@PurpleTitan wrote
Yet, it is your contention that they would rather their sons or daughters go into plumbing than graduate from Bowdoin with a philosophy degree. That doesn’t strike me as a decision any First Gen family I know would make, if given the choice.
@TheGreyKing what if your son decides in the next year he wants to be an engineer or a nurse and wants a preproffesional degree?
I 
@TheGreyKing! We’ve told my son from the time he started kindergarten that one of the best things that can come from an education is that “your head will be a more interesting place to be”. I appreciate that with the cost of college being what it is that it would indeed be a luxury to expect that if it were nothing more than 4 years of intellectual entertainment, that’d be fine. But for many, a good education in any field allows engagement, curiosity, and a life of learning. That serves the new grad well on the job and those who have left the workforce with an enthusiasm for the preset.
Most first gen families wouldn’t want either of those scenarios @circuitrider, however there’s nothing wrong with going to a trade school. Societies need skilled tradesmen and college isn’t for everyone. That said, if a first gen family is sending a child to college (at least where I’m from) and they’re paying for it it’s highly unlikely they would send them to an east coast LAC for philosophy when there are plenty of good affordable public schools here. My siblings and I are first gen and we graduated from CA public universities with business and liberal arts degrees. One of my siblings went straight into the military from HS. He is now a skilled tradesman. My BIL worked his way up construction and is now making way more money than I am and I have a graduate degree. I know money doesn’t necessarily mean success but when you come from no money and parents who are immigrants chasing the American dream, you learn to value money differently. My parents paid for all of our college without incurring debt and we all worked part time to help with costs. Now that I’m a parent with one in college and another a rising junior, our thought process behind college selection and major is based on finances first with the goal of no debt for college. I cannot stress to kids who are on CC that debt from college is not good! I have nephews one and three years out of a big ten uni with debt and they regret it, even though they have great jobs. My sister and her hubby are paying for it too and will be into their retirement years!! A big mistake and she’s regretted giving in to her sons’ insistence to have the college experience they wanted! So OP if you’re weighing which types of college are better than others, imo first and foremost it’s best to choose the one that won’t leave you and your parents in debt for years. And if your parents can full pay a $60-70k a year education (I’m assuming it’s all from savings) then you’re very fortunate.
Not to be overlooked should be the field-specific training of liberal arts colleges. Chem majors graduate as junior chemists; geoscience majors graduate as junior geologists; literature majors graduate as junior writers/editors, etc.
Being First Generation isn’t a determinate of the outcome being sought - business, STEM, and the social sciences amongst others are paths for everyone who chooses college as the next step in their life process.
While communication is important in any job, English professors are some of the worst people to teach it. Writing poetry has about zero in common with technical writing beyond basic spelling. A liberal arts professor who has spent their entire life in school or academia isn’t going to be acquainted with the style expected out of a business memo, e-mail, or executive summary.
Misrepresenting others and setting up strawmen. We’re those the critical thinking skills that a liberal arts education gave you, @circuitrider?
I did say that those who do not come from money often choose to study something that gives them practical and renumerative skills. Vocational skills, if you will (as many liberal arts proponents would call engineering, finance, and accounting). Somehow, you thought that I was speaking about plumbing instead. Did you truly think that? Or were you misrepresenting in bad faith?
In any case, actually, yes, while not all, some families who are from lower SES would indeed value learning a trade more than a philosophy degree from Bowdoin. You say that you find that hard to believe, but how many low-SES kids who didn’t go to college do you know well? If the only people I know from low-SES backgrounds were those who went to college, naturally, I too would think that all of them would value a philosophy degree from Bowdoin more.
@CALSmom wrote
And, of course, the irony here (or, the point, really) is that your kids are no longer first gens. Your parents could easily have sent you to Bowdoin (had they sufficient information upon which to make a decision) with very little debt in the 1970s. Doesn’t sound like you could pull off the same stunt.
