Let’s not forget the trend towards marrying later. It’s a lot easier for a single person to go back to their parents’ home after college.
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I am with @blossom, @ChoatieMom, and @Creekland. Following one’s dream is only an issue if one’s dream is some unrealistic fantasy, like being a world famous artist by working in a loft in NYC and painting all day.
For some reason, people think that “dream” only means “I want to be a world famous rockstar”, “I want to be a Hollywood action star”. or something like that.
Many many more kids dream of being truckers, nurses, farmers, teachers, engineering, lab techs, etc than dream of being an artist and living in a loft in NYC. Even more have dreams of having a job which is OK, but have a great family life.
The vast majority of people have very achievable dreams, providing they plan and work hard. My kid’s dream is to be a professor. So she works hard in classes, makes connections in academia, searches out internships in academic labs, and otherwise gets research experience, explores different PhD programs, etc. Her best friend from childhood has the dream to be a forensic scientist. So she explored the best programs, found the one which has the balance of cost and job placemen, and is working hard at her classes and making connections.
This puritan idea that the default is that a person’s job is distasteful, that family life is a burden, and that “being an adult” means accepting this, is such a USA thing. This attitude means that kids are discouraged from becoming enthusiastic or excited about their future careers, or, worst, discouraged from pursuing anything about which they feel excitement or enthusiasm.
That’s mostly compared to the 1950s, during which the average age at marriage was around 22 for men and 20 for women, or 0-4 years after college/high school (most finished 2-4 years of high school, but few men and fewer women attended college). Now its 29 and 27, or about 5-11 years out of college/high school. However, in 1900 the ages were 26 and 22, which was 8-12 years after school (a very small number attended college, and most had no more than 0-2 years of high school).
So moving out of home (and getting married) immediately after finishing school is really a transient phenomenon in the USA. It is something which started in the 1950s and ended in the 1990s. It was a mix of longer schooling, the youth revolution pushing earlier independence, and an economic boom allowing the achievement of quick economic independence once a person is in the job market, and finally, holdover beliefs in the importance of marriage pushing kids to leave home to get married. So kids were in school for a longer time, but once they graduated, they could get jobs which could support their independence, and which meant that they would get married and leave home.
These days it takes just as long to achieve economic independence after finishing school as it did in 1900, so, like then, kids often stay with their parents for a while after school. The main difference is that marriage is not the major driver for gaining economic independence and most importantly, for leaving home.
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Javelin Catcher ?
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Thanks for all the posts. Agree that education and career are not always linked.
One simple way to think about the original question is to pose the following question:
If I can be one of the 1000-10,000 best … in the US/world, can I make a living at it?
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Another poster mentioned “law” as an elite-or-bust career. I disagree.
There are many paths to a successful career in law. Only those with substantial student loan debt “need” to work for an elite biglaw firm for several years in order to pay off their debt.
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I love your post.
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Wouldn’t needing an “insane work ethic” (as opposed to an average or above average work ethic) to success in a career direction indicate that the career direction is elite-or-bust?
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However, if living where one’s parents live is necessary for some reason, that can prevent someone from moving to where the jobs for their career direction are. I’m sure @blossom has some anecdotes about people who cannot find a job in ____ because they refuse to move from their home town where the jobs in ____ are not present to some other place where jobs in ____ are plentiful.
Of course, WWII made a difference – lots of people moved because (a) they entered military service, or (b) they moved to where jobs were plentiful (jobs were certainly a motivator after years of high unemployment).
If you (or your parents) do not have enough money up front to keep educational debt to manageable levels, then education becomes inaccessible for money reasons. Even for those who do find education in the affordable range, those looking at educational debt are more likely to feel pressured by the debt to consider the financial ROI of the major/degree in order to be able to pay off the debt in a reasonable amount of time.
The much greater up front cost of college compared to a generation ago has a lot to do with it.
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My chosen career (in corporate HR) is not elite or bust. There are plenty of not so smart/not that ambitious people who still cash a paycheck in this field.
BUT- I’ve worked for some of the top companies in their industries, the ones on the “most admired companies in America/most desired jobs” lists-- and my colleagues have been REALLY smart and REALLY ambitious. Yes- you can get a job as a benefits analyst at a random company and if you don’t mess up you’ll likely get promoted to manager, then director after 15 years.
But with everything- there are trade-offs. My field is hardly elite or bust, but working for the top companies is a heck of a lot more interesting (and pays a lot better, and has you work with REALLY fantastic and interesting people) than just putting in your time until you retire or die.
Re: the comment about “insane work ethic”- gosh, why does that imply elite or bust? The nurse practitioner who lives across the street from me has an insane work ethic. Her field is hardly elite or bust- you can graduate from one of the top programs (as she did) or you can get your degree from anywhere-- you can still get a job. But she’s had professional opportunities (presenting at conferences, is considered a thought-leader in her specialty, has collaborated with researchers doing cutting edge work)- that a random NP clocking in and clocking out every day is not going to get.
Even in a non “elite or bust” field- there are better opportunities (in my observation) for the go-getters, the insane work ethic folks, the ones who answer emails from a colleague on a Sunday night. That doesn’t make your field elite or bust (there are thousands of NP’s who do not respond to emails when they are not on the clock, including those in the practice I use…) but what’s wrong with a field where those whose dedication and work ethic distinguish them???
