I know parents in my town who continue to support their young adult children (teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, hospitality workers, etc) so that they can continue to live the lifestyle that they grew up in. These “kids” live in very expensive apartments, eat out multiple times per week, etc. I know this true because they tell me, and they don’t seem to mind. Some of them view it as a mark of their own success.
To each his own. I can’t afford to do that, and after working for 35 years I do not make anything close to $150,000 a year. If I had my own practice perhaps my salary would be higher (?), but I do not. It’s fine- I have steady employment, good benefits, and an acceptable work/life balance.
My kids never obsessed about making a lot of money. I am not accusing, and there is nothing wrong with it…it’s just not who we are. We guided our kids to do what was of interest to them, because they would be working for 40+ years at something (careers can change). There is no big money pot to support them. They knew they had to support themselves; we could help them if necessary but not support them. Yes I am lucky to be able to help a little….if necessary. Our goal is to retire.
Educators here can make $90,000 a year in their mid 20’s, if they do summers and take advantage of tutoring in their district, etc. it’s not a bad profession…if you like it. Teaching is hard these days- very hard.
My other one made close to $70,000 out of school with her BS in biology. I do not consider that to be a bad salary at the age of 22. She’s back at school now after working for 2-3 years (hated her job, loves the field and subject matter) and saved over $60,000 by living very frugally (emphasis on very). She is frugal by nature, which is fine.
Most 22 year olds do not make $150,000 a year. I guess some do.
As I’ve posted earlier, I support letting a grown-up kid make informed decisions about her/his own future.
However, I strongly disagree with the idea that students can somehow go on to grad schools to remedy whatever the shortcomings of their undergraduate education. The purpose of going to a grad school is to pursue a higher educational objective in some field, and a graduate education isn’t meant to remedy deficiencies in one’s undergraduate education, just as college education isn’t meant to remedy deficiencies in secondary education. One of the reasons college education is so expensive in this country is because of the resources needed for remedial efforts by many colleges. There’re frivolous “graduate” degrees just as there’re frivolous college “majors”. They both often saddle students with crippling debt. Fully funded graduate programs in STEM are, of course, not in that category, but they generally only admit students who are already well prepared for these disciplines.
Interesting thread! I have a hard time w/the above idea. Agree w/others who said that spending 40+ hours a week doing something merely so you can do something else (that you really want) in your remaining time is kind of a sad concept. Life is short!
Also not sure why random posts are blocked out. They don’t seem that different from other posts. JMO
My kid looked at grad schools in Canada, the UK and Europe for affordability, at the very few schools in the US that offered a funded stand alone master’s, and finally at schools that offered a funded master’s as part of a funded PhD, and chose the latter. She only applied to two schools, both of which met her financial criteria, and both of which also offered considerable teaching experience. There are ways to do grad school without debt, but the program also has to fit your needs in other ways, including the focus of the faculty mentor(s).
Dissertation defense is today so we will see what jobs result after all these years of study! No regrets, happy years.
Work, for me, was a means to an end—retirement. I never wanted to work, hated it, and started planning for retirement from the day I started working. It couldn’t come soon enough. And, yes, that is sad and why we tried to encourage our son to find a happier way.
I had a very fulfilling job as volunteer coordinator at a large homeless shelter. I handled groups coming in with meals for 1,000 men daily, handled donations, fundraising, public education, newsletters, holidays, and spent time hanging with “guests.” One Christmas I stood on a chair and handed out wrapped presents to a line of more than a thousand men, some of whom cried at receiving a wrapped toothbrush. I knew most of them by name.
I think this is a good example of a job open to anyone with a BA in anything, that was very satisfying, if not very lucrative. People are discussing lifestyle priorities and evaluating the practicality of the arts, but service has not been mentioned. Non-profit work is possible for those majoring in the humanities and arts, business, health-related majors and probably other areas of study. I think service to community is a good goal as well, as long as we can pay rent or mortgage and have enough to live the way we want to.
Only a small % of Americans make over 200k. If that salary is not impressive for a new college graduate at Princeton, the school has a lot of work to do to get a more economically diverse student body.
For the kids we know at Princeton or that graduated, a 100k salary would be considered very impressive. They come from families with a household income of less than that.
Thank you for this post. I think that one of the reasons why I find a single-minded focus on high-paying careers so disheartening is that there are many important and fulfilling jobs that don’t pay a lot of money. Not everyone wants such a job, but they are needed and meaningful.
It is fine to think that the only “good” job is a high-paying career or that the only point of working is to fund your life outside of work. I just don’t like that some people seem to discount or even heap scorn on lower-paying careers that are important (actually crucial) in making communities function.
I get the concern about going into debt for a college experience, particularly if your education doesn’t lead to a self-supporting career. So I understand why many parents want to push their kids towards careers that will help pay the bills especially if those parents are struggling to make ends meet themselves. Among my highest priorities for my children is to find colleges that will allow them to graduate debt free, and of course I want them to be able to support themselves. My kids are still young, but my current high school senior focused almost exclusively on colleges and scholarships, which would allow her (and me) to avoid borrowing.
But it would be problematic if the only people working in the non-profit world are people who are independently wealthy --there needs to be a wide range of perspectives in such workplaces in order to serve their clients and communities well. For that matter, if all careers and research in the humanities and social sciences was conducted only by people who are already wealthy, I imagine that work/research/policy development would end up exhibiting quite a bit of bias. And while I am sure that there is wonderful art and literature that gets produced by people of generational wealth, I think that the arts world benefits enormously by having participants (and audiences) from many different SES backgrounds.
