I’ve told my kids that the main purpose of college is to prepare for a career. They need to have some plan for what to do with their education when the education is done. With that in mind, my kids see that their mom and dad are chemical engineers. They have a set of grandparents who are both chemical engineers and 2 uncles and an aunt who are also chemical engineers. Guess what, my first daughter wants to double major in chemical engineering and music. She says that music is her hobby, but I would be ok if she pursues it as long as she has a plan for what to do with it and sustain a reasonable livelihood. I tell her that the prospects for an engineering graduate will be much better than a music major. However, if no one ever took the chance then we would never have the exceptional career stories that started with humble beginnings.
See, I don’t agree with this at all. Not the main purpose.
The main purpose of college is to prepare to be a high-functioning citizen who can actively engage in civic life, contribute to a well-functioning constitutional democracy, engage in humanitarian concerns, and appreciate and support the role of science in our common betterment. And to prepare to contribute to a life-long endeavor that provides financial peace of mind.
@brantly We will just have to agree to disagree. I don’t believe a $100K and 4 year investment is needed to be a high-functioning, humanitarian citizen. It seems elitist to me that people feel their college degree somehow elevated them above other citizens. There are plenty of people without degrees who fit your description, however there are few engineers, teachers, accountants, doctors, lawyers without degrees. If my child tells me their college “goal” is to become a compassionate citizen and to support the democracy, I will tell them to join the military and/or peace corp and save me the money. If you want to “appreciate” science, please don’t spend $25K a year in college, but read some books, watch Discovery channel and visit the local science museum.
I’m a sociology major and attorney who now runs a nonprofit. H was a fed employee, working with computers and supervising engineers for most of his career.
We let our kids choose their own paths. D is a cinema major and helps with films. S is an EE major, working for the fed govt. He is also an entrepreneur. He loves what he does so far and the hours are decent and great vacations and benefits. Of course no one knows what the future will bring but I think both kids are great critical thinkers and problem solvers with good people skills.
Both kids have mentioned possibly going to grad or law school but haven’t taken action on it. We would support (financially and emotionally) whatever they choose–watching them make their own choices and grow is fun and exciting.
D1 chose my profession when I first started out and she loves it. She always knew that’s what she wanted to do. D2 is going to law. Even though law school is expensive, but many do give scholarships, even T14 schools. In looking at T14 stats, majority of their graduates do get employed.
I used to get a bit angry at my H because he actively (truthfully, very actively) discouraged our boys from following in his footsteps (law) and I do think one of our kids is well suited for it.
He has been in Big Law for 27 years and, although financially rewarding, he has never liked it, and on some days, truly, truly hated it. (he did LOVE law school though). In addition, he has had a front row seat to the huge changes in those 27 years and didn’t want our kids to be part of that world.
Interestingly, 4 of S1’s friends are starting law school this fall (2013 college grads) and they have all met with H for advice about law school selection (he has strong feelings on this subject), job prospects, etc. He has softened a bit recently and I do hear him give positive advice to these other kids. @oldfort is correct in that top students at T14s do have employment options at big firms (if that is what they are after).
As of now, all that talk from hubby worked,neither son has any interest in attending law school!
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My sister started at Big Law then went in house after her kids were born. She had a very successful law career. She has had options of working part time and full time when she wanted. In the last few years she is semi-retired working on her own doing some contract work. She works from 6am to 12pm and play tennis in the afternoons.
^^Nice!! I do think my H is ready for a change, it’s just easier said than done at this point!
i majored in chemical engineering by default - I graduated HS in 1980, was good at math and science, was steered that way. I realized by the time I graduated college that I did not like engineering. My H is a chemist. We did not steer our kids any direction.
Oldest started out in Intl affairs, discovered economics in college, and double majored. She liked the mathematical aspects of econ. She is in consulting and heading back to school for an MBA in the fall (at MIT with a lot of engineers!) She did remark to me once that she would have made a good engineer, and I agree. Next kid was a CS major, planned for that his whole life to make video games. Last kid was like me - liked many subjects and not sure where to head. Took her first CS class in college and majored in that. So they all have a math focus in their jobs, which I think reflects something in their genes.
DW or I wouldn’t mindi if kids followed one of our professions but we didnt’ push it and neither will and that’s fine.
@jerzmaster You need a college degree for peace corps. I do agree that military is a great option for four years and will also provide the GI Bill for future college options.
I’m a technical sales consultant now, but started off as an engineer and then moved into IT project management and systems architecture. D18 wasn’t initially interested in engineering, and I didn’t push it on her. Then she saw the movie Hidden Figures and now is considering Aerospace Engineering! Couldn’t be happier.
I’m in journalism. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to actively pursue journalism as a college major due to the fact that mainstream media seems to be a dying industry. That being said, if a someone wanted to pursue it as a career, I would encourage that but would suggest they major in something that could lead to a journalism focus (i.e., political science for someone who wanted to cover politics).
