Excessive debt would be a bad idea for any major.
@techmom99 my older D and her dad are working on it. They’re getting better, but there’s a long way to go before they’re back to where they were.
My younger one has been working in summer classrooms since she was 13. Lots of the kids have had challenges of some sort, so she hopes that she has an idea of what will happen. But we have a friend who was overwhelmed in her first and only semester in a regular classroom. But she’s a talented craftsperson and got a job teaching in her district’s “maker’s space”. D has a very long-range plan that includes possible political ambitions such as state superintendent, or maybe running her own school. I can’t wait to see what happens with her.
Registering on kids’ behalf is extreme most parents dp take. But I would think parents wish their kids happy and successful and financially secure. That may lead them to steer their kids to certain direction. Is that so wrong?
There was a parent of a Tufts student here on CC who was inquiring about the right courses for her son to take in his junior year. Time to cut the apron strings and fold back the helicopter blades.
:))
Yes, but more so for majors that lead into careers where salaries are not particularly high and/or some sort of graduate school will eventually be necessary (for example, teaching) than for those where pay is good and no additional education is necessary (for example, engineering).
I have a relative who has two daughters, now both in their late 20s. He was fine with whatever they wanted to study as an undergrad. But he expected them to go to grad school in a professional field that required a license. Actually, he would allow them to go to grad school for whatever they wanted, but he would only PAY for grad school in a field that required a license. His daughters were welcome to get a master’s degree—on their own dime—in English, biology, or journalism, for example. But he would only pay for a graduate degree in, say, speech pathology, education, physical therapy, psychology, physician assistant, law, medicine, nursing, accounting, actuary, dental hygiene, pharmacy, occupational therapy, architecture, engineering, etc.
An MBA did not qualify. It’s a credential, but not a license.
NYU is incredibly selective for acting, and (not surprisingly) plugged in to the NY theater and film/TV production worlds. Your looks and your talent you are more or less born with, although both take a lot of work to maintain. Going to a program like NYU’s is probably one of the few things you can do to improve your chances of success as an actor meaningfully.
Of course, it would still be very risky to incur debt to do it. I’m sure not all NYU acting grads go on to successful acting careers. But it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that borrowing to attend NYU for acting is a mistake. The kids I have known who went to Tisch all have real careers. (None of them are actors, though. One was, in high school, but went to Tisch in a tech specialty.)
@brantly, although it was generous for your relative to offer to help with the costs of at least some types of graduate programs, I don’t see any particular benefit to preferring occupations that require licenses vs. those that don’t. There are many good ways to earn a living in which licensing plays no role.
One of my kids has a master’s degree in computer science. The other has an MBA. They both have very good jobs. The only licenses they have are the ones that allow them to drive cars.
@Marian I think his reasoning is absurd. I told the story as an example of how some parents choose to control their kids’ choice of career or area of study. His reasoning is that his children are female and that if they ever choose to leave the workforce for any period of time (presumably to be an at-home parent), they will always have that license. OTOH, if they had an MBA or a master’s in international relations, that’s not a credential that enables them to perform professional duties.
We basically picked our daughters major. She had no idea and mom is an accountant so we said accounting would be a good major for her. She agreed. She’s a freshman and yesterday she just changed her major to Health Science 
We didn’t think we had a future CPA in the family but she had no clue about what to major and offered no resistance to the suggestion. In her case she was happy to have an answer to the question everyone asked - even if it was just a placeholder until her mind focused on the real area she wanted to study. I’m glad it didnt take a few years before she switched.
However, some students do change majors, so the debt that the student takes should be limited to what s/he can pay off with any of his/her possible career paths that follow any of his/her possible majors.
Note also that, at some schools, engineering majors, nursing, and some other majors may require a competitive secondary admission process to get into the major. A student at such a school needs to consider the possibility of not being able to get into the major and what alternative majors (or transfer to another school) s/he would take in that case. This can impact the maximum amount of debt that the student should be willing to take, if s/he were basing it on the job and career prospects of his/her intended major.
My kids are sort of falling into their paths. My daughter started out thinking she would study English with a minor in music, but is now getting her degree in medieval studies and French and is applying to divinity school. She also applied for a Fulbright to continue her medieval history studies, but that’s a long shot.
My son went in as a possible English or creative writing major, but has taken a lot of Japanese, and is now thinking he’ll major in East Asian studies. He’ll also have enough credits for a minor in theatre. As a sophomore, he has time to sort this out further.
