As some of you know and the rest of you are about to learn, I have a daughter who’s getting near adulthood. Nominal adulthood. Alleged adulthood. Something like that.
One issue that comes up with almost-adults as they near the end of mandated schooling is, What next? For most middle-class Americans, the obvious, why-are-you-even-asking answer is college.
I’ve told my daughter, like her brothers before her, that if she goes into engineering, premed, accounting, or some other field where the expected salary is worth the cost (not only tuition but four years spent not working), I’d help pay for it. If she wants to study Medieval French Literature or Dance Therapy or Sociology, you’re on your own, kid.
The boys went into engineering school. The daughter had been firmly set on that path, too, but has been having second thoughts. She gives a variety of reasons but I think it comes down to not being excited by it. OK, that’s fine. There are other options. She was thinking about a general STEM-oriented freshman year and then deciding, which makes good sense. We started putting together plans.
Enter Heaven. That’s stage direction for a young woman, not a suggestion to die and go to the afterlife. And Heaven isn’t her real name, but it’s thematically similar. I’m not blaming her for her name, just as I wouldn’t blame Starlit Waterfall a couple generations earlier. It’s her parents’ doing, not hers. But her name does suggest a few things about her parents’ values and her upbringing, beyond being a woman born in 2000s America.
She’s six or so years older than my daughter, in grad school. She and my daughter have been talking about many things, from care of aquatic frogs to careers. And there’s the problem.
Heaven’s studying psychology or sociology or something similar. While such degrees can lead to decent-paying jobs, that’s not the way to bet, not until you’ve been doing it long enough that you can open your own practice. I’ll dig up some employment statistics and income projections if I remember once I’m back online. (Let’s face it, I won’t remember. I’m very tired and very busy. Wouldn’t be writing this if I weren’t stuck sitting and waiting, with no connectivity.)
Heaven is encouraging my daughter to follow her dream and things will work out and the money will take care of itself. Because, you know, that’s how it works.
The daughter’s dream right now is getting into game design. Maybe as a social psychologist (Maybe? I think that’s what she said the job was called.) working on the psychological cues that go into computer games. Maybe as a programmer. Maybe as a graphic designer. There’s lots of choices!
Should she look into what’s involved in working for a gaming company, like hours worked and expected salaries and job security and market trends? Nah! Talk to her best friend’s father, who works in the biz? Nah! Sit down and start designing a game yourself? Nah! Apply for a position as an intern at the local game development company? Nah! Just sign up for the college classes. It’ll work itself out!
Another dismissed idea is taking a gap year and working, whether to test a career field or two or simply to earn money and get a feel for adult life. She likes welding, so why not practice and hone her skills and then apprentice for a year to see if she likes working as a welder? And another dismissed idea is getting married and starting a family and doing some kind of work-from-home while raising the kids. (Rejected out of hand. I’m never going to have grandchildren at this rate, heh.)
You might deduce from my subtle phrasing choices that I’m not thrilled about Heaven’s advice. You might also deduce that I’m not thrilled that my daughter is listening to someone who tells her what she wants to hear rather than what may actually help her.
I’m not claiming to be the one source of Truth. I’m not saying that my suggestions are the only ones that will lead her to happiness and success, however defined. I am saying that you should look carefully at costs and benefits before signing up for a hundred thousand in non-dischargeable student loans. Especially when the dream you’re following is likely to change within the year, let alone before it starts paying off.
I’m also not claiming that economic utility is the only value of a college education. I am saying that a college education which will not pay off economically is a luxury, to be purchased with spare wealth. It is certainly not to be borrowed for.
I’m not even claiming that psychology and sociology degrees are worthless. 90% worthless, maybe, but not totally. But again, they are luxuries, to be purchased when your future is assured and you have time and money to put into them.
But the easy advice, the advice to do what you want to do (at the moment) and to avoid the hard work and the hard decisions, that advice is just so much more tempting!
- Entries
“I’m also not claiming that economic utility is the only value of a college education. I am saying that a college education which will not pay off economically is a luxury, to be purchased with spare wealth. It is certainly not to be borrowed for.
I’m not even claiming that psychology and sociology degrees are worthless. 90% worthless, maybe, but not totally. But again, they are luxuries, to be purchased when your future is assured and you have time and money to put into them.”
Exactly Steve. Every kid getting ready to go to school should read those two paragraphs. One of my daughter in laws is an accountant (masters), a really good one and well paid. Her undergrad major (at a top 5 in the country school) was art history because that is what she liked. When she graduated she realized that would not pay the bills, so back to school.
