<p>Is what your child wants to do related to your family's expectations, idea of success or current occupation? Will you consider college to be an area of experimentation and trying on different hats? Will you demand an accounting of the types of courses your kid takes, being very value conscious and concerned that each choice lead to the most market competitive outcome in the post-college job search? If your kid has already decided a general direction, how much research was done in the outlook for the potential career (out-sourcing, ultra-competitive, many or few job openings...)</p>
<p>My son is gravitating toward engineering. His dad was an MSEE but with very broad rather than narrowly focussed courses (took extra). I haven't heard son talk about anything else as a career direction other than talking about math careers within finance so maybe what his Dad does is influencing him. Still, he enjoys that kind of thinking and it seems a natural, uncontrived direction for him to go.
Me, I have 9 full years of college all over the map and never had a solid career direction until the last 4 and then the market interfered. I feel lucky that we don't have to rely on me financially. I could not have forseen the problems for my career, but it was too specialized.</p>
<p>We believe in a broad base of knowlege and that college is a time of discovery. We plan to butt out for the most part and let it be his journey. He can choose where he wants to go and change his mind if he desires. We have looked at engineering generally and I would say we are concerned about outsourcing for some categories. In our geographical region, most engineering jobs seem to require a security clearance--not great for new graduates i would think. We would have liked to get him involved in more external activities related to physics, but most of them are quite far from our rural location and limit participants. Guidance counselors at his school often don't get or distribute the notices about activities until late in the game.</p>
<p>My daughters career focus is driven by interest and experience. She is attending a college that requires quite a few courses in non connected areas as well as a year long full time + class studying the classics.
She has spent every summer since she was in middle school working with kids, and since high school teaching in science programs. She is majoring in biology but planning to become a science teacher. She is also interested in biotech research, but teaching will give her flexibility to do other work as well. She has finished her junior year, and she only recently decided that she was seriously interested in teaching science, she had resisted it as a career choice.
I don't think that we steered her in anyway, although she was very interested in art school, but we had many discussions about that, and she decided that it for her, she was content to do art on the side, and that would be easier than being an "artist" and doing science on the side!</p>
<p>When my son went off to college, the only general expectation we had is that he'd get an excellent liberal arts education. Although he was then leaning toward social sciences, and possibly toward law or journalism as a career or toward academia (my career), we urged him to "give science a chance" since he had very strong capabilities across a very broad range of areas. At the same time, we told him that other than academic careers we couldn't provide him a lot of advice or guidance. He ended up concentrating in economics, while also building his strong math, analytic, and writing skills. While we couldn't predict the particular turn that his career has taken since he graduated 4 years ago, he's going into areas in the private economy that combine his skills and interests (after an interim job in a large consulting firm), and so far at least he's being quite successful at it and he's financially independent (making more money than I am this year). So we're happy. Where this 26 year old will be in 5 years?</p>
<p>I truly believe in the liberal arts education as a valid foundation for most careers professional, business, public service. Learning to reason, to articulate, to analyze, to question are skills that will serve you well in whatever career you end up in. My career path was entirely random. Im satisfied with where I ended up on the happiness and financial scale with my history of art/English degree, and therefore Im not much worried about my sons ability to eventually become a self-supporting member of society with a similarly arcane education. (Hes actually more anxious about what hell be when he grows up than I am.) My advice to him is to challenge himself and to take classes in areas that he knows nothing about. I assume that his career goals will undergo many metamorphoses between now and completion of graduate school. I believe that education is as Three<em>to</em>Go says a journey, a pilgrimage, that I hope he will continue all his life.</p>
<p>My only advice...check that, when have I ever had <em>only</em> advice...to my D was to try lots of things. She not unreasonably points out that if she did all the things I suggested might be interesting she would spend eight years at Smith as an undergrad. But on her own power, she was mulling over a double major from among a choice of Government, Math, and Classics, finally settling on the first two but not before taking a year-course in Latin.</p>
<p>I like the breadth of outlook and skills implicit in a broad education.</p>
<p>I believe the beauty in a liberal arts education (and also in distribution requirements similar to Wesleyan's) is that students are exposed to a wide enough range of subjects that they can make the decision on their own. This is different from high school in that the students are not forced to do anything, they choose a course that fulfills a requirement but also intrigues them.</p>
<p>I think that this set up has probably turned many on to a subject or field that would have otherwise ignored.</p>