My kids used summer programs and various MIT programs for kids to sample potential areas of interest while they were still in high school. I didn’t care what they majored in, really, but I thought it was useful to think about what you might like, maybe point yourself in a certain direction and potentially find a way to make a living doing something you like, and if you find that you don’t like where you’re heading point somewhere else. I think it’s hard to find yourself if you don’t look. I see many of my kids peers graduating with no direction and hefty debt. In Europe, students have to choose their major upon applying and it’s really hard to switch. It deserves some thought, and some looking. Unfortunately many students today are too busy to look around and see what interests them outside of school.
@ClassicRockerDad, my kids did similar things. One went to Various summer camps, and to Johns Hopkins for 2 summers. He was only ever interested in STEM subjects. So when it came to college, I knew a STEM heavy school with not too many other majors would be fine for him. Other went to computer camp early on, but went to UMD for 3 summers, and took classes like communications and business. He thought he wanted to be a business major, but wasn’t certain, and had multiple interests, so he picked a big state U with a great businnes school and several strong programs, in case he changed his mind. I’m sure I influenced their decisions, but certainly did not pick their majors,
I think I could support any major my kid had a great passion for–acting at NYU included, as long as tremendous passion was there and I assume if he/she got in to NYU for acting, that he/she would have some real talent. I have a son in Game Design/Game Art. A few years ago I didn’t think that was a real major, and you don’t really have to have a degree for this. But I learned about it because it’s all he wanted to do. I hope he can build a stellar portfolio in college while he grows up a little.
It’s hard when your kid just doesn’t feel pulled to anything. You give the best advice you can, including coaching on possible majors, but bottom line is they have to do the work. I do have to be clear that they can’t live off us forever, though, and I’m not going to pay tuition for putzing around and doing poorly. I have expectations. If they want to putz around they can do it working at Walmart. My H really wants to retire. Badly. So it isn’t fair to use all the family resources for nothing. I wish we could slow time down for them. Everything feels so fast these days.
D felt that starting at community college gave her more freedom to experiment and take a broader range of courses at practically no cost.
I cannot even keep track of my kid’s major.
S1 picked engineering over my objections. Not that I would discourage everyone, but it just did not fit his personality. He switched to business/MIS end of his sophomore year. S2 is at a STEM HS so knows beforehand it does not fit his personality.
My dad was an engineer, thought the world of it, my older brother became an EE, me, not so much. I was sort of half a black sheep, got a CS degree, my sister was an English major…but God rest his soul, he never forced me to be anything, despite his bias towards engineering.
With my son, he chose his future early, he went serious with music performance when he was 11 and hasn’t looked back since, and I was okay with it because he had the talent and passion it requires (or at least I think so), if I didn’t I would encourage him to look at other things and say why, but I suspect to be honest he would likely have seen the writing on the wall long before I did.
In music you see both cases,parents who force kids into music, whether it was because it was their dream, because they think their kid is going to be the next Yo Yo Ma or Perlman , or in high school, because they thought it was the golden ticket into a top level college, and you never saw anything more sad, the kids often were really, really strong on the instrument, but it was clear they would rather be elsewhere. The problem with forcing a kid to do something is unless they find they like it, they likely will not do well in it, my student days in CS were not exactly stellar, I chose it as a compromise and in the end it did get me into my current career but not in the way a CS degree typically trains you for, I ended up finding my place. This is also a problem when it is aimed “at the money” (usually STEM or being a doctor), because if the kid doesn’t like it, they likely won’t do well when they walk out the door, and they will be faced with trying to find something they do want to do; coming out with a music degree in terms of ‘making it’ in music is not exactly easy, but coming out with an EE degree or an accounting degree when you don’t feel anything for it isn’t going to be, either. If a kid comes out with an EE degree and a ton of debt and isn’t good at it, they will be faced with the same problem as a kid who majored in Art History or ancient sanskrit, they might get a job as an engineer or accountant, but will it last?
Parents don’t know best, and rather than force kids to do anything, I think the best role we have is as advisors, helping the kids find their own passion, pointing out what the world is like and making sure the kid is going into things with open eyes, the kid these days who looks at being a lawyer and sees a world of high 6 figure salaries and whatnot needs to see what the reality of being a lawyer is these days and if they want that, better get into a top law school and do well, if they want to be a doctor because it is well paying, they need to look at the reality and we should be the window to that, not the dictator.
I personally think a kid who loves history and majors in that in the end will find something they want to do in the real world (the majority of college degrees outside a narrow band, engineering, comp sci, maybe some kinds of math, accounting, tend not to be direct job training, even science positions like chem, bio and physics don’t allow you to do much in those fields without an advanced degree), and being able to study what they want might teach them a lot in how to try and find something in the real world, rather than slogging in a major and job that doesn’t interest them.