Pulled this quote off the Internet:
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So true!
Something to note, the people I know who have done well in their careers majored in all sorts of things. They pounded the payment, networked, volunteered, interned, etc. People shouldn’t just rest on their laurels and assume the perfect, high paying job will drop into their lap. And there is more to life then a high-paying job. I care more about my kids being happy. I care about my kids being kind and selfless. That matters much more then making a ton of money. Plus, not everyone has the ability to be a doctor or engineer or the interest.
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@gwnorth
Your argument about forgoing full time salary to earn a grad degree could also be said about undergraduate degrees. But these degrees are often necessary to obtain certain levels of jobs. So, in my view, those years of education are worth it.
Even in my own case, my M.Ed. from Harvard (which only took one year), first enabled me to get a higher salary as a teacher, but eventually enabled me to be a consultant to schools, an adjunct faculty at five colleges and now an independent college counselor. Without that graduate degree, I would not have these jobs.
You ask what kind of a career requires 3 Masters degrees. First, I am not going to divulge my DIL’s job. I never said her job requires 3 Master’s degrees. Her second Master’s Degree (the one at Harvard) was earned on her way to her Doctorate degree. She was being primed to become an academic/professor and decided she did not want to do that, and so left the PhD program. The third Master’s degree (done while working full time and paid for by her current job) is in order to add a specialty that her job would require her to have in order to move up to a higher level position.
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Why do people make the assumption that jobs that pay well are always something someone doesn’t want to do? Or that jobs that pay poorly are improving society in some way?
There are lots of job that fill both buckets. And many people make up their own jobs.
I want kids who have jobs that pay enough that they can live and find happiness. Kindness is a given but has nothing to do with jobs.
I’d never make the assumption that the humanities kid needs to bartend either. Many CEO’s I’ve worked with have odd degrees. Classics comes up a lot, so do archaeology, philosophy and many other things. Big thinkers often command high salaries and are in management.
And I know only a handful of people who work in the same field they studied in as undergrads. Exceptions being in the medical fields and some other pre-professional worlds.
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Incidentally there are some high paying jobs in quant finance that don’t seem to require you to have finished your undergrad, as long as you intern with them and they assess you over that period and find you qualified. I have heard of people that then quit their undergrad at the end of junior year and join the firm directly.
In the old days even tech was like that. Not sure if they insist on graduating now. In fact I heard that “dropped out” from “name brand school” is a valuable credential to raise VC money in some circumstances even now.
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A doctorate in a performing art like music (Including composition) actually provides some shelter in a country that does not fund the arts very well. The university provides an often meager stipend, but free tuition and health insurance, performance venue, production team, other musicians, collaborators in other fields and mentorship. Plus payment for TA’ing and, in my kid’s case, (higher) salary for two and a half years of actual teaching, including curriculum development. It is hard to do creative work on top of a full time job, and often a full-time job or many p/t ones are needed to live. So the 5-7 years in a doctoral program, though they represent lost income, provide a sort of laboratory environment for artistic growth. After that, reality…tenure track is elusive but there are many other jobs. Getting the degree is, in some ways, the end of paradise!
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I have to laugh. If you go to a top school and do well in philosophy, you won’t end up bartending.
From the U of North Carolina philosophy department website:
The Wall Street Journal list, “Degrees that Pay You Back,” shows that philosophy majors have the highest increase in yearly earnings from starting median salary to mid-career salary at 103.5 percent. Philosophy is the top earning humanities major, ranking above chemistry, accounting, and business management for midcareer earning potential.
See WSJ.com for full list.
Lots of philosophy majors end up going to law school. Pay scale in the WSJ is for those who don’t have advanced degrees.
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I think I have a story that is close to the opposite of what is discussed here. When my older son was deciding what to major in, he chose Computer Science. I didn’t think that’s a good idea, because I don’t think he has the temperament of a good programmer. Of course, I didn’t discourage him, although I thought that another major, even lower paying one would fit him better.
Four years later he graduated and got close to the proverbial $150K initial compensation. So I guess he became a decent programmer (I personally wouldn’t hire him, he is lacking skills in too many areas), but I still think the major wasn’t a good fit for him. It looks that he is realizing it too, and only about 30% of his hobbies are related to programming.
So, sometimes kids seek degrees that are better pay and not good fit even when we parents don’t suggest it. 
The younger one, on the other hand, has temperament that would fit better with computer programming, but chose a major that would require Ph.D. to do anything in the field. My only suggestion was to keep his programming skills in shape (he is much better programmer than he realizes), because you can’t avoid programming in any science these days.
Oh boy. Am I the exception here? Do most people spend their free time doing things related to what they do on the job? Legitimate question.
After spending the day at my technical job, I want to go to the opera! 
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Curious how much coding actually happens in the industry. Would appreciate if you could shed some light.
I am not in the industry. So I asked my son who did a summer in the industry.
He said xyz, who is 15-20 years in the industry, in a senior position (Distinguished Engg at a big firm) had committed less than 1000 lines of code the prior year.
Less senior people (3-5 years in) have modestly more lines committed. Maybe 2000.