In the self-employed tax CPA world, the “grow your own” succession plan seems to be pretty popular.
I’ve told my own kid that she ought to major in whatever she’s most interested in in college. It’s easy and cheap enough to pick up enough accounting hours to sit for the CPA exam later, if she goes down that road. With the 150-hour requirement, it doesn’t even mean significantly more time in school than having been dead set on accounting from the start.
I’m a chemist; my husband is a chemist; neither one of us would encourage a young person to enter our sub-specialty (synthetic organic chemistry), especially if he/she is interested in pharmaceutical research. Too much outsourcing, too few domestic research jobs, too little interest by Big Pharma in bringing those research jobs back.
Now, if you really love lab work, don’t mind changing jobs every four-five years, and thrive on uncertainty – then maybe! I guess I’m just too cautious, too risk-averse. It’s too bad, because I used to think I had the best job in the world.
My own D had no interest in my career, although she definitely had the talent for it.
The problem for law training is that many of us did not go into “Big Law” and never wanted to – in fact, such a career aspiration is in many ways antithetical to the reasons we did or would choose law. I mean, I am one of the many who chose law inspired by Clarence Darrow – I cemented my desire to pursue a law career through volunteering as an advocate for welfare recipients for two years as an undergrad at the Legal Aid Society. It doesn’t really work to come in to law with the ideals of helping the downtrodden or working for social change and then looking for big bucks at Big Law. And my kids share my social values, as I would want them to – and they also have as their model, from both parents & a grandparent, lawyers who maintained private practice careers yielding modest and often unpredictable incomes.
And you can’t graduate from law school and expect to get a big salary as newbie attorney with the public defender’s or legal aid office, or working for a nonprofit advocacy group. And yes – the student can get the benefit of income based repayment and potential loan forgiveness in the end… but it is one thing for a student to hope for that sort of career, and another to be locked into it.
Plus loan forgiveness depends on the student working for qualifying organizations – something that is not always guaranteed and can even be retroactively denied. So there are many public-service oriented career paths that still leave recipients with a mountain of debt.
And of course just because a student wants a certain type of job doesn’t mean that they will get it.
I would never encourage anyone to end up in the soul-sucking careers DH and I have had. We encouraged our son to follow his passions and enjoy every minute of college for mind enrichment not job training. He chose the military in spite of heavy discouragement. He appears to be very happy, and he is now an adult, so our opinion is moot. This is not what we envisioned for him but is was never about us.
I actively discouraged my daughters from becoming models when they were younger (it’s a deeply nasty and corrupt industry), and mother nature did me a solid-D1 is 5’8" and D2 is 5’7 1/2".
I’m 5’9 1/2" and H is 6’4", so that was some lucky lucky genetics, right there…
I’m in the college is for an education camp. Benefit if the degree also leads to employment.
We used to tell people our son of two physicians was too smart to become one. Plus, he never had any interest in anything leading to it.
No way could we have told our son what to do- he’s as strong willed/stubborn as his parents.
He was an Honors Math major- preferred theoretical to applied and when he overreached for top math grad schools on his own he decided to finish the computer science major and gat a good job in that. By good I mean not only paying the bills, becoming self supporting bit also being intellectually satisfied. Happy he likes it, not my preference. He once told me maybe he should have taken the Honors Chemistry sequence instead of the Honors Physics one- I was an Honors Chemistry grad at the same U eons ago. Knowing the field, his lack of interest when he did AP in HS and my knowledge of him et al I told him he had done the right thing with physics (a contender for his major- I have always disliked it).
We are a 2 lawyer couple and have actively discouraged our D1 from pursuing law for the reasons outlined by @calmom. We both got our law degrees at a time when public law schools were very inexpensive and a law degree was a reliable ticket to an upper middle class lifestyle. But now those same public law schools are very expensive and employment prospects are shaky. There’s no way we want her to take on a bunch of debt to get a law degree, even though she’d probably make a great lawyer. Interestingly she now has a boyfriend in law school and he’s second guessing his decision, so that may influence her more than we do.
To the big question in the title of this thread, a direct answer: HA!!! My son is as intellectual as they come, but had no interest in an academic career.
After he returned home from his first year at UChicago, my wife asked him, “Have you given any thought to a career?” His answer, “I could become an academic [like Dad], but academics is [are?] boring.” [Me: Thanks a lot, son.]
My wife pursued the question further, and asked him:
Q. “You must have read some interesting things at Chicago that were written by academics.”
A. “Yes I did.”
Q. “Who did you read that was interesting?”
A. “I realllly liked Durkheim.”
Q. “Well suppose you could be Durkheim. Then would you consider being an academic?”
A. “Maybe. IFF I could be Durkheim.”
As it happened, although he rejected pursuing an academic career, much of his career after earning his A.B. has involved research and writing. He’s even published a book. But a career in academia had no appeal to him.
He chose Chicago because it’s a college “where it’s safe to be a thinker” (his words). And that he has become – but NOT as an academic!