The point I was making is that the things that sound impressive inside the campus are non salary related if you notice the list. Every year some 15% or more of the campus is at 150k or more, and kids think that if they wanted a high salary they can get it. The only reason they don’t have a high salary is they picked a field such as policy work which don’t have as high salaries. So they don’t particularly give any credit to the kids that have high salaries. And that is totally fine. I am saying the kids are giving less credit to the salary than this forum seems to do here. The only reason I brought up the salary is to argue that 150k is not some rare salary for a kid to want. Some professions seem to allow those opportunities.
This has been a very enlightening thread to follow. The multitude of different perspectives are quite interesting. My husband and I chose a career where we followed our passion and sacrificed earning potential. We know the joys of enjoying your job but also what we have given up in financial security. Our kids have seen and experienced what it means to be low income and the challenges that come with that. They also understand what it means to be tied to a job and what a 90-100 hr work week without vacations actually looks like. All this is to say that sometimes following your dream is hard and not without great sacrifice.
The question of whether you suggest a child seek a degree that offers a better paying job is one that has been front and center in our thought processes as we help our children navigate college and career choices. I will be flat out honest, we have strongly discouraged our children from pursuing any degree in our field of work (agriculture) or even considering coming back to the farm. It was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do. That being said, if one of them was super passionate about being involved in animal agriculture we would have offered ideas, options, suggestions for college paths and employment. All of our discussions about college and careers have revolved around each child understanding who they are, where they think they ultimately want to end up (they all want to live some place rural) and basic concepts such as “do you want to work in an office or outside” “do you want to work in health care” “do you want to work with people or kids”, “what careers can you do in a rural area”, etc. Each of our children have different personalities that have led to different answers to these questions and ultimately looking at different possibilities for majors depending on what they want their final outcome to be. As a example, D23 has been looking at options, we toured Penn State’s food science program, which was amazing. I was blown away. It didn’t excite her. In the end it made her realize she didn’t want to work in a lab and that she likes working with people and helping people. She’s leaning towards PT. It meets her criteria and is something she can do just about anywhere.
I think it’s more important for us as parents to help our children sort out many of these intangibles and to help guide them than it is to focus on super high paying jobs. For my kids we want them to be able to support themselves, have a decent work/life balance, have a career that might allow them to work part time while having children and live where they want. We spent a lot of time talking about different majors and what job prospects are for each. I admit I’m in the camp where I prefer my kids have a solid idea of a direction they want to follow before they enter college. We don’t have the luxury of offering them 4 years of free college for them to figure it out. We are trying to limit the loans they need. Most low income parents are in our situation and feel the same. I think that is something that gets missed on forums such as this. The people we know do not have the luxury of having huge college saving accounts. They are all just trying to survive and help their kids have a better life.
Everything you say is true for some and not for others. We can encourage our kids look for their optimum balance of happiness because we have the privilege of doing so.
For my parents (and I suspect others), they felt grateful to be pursuing jobs that their college educations had provided them . They deliberately picked professions that gave them a good living and provided them with means to support extended families. They were not forced to do so, but I know they derived enormous satisfaction from this.
All this boils down to me to something unanswerable for the collective - what happiness means for anyone.
If everyone chases after a few high paying jobs after college and becomes “successful”, these jobs, at least for many, won’t remain high paying. The most skilled in those jobs will, of course, still be well compensated, but they’re likely the ones who are self-motivated and naturally talented in those fields.
Don’t tell my D. She received a full tuition merit award to get her MBA from a program rated in the top 25. The job she gave up to go to school full time did not pay nearly 6 figures and the grad program was in a much less expensive city. SIL easily found a good job in the new location and she had a great job waiting when she graduated. They are much better off than they were before even taking in account of her not working for 2 years.
Here’s a heartening anecdote…good friend’s D was a solid but not excellent student in high school, finding the classes boring and uninspiring. Went to a fine university often poo-pooed by students on this forum, took a class very early in her college career and found her passion as a social justice warrior. Finished school with one of those “impractical” majors and currently works for a non-profit serving victims of domestic violence.
She did relocate from the expensive state she grew up in, lives in an apartment with roommates and won’t be buying a house anytime soon. Probably will never match the very well off (but not ostentatious) lifestyle she grew up in. But she’s happy, fulfilled, self-supporting and contributing to society.
Yes, a few people do get free rides to graduate business school. 95% of students do not. While I am glad your daughter was among the fortunate few, that does not change the general proposition that pursuing some types of grad education can be costly and not necessarily worthwhile for many.
I realize her experience is anecdotal, however her salary now is 3X what she made in her pre MBA job. So even if she had had to pay the tuition, she is still very much ahead financially.
That is great, but seems to refute the theme of many posters of “study whatever you want”. Presumably, your daughter did not suddenly develop of love of studying accounting and finance, but did so for the salary bump it would give her, which is fine. Some make that decision as a 19 year old college sophomore deciding on a major; others as a 25 year old potential MBA applicant
I dropped out of HBS at 31 when I realized what that MBA was really costing. As someone posted upthread, you have to figure in two years of foregone earnings plus the delta between what you were making going in to the program and what you were likely to make coming out. For me, the breakeven was likely to be about ten years. Nah. I left quickly and never looked back.
Our son just started a master’s program in CS at GT compliments of the Army. We would have been happy to pay for that (any major) but, again, the government is seeing to his education so no financial debt there, just time.
I posted here that he was awarded a commendation medal for a solution he developed that the government contractor they were working with said couldn’t be done. Three months later, Lockheed-Martin came after him with an offer north of $150K plus a buyout of his Army contract. He declined as he feels bound to his commitment and wants to finish his master’s. There has been 100% attrition of Cyber officers (a real problem for the Army) who have all been lured away after their commitments by very high civilian or military contractor offers, some as high as $300K.