He said a lot of work is just re thinking large pieces of code, cutting stuff out, streamlining, maintainability etc.
In this scheme of things, I am curious what you mean by “better programmer” or “temperment of a good programmer”
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When you like what you are doing, you are doing it for fun, not for money.
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gmnorth, That is a tough one, because graduating from college is a natural breaking point. There are specific situations where it makes sense to live with parents after college for a short time; a job or graduate degree may not start for a couple months; the graduate may have a job where they travel constantly and they are never home anyway (this was my wife’s situation when she travelled internationally as an auditor); or to help them meet a short term financial goal like saving for a down payment on a home. All these situations, however, are predicated on them furthering their career or improving their financial situation.
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Lots of people have hobbies that are completely not related to their job. Sports and performing arts are examples. One does not have to do job-related hobbies all the time when not on the job.
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Whew! 
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This is my D’s situation. She sees no reason to get her own place though she’ll be making 6 figures since she’ll be traveling most of the time for work. So she’ll live at home for 2-3 years and save most of her income. I’m not charging her rent.
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Regarding the discussion of which majors are associated with higher/lower earnings. I looked up tax-reported earnings by major in the CollegeScorecard database for ~70 of the most selective colleges in the US, including a good mix of publics, privates, and LACs.
I’d expect the CollegeScorecard numbers below to lean on the low side for a variety of reasons including only counting kids in the federal database (mostly kids who received loans/grants), including kids who only worked part-time or only for a small portion of year, some forms of compensation not being reported on taxes, being ~1(?) years not inflation adjusted, etc. Groups that are excluded include kids who were enrolled in school for a non-zero portion of year, kids who received a degree higher than bachelor’s post grad, kids who were not employed at any point during year, kids who did not fill out taxes, and kids who died. I only reported majors for which there was a good sized sample of kids at a good number of the ~70 colleges.
The higher earnings were mostly vocationally focused – CS, engineering, nursing, etc. Business and math related degrees also tended to be on the higher end. Humanities, performance, and life science degrees tended to be on the lower end.
Median Earnings by Major at ~70 Selective Colleges: College Scorecard
- Computer Science – 1st year = $95k, 2nd year = $97k
- Computer Engineering – 1st year = $88k, 2nd year = $85k
- Electrical Engineering – 1st year = $78k, 2nd year = $79k
- Industrial Engineering – 1st year = $72k, 2nd year = $73k
- Nursing – 1st year = $69k, 2nd year = $74k
- Mechanical Engineering – 1st year = $69k, 2nd year = $70k
- Aerospace Engineering – 1st year = $69k, 2nd year = $69k
- Chemical Engineering – 1st year = $68k, 2nd year = $71k
- Applied Math – 1st year = $68k, 2nd year = $64k
- Finance – 1st year = $67k, 2nd year = $70k
- Civil Engineering – 1st year = $67k, 2nd year = $67k
- Economics – 1st year = $63k, 2nd year = $64k
- Statistics – 1st year = $61k, 2nd year = $68k
- Business/Management – 1st year = $60k, 2nd year = $61k
- Biomedical Engineering – 1st year = $58k, 2nd year = $65k
- Mathematics – 1st year = $57k, 2nd year = $61k
- Marketing – 1st year = $55k, 2nd year = $56k
- Architecture – 1st year = $51k, 2nd year = $51k
- International Relations – 1st year = $44k, 2nd year = $45k
- Political Science – 1st year = $43k, 2nd year = $44k
- Physics – 1st year = $41k, 2nd year = $47k
- Communication – 1st year = $41k, 2nd year = $42k
- Sociology – 1st year = $36k, 2nd year = $38k
- History – 1st year = $36k, 2nd year = $37k
- Chemistry – 1st year = $35k, 2nd year = $37k
- Psychology – 1st year = $35k, 2nd year = $34k
- Romance Languages – 1st year = $33k, 2nd year = $37k
- Area Studies – 1st year = $33k, 2nd year = $35k
- English – 1st year = $33k, 2nd year = $34k
- Natural Resource Conservation – 1st year = $32k, 2nd year = $35k
- Ethic/Gender Studies – 1st year = $32k, 2nd year = $32k
- Biochemistry – 1st year = $32k, 2nd year = $31k
- Neuroscience – 1st year = $31k, 2nd year = $31k
- Philosophy – 1st year = $31k, 2nd year = $30k
- Biology – 1st year = $30k, 2nd year = $30k
- Linguistics – 1st year = $29k, 2nd year = $31k
- Anthropology – 1st year = $28k, 2nd year = $27k
- Fine and Studio Arts – 1st year = $27k, 2nd year = $31k
- Drama/ Theater – 1st year = $25k, 2nd year = $26k
- Music – 1st year = $24k, 2nd year = $25k
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Ok, let me say it differently. He is talking about the time when he will be financially independent without working and from the things he is planning to do, very few are related to computers.
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I don’t have recent experience from the industry, I am in the research field. From my (already foggy) memory from more than 15 years ago, there was more coding involved than that.
A friend was comparing the programming jobs to the plumbers’. You get the components, you assemble the components, the data flows. Maybe he is right for most of the jobs out there.
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