and didn’t take a single computer course during college, and I’ve had a career in computer programming and analysis. What college gave me was confidence, some writing ability, and connections. Those have been enough.
My kid wants to major in theatre performance. I occasionally get into arguments with my husband about it. “He’ll never work, we will be supporting him until we die”. The rest of the world can tell that to my kid. I will continue to tell him that he will succeed in whatever he chooses to work hard at. Four years ago he wanted to design characters for video games for a living. It could still happen, or something equally strange and wonderful. In the meantime, he is developing tools and skills.
I think that getting a PhD is wonderful if you have the money and time for it and you enjoy the pursuit for its own sake. But very few people have that luxury of time and money.
In my life I’ve had money and I’ve had spare time but I’ve never had both at the same time.
Yup! My D1 is also majoring in a field with a difficult career path. My feeling is that when you are young, you should take your shot at what you really want. The truth is that there are very few “safe” career paths out there these days unless you are CS and that is not her. There are also many, many good jobs out there for people who know how to write, think, communicate well and have a good work ethic. Those skills can be learned in any liberal arts major.
I agree @ninakatarina . For many kids, the major doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they make the most of their connections and get all kinds of experiences. I think summer internships are particularly important and can set one up for a job offer right out of school. Worst case is that the student spends a summer doing something they decide that they do NOT like and that’s a good thing to know as well. We aren’t really giving our kids any direction as to what to study, but we will insist that they take full advantage of their colleges’ career center starting day one.
I get annoyed—no, more than that, i get honestly angry—at demands from politicians that colleges should be “preparing students for careers”.
None of us know what tomorrow’s good careers are going to be. In fact, some career fields that looked eternally promising once (nursing, K–12 education,…) are now less good because of changes to the nature of the jobs and the way those in them are employed. Better to get something that teaches you to think nimbly, which can be nearly any non-narrowly-defined major.
@dfbdfb Don’t you think part of the problem is the rising cost of school and parents’ worry that kids won’t get a job? That seems to be why many people I know want their kids to get an undergrad business degree. Don’t get me started on that. If a student really likes finance or accounting then I say go for it as an undergrad degree but, if kids are entering business programs just because they think they will get a better job out of school, I think that’s too bad. I have multiple nieces and nephews who went the business route because their parents pretty much insisted. Do they have jobs? Yes. They did not, however, enjoy their business classes and they don’t seem to be enjoying their jobs either.
I just devoured a book called “You Can Do Anything” by George Anders. The subtitle is “The Surprising Power of a Useless Liberal Arts Education”. I highly recommend it.
My d19 is interested and planning a chemical engineering degree. Her reasoning is that she doesn’t want to stop studying either higher level math or chemistry (and now physics since she is currently taking it and loving it) and has found her tech classes easy and sometimes fun (their focus tends to be more on other types of engineering, chemical is very different).
However, we talk tons about how many students change majors and it’s completely ok if she does. I would be shocked if she doesn’t graduate college with a mathy-sciencey degree, but have no other expectations. It’s one reason I’ve steered her more towards colleges with a variety of majors and where students can switch majors fairly easily. I would not have prevented her from going to an engineering school or one that is harder to switch majors.
I think its entirely rational to worry about this. However, I believe that means colleges should be preparing kids to learn to be employable which is different from preparing them for a specific job. They need interview skills, interships that help them figure out what they like and what kind of jobs are suited for them. They will also learn a work ethic and what it means to show up on time, every day. They need to learn how to network. Some colleges do a great job at this, others don’t.
On the other hand, if a kid really has a passion for something and wants to go into a direct training program, I see nothing wrong with that. I just don’t see it as a need for the majority of students who have no idea what they want to do.
Well for some kids a “job training” kind of school might be the wise fit. My older son is going Northeastern and I would not say he has much interest in literature, writing, science, arts etc. He has always been money motivated and is genuinely interested in obtaining it, ha. He wants to learn business and technology and eventually go into some sort of consulting I think. So the kids at his school work on lots of group projects, write business summaries, learn spreadsheets and business software, present in class etc. He’ll eventually do a few co-ops and may head back overseas. So he is learning different things and mastering new skills, and getting exposed to some different career paths and industries. I’m sure one of these experiences will lead him to a decent job, so for him this was the right kind of learning environment.
I think the “job training or not” question kind of depends on the type of job your student is interested in. Tech jobs (engineering, computing, etc.) tend to require more specific/directed training. That’s not to say the student shouldn’t get a well-rounded education, and most tech schools do a creditable job of this.
First of all, everything that @gallentjill#8353 wrote.
Second, one should remember that there’s job training and then there’s job training. Sure, a baccalaureate in engineering is focused on entering one of the professions, but it’s actually much more of a generalist degree than, say, (most) colleges’ nursing programs—and even those are more generalist than, say, the dental hygiene certificate program at your local for-profit.
So, S19 has swung back around the AROTC thing again. Only three schools on the “final” non-AROTC list offer it: one state-related school (PSU), one actual state school (his safety), and one LAC. Which is not a bad spread all things considered. His two favorite LACs don’t offer it.
I’m thinking that we need to consider a few more schools that offer AROTC. We’ve already visited and ruled out a bunch of them (during the non-ROTC search) for various reasons. There aren’t many left that meet his other criteria.
And here I thought that the list was complete and we would be moving into application prep. Ugh.
The other “job training” that you get at college is learning to be friends with people from very different backgrounds. The more practice you have at that, the better you will be at fitting in to an office culture. People scoff at campuses striving for diversity, but being forced to learn how much you can relate to people of different backgrounds IS a job skill.
My kid’s list has been stable for months. I know it’s because he is laser-focused on getting through the classes and the plays he is currently in, but it occasionally makes me anxious that I have nobody to vent my college search obsessions on, and no new rabbits to chase down holes.
A friend of ours who graduated high school last year and went to community college for monetary reasons posted on Facebook that she is looking at what 4-year institutions to apply to once she gets her 2-year degree next year. I immediately went on a 2 hour google search and loaded her down with several dozen links and 20 suggestions.
I have searched for statistics on faculty composition (full professors vs adjuncts) and there is some info, but it’s hard to compare schools. The ones D is interested in all seem to have about 15-20% part time instructors. That’s great compared to the average for US colleges which I think is 40% part time, but is it actually good? It’s also hard to find out how well adjuncts are paid and treated at different institutions.
In my experience, if you’re going for a liberal arts degree, which undergraduate major you choose does not seem to matter much for your future job or grad school decisions. We’ll encourage D19 to take a wide variety of classes and consider all factors when choosing a major, like what she thinks of professors in each department, and which subject she would want to read about outside of class. I’m really looking forward to discussing her classes with her, and to her being able to explore new things. Like @homerdog mentioned, our high school offers some cool classes in diverse fields, but most aren’t really options when you have to worry about “rigor”.