I think kids graduating today into a shaky job market need to confront reality- if they DON’T have an extreme work ethic- great- but that requires some trade-offs professionally. And yes- if you don’t want to move or relocate- ever- that’s going to limit you professionally. Even Tom Brady- arguably a guy doing pretty well professionally- decided to move. My point is that none of what we’re talking about means that Mom and Dad have money, or that you have “connections”. It’s an easy out to say that your kid can’t pursue his/her dream because you can’t bankroll his art gallery or her career as a poet.
That was the argument I was responding to- and I’m pointing out that pursuing your dream requires reality plus work ethic plus some flexibility- maybe starting out in Dayton, OH as a newscaster and not Washington, DC. Maybe developing multi-media presentations on the communications team at a pharma company and not making feature films with a multi- year contract at Netflix. Even kids whose parents don’t have money can translate the dream of being on camera, or working in film.
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However another trend that Covid has accelerated is the increased ability to work remotely. Some may find as a result less of a need to relocate geographically for work.
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The difference, @choatiemom, is that all that wonderful “life of the mind” intellectual engagement is now available for free, or at very little cost. The best universities have put hundreds of their courses online, and there are discussion groups and chat rooms on every conceivable topic freely available to delve into. So the ROI of a $320k degree becomes more relevant when much of the content can be obtained for free.
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Wow! I definitely needed to read this. Your thoughts/feelings are so different from what I constantly hear around me from most parents. I’m having some anxiety as my D gets ready to head back for her last semester at her LAC as an English major. She has had so many interesting English, creative writing, and women’s studies courses, but of course everyone wants to know what she will do after graduation. As do I! Especially during this strange time, when most of her peers were not able to have internships last summer and are worried about the job market. However, your eloquent words helped ease my fears a bit. Despite my anxiety about supporting her through college with no help from her dad, and the stress of driving her 15 hours away to a college she and I had never seen until move in day, I know she has experienced a wonderful life changing gift that will continue to be meaningful to her throughout her life.
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To me, a career path that’s elite or bust doesn’t mean there won’t be decent jobs for those without connetions, or insane work ethics, or super smarts, or some other special attribute. All it means is that these jobs are getting fewer and fewer. Such career paths are almost everywhere. And the trend is accelerating almost everywhere.
For some, a college education could be a launching pad for an elite career, but for more and more students, that isn’t the case. Some of them are even worse off because they graduate with significant amount of debt.
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Thank you.
@elena13 kids with English majors from LACs go places. Seriously, the corporate world loves English majors, and liberal arts colleges excel at teaching how to write. English majors also do very well in sales, in law schools, in management (if their talents lie in those directions), as well as many other fields.
English is one of the most versatile majors out there.
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I’m not sure the what the posts about living one’s dream has to do with elite-or-bust fields, but I actually think living one’s dream need not be so rare. I think a person is living his/her dream when he/she gets up in the morning excited about doing what he/she is going to do that day.
Most people do not know the work that they would ultimately find fulfilling. I think a person can follow a path that plays to his/her intellectual and interpersonal strengths to find problems that he/she is very good to uniquely good at handling/solving. When that work is in an area that the person also finds meaningful, then he/she can probably carve out a path that is living’s his/her dream.
But, most people do not know what their dream career path/calling is. In a rapidly changing world, it is hard to predict what fields will develop even five years out. My two primary jobs have been in fields that didn’t exist when I was an undergraduate. In fact, kids who think they know what they want to do may well just not have had broad enough exposure. For example, kids who want to be doctors because their parents and grandparents are doctors probably do not know if that is the most fulfilling choice for them. And, there are the trust fund types that I think an earlier poster was referring to. We have friends two of whose kids went to a social justice warrior academy LAC (excellent school by the way). They are aggressively anti-capitalist (while living on money that dad earned while being a senior corporate exec). One wants to carve out a career eliminating prisons (but can’t find anyone to pay for that while she lives in an apartment in NY). The other spent two years living in an urban park and dumpster diving for food because he was privileged and didn’t want to lead a conventional life (?) – I could never get a clear explanation of his rationale. He was an English major and excellent writer (sorry @MWolf). My wife suggested that he keep notes and write a book about the urban version of Thoreau at Walden. Wasn’t interested. Now has a job doing web development, but not really living up to his (pretty high) intellectual potential. Their third kid wants to be a fine artist. They each want to live their dream (and maybe a naive dream, because it is formed without real experience with the world) without creating a way to do it.
I have talked long and hard with my kids about striving for work that feels meaningful to them, is exciting to do, and is financially rewarding enough. By “enough,” I mean that they have to create a lifestyle in which expenditures are less than income. They have picked very different paths. But, both are on the way, in very different ways that match who they are, to living their dreams.
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Of course, the person has some control of expenditures – lower expenditures mean that a wider range of incomes, and therefore a wider range of jobs and careers, becomes suitable. Someone whose expenditures are $20k per year may find many suitable jobs and careers, while someone whose expenditures are $200k per year may be very limited in what can be suitable (of course, such jobs and careers are hard to get as well).
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His English degree was versatile enough that he could even do that. I mean, let’s see how many engineers are able to use their degree to live in the park and dumpster dive, right? Put a business major there and they wouldn’t survive a week like that.
Let’s hear for English majors!
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If one loves what s/he does, regardless of her/his major, s/he likely would be more willing to sacrifice some material comforts.