A lot of talk about FGLI’s here. Any FGLI’s here who can speak for themselves, instead of opinions based upon anecdotes sans data in these unspecified geographic regions?
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What does this mean? Are you saying that you don’t appreciate the books, music, art, theater and other entertainment of today?
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FGLI millennial here.
My parents were very supportive and let me choose my own majors (ultimately settled on Earth & Ocean Sciences and Classics). I knew pretty much from day 1 that I wanted to get a PhD and teach, and I always put much more pressure on myself than they did.
That said, I have always discouraged students from pursuing a similar path unless they can’t see themselves doing anything else. The job prospects in academia are simply much too bleak. Most of the other people in my PhD cohort left academia (especially the married ones with kids) or took jobs overseas (primarily in Germany and Australia).
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And business majors are right behind them in 2nd place.
Who Is More Likely to Default on Student Loans? - Liberty Street Economics.
Of course, maybe some of those arts/humanities and business majors are or can become the next generation of debt collectors in order to pay off their educational debts.
I don’t think that’s true. It sounds as if a good part of her problem was anxiety and depression, including suffering from them while in college. There’s no reason to think she wouldn’t have had those problems if she had attended a community college. While she was enrolled at Dartmouth, she had housing and food. Those would not have been available to her at a community college. It sounds as if Dartmouth gave her excellent fin aid, so there’s no reason to think she would owe less money if she went the CC route. Transfers often get worse aid, so she might not have finished her last 2 years or, if she did, she would owe more.
It sounds as if she took off for DR as soon as she finished the Tuck program. I assume that she wasn’t job hunting while she was there. Then she got pregnant. She focused her energies on getting her then H into the US. I assume that took up a lot of her time.
Then look at what finally DID turn her life around. Dartmouth.
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Thank you.
All I was hearing here was wealthy people arguing with other weathly people about FGLI’s. 
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I was a FGLI. I initially wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. Then I learned how much teachers made. I dropped that idea immediately and chose a high income career and have no regrets. But that is because financial security and being able to help my family financially was of paramount importance. My FGLI friends with the same priorities made similar choices. My high school grad class has a very significant percentage of doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, execs etc.
My DD now has the luxury to choose a lower paying career.
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What, if anything, was the input from your parents, assuming they were around for your decision(s)?
I’m curious, is that because you would be willing to help her financially, or because you are better equipped to provide information on how to make that work? Or some other reason?
Have any of you ever read the book “Paying for the Party?” It’s about a thinly disguised Indiana University. The lower SES kids didn’t do well and the authors felt they would have been better off going to lower ranked regional schools. In the book, IIRC, a lot of lower SES kids went into fields like broadcasting and fashion merchandising, thinking that they WERE being practical. But they didn’t get the internships in those fields more connected classmates were able to land.
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Neither of my parents had a college degree. One had a GED and the other an elementary school education and worked minimum wage jobs. They both worked multiple jobs and worked very hard. Yet I experienced both homelessness and hunger growing up. My parents didn’t dictate what I studied. They wouldn’t even know where to begin. As immigrants they didn’t even understand anything about the college process or majors. I did it all on my own. They just stressed the importance of education as a way out of poverty and to not end up the way did due to the limits placed on them in their country.
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This is perhaps a different topic. I have learned, together with my kids, that within the confines of a practical field, there is great value in doing non-practical or non-vocational things. As an example, if you picked CS, there is value in going deep into the subject in college rather than learning seemingly practical tools and technologies that become obsolete by next year. These in-depth areas often look very theoretical and not useful. In practice it is in fact useful to get that exposure in college because it can be leveraged very effectively in a job later on.
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You “made it” with the only input from your parents being “education is important.” I think that’s a wonderful life story.
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Four thoughts on this:
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If your advice is that a kid should go to Harvard rather than a directional school and study accounting, I am not sure how practical that is for about 99.9% of kids applying to college.
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Apples to apples, the more attractive majors will do better in job placement. Penn produces a lot of business grads. I suspect they have an easier time and have better outcomes than the English majors at Penn. Or are you arguing otherwise?
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Do you think companies hire kids to sit around and just be smart? In the old days they would dump Ivy League kids into corporate management programs, but those programs are not as big or ubiquitous as they used to be. From the company’s standpoint, why bother putting a kid in a 3 year training program if the kid probably will change jobs within 3-5 years? They want kids that can perform on day one. The big banks still hire a lot of Ivy league grads to be banking analysts. First, I would not recommend that lifestyle to anyone, and second, basing a career plan on getting into an Ivy League school and studying history with the objective of getting a job at Goldman Sachs has only is only slightly less ridiculous than a career plan predicated on making the NBA or winning American Idol.
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If it is not a T20 school, I think a lot of grads unfortunately learn that your assertion is not as accurate as they would like.
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The charges there indicate the following stratification of default rates:
- Type of college: for-profit two and four year and public two year >> non-profit two and four year and public four year (interesting that community college students have a high default rate, given the low cost to begin with)
- Degree program and graduation: nongraduate >> AA/AS graduate >> BA/BS graduate (no surprise that nongraduates default more)
- Major group and college selectivity: arts/humanities less selective > business less selective > STEM or vocational less selective > arts/humanities more selective > business, STEM, vocational more selective (note that variation by major is smaller at more selective colleges; also note the lack of mention of social science majors)
- Family income and college type: for-profit below mean income > for-profit above mean income > public below mean income > non-profit below mean income, public above mean income > non-profit above mean income (no surprise that family money is associated with lower default rates, probably due to having to borrow less and some getting bailed out by parents if they cannot repay on their own)
It’s also very common. The idea that parents absolutely need to be there to help isn’t accurate. Is it harder? Sure. But not many kids have a strong and supportive parent. And some have great parents who overadvocate reducing the kids abilities to learn basic life skills.
Yes, some of these overly specialized pre-professional majors can be more of a trap compared to more general majors (sports management and computer game design are other examples).
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I agree 100%.
I just read the bar graphs. Much easier.
It’s interesting to read people’s perceptions on “connections” and their role in obtaining jobs. I wonder how much of this based on third party anecdotes that go back decades. So my experience (no original family wealth, graduate of undergrad and professional schools with great alumni networks, lots of very successful friends), which I think is typical based on what I have seen and heard of other well connected friends:
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Connections valuable: information on what is going on with hiring in that industry/company; companies that may be hiring and what they are looking for; resume review (what is important and should be highlighted vs distracting stuff); interview advice – what to be prepared for; who to call/contact; getting someone past a first HR screen. This is all valuable stuff, but it is not necessary for someone who makes connections on their own and has a stellar resume. My D is in the STEM world where we know no one. She worked her professors, LinkedIn and other sources to get herself in front of jobs she was interested in.
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What connections don’t do: secure a job (unless it is a smaller business where the connection (person) can unilaterally make hiring decisions or the parents of the kid are sources/potential sources of big business). Businesses cannot afford to hire and pay unproductive/low potential employees. Have had friends, relatives, acquaintances ask me to “help” their kids. I will screen their resumes and only pass those on of those who I think are good candidates. The rest is up to them and the “system”, but yes there was an advantage of not getting your resume lost in the first big stack pile.
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