Lesson learned.
We need a few sociologists and psycho’s 🙂 We just don’t need an army of them to go along with the army of women’s study grads.
Personally I value a broad education in all manner of things. But if you graduate university with no understanding of math/physics/chemistry/biology then you are an easily fooled person. I.E., you don’t know when you are being lied to. What to study should be a fairly easy decision – how quick and how much can you get for that course of study today? If your education doesn’t result in good job offers it’s useless unless you are already wealthy.
Welding is a hot field in more ways than one 🙂 Specialty welders are making 6 figure + salary’s.
Aaron Clarey wrote Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major which covers the topic at more length but really doesn’t say more than what I wrote.
It is all about the individual.
To me Worthless would be trying to apprentice to a plumber, mechanic or carpenter. I’m all thumbs and over the years I haven’t been able to handle anything more than the basics of handiwork.
College was my only real option. But I took a business degree and it worked for me.
Just like if you’re not very good at math beyond 8th grade, engineering wouldn’t be for you.
Nonsense. Sex work is real work!
“But I took a business degree and it worked for me.”
It’s always a blessing if you get to find what you’re good at and go that route.
Like the other commenter, I ended up doing something related to, but not really the career path of, my primary major.
The other thing I always hear is “just do what you love to do and it’ll all work out because you’ll be driven to succeed because you love it.
Two things wrong with that.
First. When I was a kid I loved basketball and rock music. My career path would have been Rock Star or The NBA
Problem was I had 0 ability to make the NBA and only modest skills to play an instrument. No matter how “driven” I was I was never going to be a Rock Star or an NBA player.
Second. Often when people make something they love their JOB they no longer love it. The reason they loved it was because they used it as a distraction from the daily grind of doing what they had to do. Once it became something they had to do it was no longer fun!
Take something you’re good at and match it with something that pays and try your best to love it. Or else keep your hobbies and make the best of it.
“Often when people make something they love their JOB they no longer love it.”
Exactly right. No matter how much you love something you do, 70% of it is drudgery. The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the professional does it even when it’s not fun.
I’m a forensic pathologist. A lot of what I do is fascinating and fun.
Even more is profoundly unpleasant. I did my Fellowship in North Carolina. One day a body came in that had been in the Atlantic for some time. It was decomposing, had been partially eaten by sea creatures, and smelled to high heaven. In the old Medical Examiner Office, there was a special room for examining decomposing bodies so that the whole office would not stink up.
The room was small and close. The Chief Medical Examiner called us in to examine the body. The smell was horrible. The Chief looked at us and asked “Gentlemen, what’s that smell?”
We had been informed by a couple of the staff that this was from the coast, so we had all the answers ready.
“Dr. Hudson, we can tell from the sweet tones of the smell that this was a saltwater case. Moreover, the circular depredations around the nipples are characteristic of crab activity, also suggestive of a saltwater death…”
The Chief raised his hand to stop us. “No, gentlemen. This smell? This is the smell of job security.”
Gee, think what we’re missing – a normal size dude playing the guitar while dunking a basketball
🙂
Even with a trampoline involved I don’t think dunking is happening.
Daughter graduated with a BS in phycology. Never used her degree. Ended up in DC(this is 30 years ago) with her SO and got a job as the webmaster for the US Army; and then for the Optical Society of America . . . weird ehh?
My advice — embrace the power of “and.” First study something that will give you a livelihood, *then* study the thing that will allow you to leverage it into an area you like better.
Let me give you my story. I worked my ass off in high school and college to get into medical school. And I did — I got into one of the better schools in the nation. Then I found out that I hated it. I had worked for years and it was all a mistake. I did very poorly. My second year of medical school the Dean of Students called me in and said “Bill, you have great test results and school records, but you’re not doing that well. What’s going on?”
“Dean Phelps, I hate it here. I don’t like the culture, I don’t like the classes, I don’t like any of it. I’m thinking about dropping out and doing something else.”
“So, what do you like?”
” I kinda like these new computers that are coming out. (This was in the early 1980s before there were even PCs). I’d kinda like to become a computer engineer or something like that.”
“Well, Bill, here’s the thing. How much you figure a computer engineer makes?”