^^@purpletitan - I think the lesson here is 1) Try to be specific (the term, “marketable skill” covers everything from plumbing to pursuing an ABET approved engineering degree) and 2) Don’t generalize. 
@TheGreyKing – Some thoughts:
1 – Congratulations on saving the fund for college. The vast majority of Americans do not have this luxury. Roughly 70 percent of college grads have debt, and the average debt load for a 2016 graduate is more than $36,000 (Source: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/slideshows/10-student-loan-facts-college-grads-need-to-know). To make that sort of financial decision without being informed on how to pay it pack is foolish, and unfortunately most students and parents have only a vague idea of how the job market works.
2 – When your children are making a college decision, it is not just a four choice, but a forty-year choice that will impact the trajectory of their adult lives, and those of their children. One may try to maximize the “life of the mind” in that four-year period in college, but at the expense of a long-term happiness.
One of the advantages of CC is that one can learn the from the experiences of other parents in making educational decisions for your children. You stated that you are an educator who migrated to administration. If you are like other educators, you worked for a local school district or private school with a fairly set income scale based on seniority, academic specialization and support for extracurricular activities. Some educators jumped to the administrative side, but most retired after vesting into whatever retirement system offered by the employer, with some post retirement income from working as an administrator or teacher in another district. It is an ordered career path with little deviation in financial rewards for highly proficient or incompetent teachers. Given your background, it is evident how you generated your preference for your child’s college education.
I have worked my entire career in professional consulting which has an entirely different structure. The various firms I worked at had similar physical configurations. They would have a downtown office in a major city, and the central part of the floor had a large area of cubicles, with enclosed offices along the perimeter. Generally, the administrative and support staff were in the cubicles, with the professional staff who drove the firm’s revenues in the offices. This being the Midwest, both the professional staff and administrative staff generally went to the same kind of colleges; big state institutions.
What separated them was their area of study. The administrative staff pretty much all had degree’s that would score high on the “life of the mind” scale, i.e. English, Foreign Language, art and history majors. One HR manager liked actors, so he would go out of his way to hire BFAs. The professionals would score high in your “trade school” category; many accountants and finance majors, some engineers with MBA’s, and a few actuaries, building construction or architects whose careers lead them into consulting.
The difference in compensation was tremendous. Earlier in the thread, there was a link to an older Payscale report (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html) that reported compensation by major. The admins generally earned near the mid-career salary for liberal arts majors, while the consultants would earn near the 90th percentile for their majors, and, as you can imagine, this wage differential made a material impact on their happiness. In their 30’s, most of the professional staff were married and looking at move-up houses in UMC suburbs, while many of the administrative staff were single, renting in older parts of the city and still paying off student loans. Given this background, I hope you can understand by preference for the “trade school” majors.
3 – Colleges do not have a monopoly on the “life of the mind”. If anything, the traditional liberal arts majors are the easiest areas to be self-taught in. One does not need a college degree if you want to become a historian or fluent in another language, just read a lot of history books or live in a foreign culture for a few years. Many colleges offer their courses on-line for free. I have been happily listening to Yale’s liberal arts lectures for years now (https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses).
On the other hand, if you want to become a professional engineer, you need an engineering degree. If you want to become a CPA, you need an accounting degree. If you want to be an architect, you need an architecture degree. It is very difficult to be a self-taught physicist or mathematician. Since most people only have one shot at getting a bachelor’s degree, it seems a waste to major in something you have the rest of your life to study, or could be learned easier outside of college.
4 - I agree that the size of a bank account is not a measure of success. However, in my experience, it is much easier to be happy with a large bank account than a smaller one. Good luck with you and your child’s education.
One does not need a college degree to be a poet, artist or expert in Plato.
I think you might be focusing on the “Liberal Arts” in LAC and not the comparison of top LAC’s as they relate to top Universities. You can obviously major in many different fields at the vast majority of top LAC’s. They’re NOT mutually exclusive. You can major in engineering and still balance out your education with liberal arts and be better for it, don’t you think?