“About fifty grand a year. (Again, early 80s)”
“OK. Now think about this. You can be an engineer, a writer, a chemist, or anything. Take whatever it is and add an MD to it, and you can add another 50 grand to your income. You don’t have to practice medicine after you graduate. Lot’s of people don’t. Think about Michael Crichton. He went to medical school just so he could write novels. He never practiced a day in his life. You can do that. Finish med school, then learn some computer engineering. I guarantee you it will be worth it. All you have to do is make it through the next two years, and you are golden. What about it?”
“Well, I guess I can do anything for two years….”
“There you go. You don’t have to be the best in class, just don’t drop out.”
And that’s what I did. I ended up in a residency that allowed me time off to do graduate school in computer science, so by the time I finished, I was not only board certified in my specialties (Anatomic, Clinical, and Forensic Pathology), but I also had an MS in Computer Science with emphasis on graphics and computer vision.
I got out of training and joined the Army. I spent the next 12 years mostly doing various forms of image intelligence involving exploiting imagery of forensic operational significance and running a small military scientific network, in addition to doing death investigation and consultation with representatives from various agencies and governments. It was the perfect place for me.
But, I could never have done it if I had not gotten my MD first, and *then* did the computer thing. I know a guy who did it the other way — he got a PhD in computer science and then got his MD. An it’s not just those two. I have a friend who was a Philly cop for 10 years and then went to med school who is also a forensic pathologist. I know of another guy who is a physician and an artist — and who uses his medical knowledge in his art. And of course there are the thousands of physician-writers, from Michael Crichton to Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s not just physician-whatevers, of course, that’s just what I’m most familiar with. I just read an article about a physicist-cook and an engineer-mixologist.
But the bottom line is that I am big fan of first getting training in something that will pay the bills and then supplement it by learning something that will allow you to leverage your skills in a direction that you find more fulfilling. That way you get the best of both worlds.
This is exactly what happened with my youngest. She had band teachers in HS tell her it was so worth it to go to an elite music school for music performance.
I should’ve stuck to my guns, like my old man, and said you can go in state, I’ll help. Go out of state and you are on your own. She got scholarships and grants to some really great schools. Didn’t matter that a guy that fixed instruments on the side who also was in a few orchestras around here said go for something different, you still can play (he did dentistry, and had a dental implant business). Didn’t matter that I pointed out that in the major symphonies around here that the first and second chairs were pretty old, and they’d have to die before a good seat opened up, which would have a line. Nope. Still went. Got a masters in fact.
When she was in school, she interned back at her high school band program. Only then did she find out that these ass clowns were tits deep in debt in their late 40s, working as high school band teachers. I pointed out that they at least would have a semblance of a retirement plan and bennies.
She works as a development director for a music program at a university. She hold me she couldn’t have gotten the gig without paying the dues. Entry to the club, so to speak. At least she’s been whittling down debt and should be free of it in less than a year, as she turns 30.
I’ve never pissed into a headwind, but the closest I cam was trying to give a nickel’s worth of free advice to my niece, headed for college.
Told her to get her A.A from the local j.c. for pennies, then spend her miniscule college funds on the last year or two at Big Name U., for a degree worth the trouble.
Instead, she decided she needed to get into the program for her chosen major at Big Out Of State U., at top dollar, across the country, using all the money alloted for her freshman year.
Where she found out
1) She hated the major, and the pre-reqs were killing her.
2) Her roommates were a waste of skin and oxygen, only being at college to get high and get laid far from parental notice or care.
3) She dropped out halfway through her second semester, broke and with nothing to show for it.
Then she doubled down, by joining the Disney Indentured Servitude Intern program, which gave her room and board, in exchange for a years’ slave labor at Disney Worl, and which dumps them out after a year, and never hires anyone from that program.
She ended up having to slog through still fourr years, living at home, first at the local j.c. she’d ignored, exactly as I and her freshman dropout father had suggested at the get-go, and then at Bargain State U., but at least in a major with a decent chance of a job, rather than a sheepskin from Prestigious In-State U., which her funds could have covered for the last two years, if only she hadn’t pissed them all away before her first year was up, and after only six years chasing her tail instead of four.
The best things parents can do is either evict their younglings at h.s. graduation, or charge them market rent on June 1st of the graduating year, or tell them to ship out for four years military service in the branch of their choice, allowing military sergeants to serve in loco parentis, until they’re a lot closer to their full adult brains growing in around age 25.
The best life advice is to let Life tattoo their asses with its hoofprints, good and hard, as early as possible, because they’re biologically stupid, and functionally tone-deaf to sound advice before that happens.