And for those kids who don’t know they like engineering/technical fields, the LAC’s arguably present more opportunity to find your calling and gravitate towards that focus.
@rwmannesq I understand the pull toward a LAC but I know a few kids who graduated from them with English degrees, sports management degrees (to name a few) and cannot find a job that pays well enough to pay rent, car, insurance plus their school loan payments. They have since moved home. I’m sure this isn’t an isolated example either. Just be sure that if your kid is going that route they are able to be independent when they graduate unless you don’t mind them living back at home. just my two cents
@rwmannesq - There are only 15 LAC’s with Engineering:
It’s generally very difficult to transfer into Engineering unless you start there, as the requirements get away from you pretty quickly if you don’t start freshman year. My daughter selected Swarthmore because of the LA options (just in case), but started (and will finish) as an Engineering major. Her double major / minor (TBD) will be art history, which is a complete surprise, and based on a couple of classes that she really enjoyed. The STEAM focus of her studies (STEM + arts) has lead to internships and potential post graduate work that I can’t imagine she would have arrived at elsewhere.
@CALSmom - The difficult issue to isolate is identifying the reasons for the struggle to find positions. Is it their degree/major? Is it the LAC? Is it the kids?
@CALSmom I would anticipate that it’s very difficult indeed to find decently paying jobs majoring in English or sports management. However, that’s not necessarily the LAC issue but instead the choice, motivation and desire of the student to utilize the opportunities fully (some of course will be perfectly happy and find economic satisfaction with these degrees.)
Put yourself in my situation: I have a son on the Spectrum who is never going to qualify for Ivy but might be interested in STEM programs. He doesn’t really have any issues in school and maintains very good grades, though he doesn’t have any AP’s or EC’s. So he’s looking at an entirely different college experience than are kids such as yours who are top students with a plan. He’s what I think of as a “normal” student. Doesn’t yet know what he wants to do but loves learning. There’s absolutely no reason to think that he won’t be successful or independent. So, like the vast majority of students out there, he’ll need to figure it out as he goes.
So, the question is whether LAC’s are equal to Universities. For someone like my son, and for the general good but not great student out there, LAC’s provide a very attractive and competitive package allowing our kids to grow into what they want to do with themselves. They get a broad base/exposure to core classes and hopefully find something that calls them. As with every walk of life, some will just coast and not take full advantage of the opportunities. But that will happen equally in “regular” universities. In other words, being in the Ivy’s or in a top STEM program does NOT equal success nor does it insure happiness (nor guarantee significant income, if that’s your measure.)
Conversely, the Regular Universities might be too structured and limiting (not to mention…let’s call it “competitive”) to allow these types of students to fully develop into what otherwise will likely be very strong professionals. The learning environment and style may not suit their skill sets.
I really haven’t heard a logical reason to conclude that LAC’s are lesser schools than “regular” Universities. You get out of it what you put into it. Considering how motivated we all here are as parents (as evidenced by our thoughtful and spirited discussions) I suspect most of our kids are going to be successful with whatever choices they/we make BECAUSE we are fully considering all issues. So long as we all make informed decisions we’ll minimize risk and increase odds of success for our children (however you choose to measure that.)
BTW, all of this is with the deepest respect. I appreciate and grow from the opinions you all share here.
@CALSmom, a Sports Management degree isn’t received from a liberals arts college - too many people confuse small no-name universities with a LAC. Also, unless one is attending a highly selective LAC (top-25, or at least top-50), a state university is probably a better bet.
@rwmannesq, while there aren’t any bad reasons for picking a LAC as compared to a university, students who attend highly selective LAC’s could just as easily attend a top university; my twin DD’s were accepted to both and decided that the LAC experience suited them both best - the top 20 universities and LAC’s are interchangeable as it relates to accepted student academic profiles.
Looking at those, too. Mostly too big though.