That should be in the last chapters of the Parenting textbooks. If they can piss and shit on porcelain rather than their clothes, cook themselves a meal, balance a checkbook, and come in out of the rain without being told by age 18, your work is done. It’s a bitter truth to swallow, but it only hurts the parents who ignore it.
I don’t agree with 100% of that. Specifically, up here the public school don’t get out until late June and the private schools usually a week or two earlier. And my daughter won’t turn 18 until after school gets out. Oh, and military enlistments are currently longer than four years.
Other than that, yah, I think you nailed it.
One option that I didn’t mention in the essay but did discuss with The Child is military enlistment. She rejected it, which was probably the right call. She’s much less tolerant of bullshit than I was at her age, much more distrustful of the government, and less patriotic. (I have no idea, no idea at all, how she could have picked up those attitudes, like, from living with me or something.) (Except for that last one. I’m still very patriotic, but to the American ideal and heritage population. Not at all to the governments or the tens of millions of invaders.)
As for trying to advise one’s children, nephews, and nieces, it’s very frustrating to tell them something and have it ignored but then to see them take the same advice from someone else. For the absolute perfect cherry on top, the someone else can be one of their classmates or friends, who got the advice from me. (A fair few of my daughter’s friends and classmates ask me for my thoughts on many topics, from college majors to parallels between late republic Rome and modern America. They listen politely, ask questions, and seem to give my thoughts some weight. Totally different experience than with the brat living in the house.)
(See also: wives)
I had 3 kids:
First one, a daughter, had a fully paid ride at college. Decided to major in sociology! Later, after she worked at a few jobs, and had more life experience, she qualified as a sign language interpreter, then later finished a master’s in Special Ed. Never has to worry about being unemployed.
Second kid went right into the Navy – his MOS was in digital electronics. After his hitch, he putzed around for a while, then landed a job working as an electronics technician while attending community college. He didn’t really like school (he dad REALLY wanted him to finish a bachelor’s degree). Eventually, he upped his hours at his job, learned all there was to do at the factory, and is now operations manager (his youngest sister was mightily pissed to realize that he out-earned her by almost twice, although she had a master, and he had never completed his AA).
Youngest majored in sociology AND psychology! She did eventually return for a master’s in teaching, while picking up the credits needed to be a middle school science teacher. That job does allow her time to be with her family, not a small perk.
The main thing is sit them down, use the university of their choice to determined the beginning salary, and middle of career salary for their major. Then look at the numbers – how long will it take to complete their education, what will be the cost of paying the loans back, and how many years will it take to do so?
If you point out that she CANNOT afford to START her family until 40-something (a VERY expensive proposition), it MIGHT have some impact.
Probably not.
Women are very tied to what OTHER women say about their career. They seem to need that social approval to function.
Not me, of course, but, then, I’ve always been an oddball.
My grandmother – who was the only person resembling a functional parent I had when growing up – basically told me that I was going to Kansas University or Missouri University – places she could keep her eye on me – or go out on my own. Otherwise, she’d pick up the cost of tuition, room, and board – and books – and $100 per month for incidentals. My cousins all went to Ivy League schools, they had functioning parents. One of them flunked out after two years at Brown, ended up working in a hospital storeroom, one went for an MRS degree and got it, later ending up as a secretary in a law firm – not even a paralegal, another ended up stringing bead necklaces in Iowa, no degree, another ended up as a “house husband” with a BFA in guitar, from Brown – his wife wrote romance novels and made a ton of money doing it, and one got an MA in Education from Columbia and wound up teaching mentally retarded kindergartners. I ended up with a BSc in Chemistry and could have come out, if I’d stayed another semester, with a BSc in both Computer Science and Biochemistry – but I had a full ride graduate fellowship at Emory University – and then wound up doing my PhD in physical/organic chemistry at the University of Florida, where I was also part of the Quantum Theory Project – full ride there, too, including a pretty good stipend – then a couple of post-docs – then a law degree which I paid for (as did two other PhD people I knew from UF, one in my research group). So the state school ended up being the better deal. My grandmother was pretty strict with me, not so with my cousins, and the end result… could have easily been predicted.
If she wants to go and get a worthless degree, I’d tell her she’s on her own. You probably also don’t have the clout my grandmother had, she could be pretty fearsome if she wanted to be – and she had some very interesting connections.
It appears that we haven’t met…
🙂