“If someone wants to spend $200,000 + for their kid to attend an expensive private (for the experience or whatever other reason) and become a teacher , I fail to see how that is anybody else’s business”
Lots of gossipy losers in this world, though!
So instead of admitting the money-loving type as suggested by PG, @Data10, the VOX article is suggesting the elites are admitting the risk-adverse type. Finance has changed since the crash and its’ status is replaced by the Googles of this world.
Looking over the survey, it has risk-aversion written all over it. Only 10% want to be entrepreneurs and only another 10% want to be in technology/engineering. As I said in an earlier post, since we are moving more and more into the quantification of knowledge, the traditional professions like law and medicine are not the save haven they were before. Why not more of them interested in tech? I suspect a lack of world class quant skills.
The 11% that are interested in arts/entertainment reminds me of this article:
Works for the well-connected, but a disaster for the less privileged where my sympathies are.
Interesting post, but I am not sure I interpreted it the way you have in mind.
The update @PurpleTitan is a worthy read too.
“are not the save haven they were before. Why not more of them interested in tech? I suspect a lack of world class quant skills.”
Can’t you just take people at face value that they are interested in something because they are interested in it? It is just so odd that you see tech as the thing people “should” be interested in and if not it reflects a deficiency on their part.
Is it a deficiency that your kids aren’t interested in the arts, music, theater? Or is it just who they are?
Btw there’s a lot more out there than just “STEM” and “arts/entertainment.” My kids happen to fall there. Neither are STEM-my and neither are “artists” (in the broad sense of the word).
The article you linked to has nothing to do with anything. Neither of my kids’ elite institutions are remotely party schools.
An example of elite university students pursuing the arts might be the students in Northwestern’s theater program or music program, both of which are highly regarded as world class in those fields, but that has absolutely nothing to do with any “paying for the party” discourse, as those are serious programs in a serious school.
But, go ahead and conflate it with Basketweaving 101 at Party-On State U. If it’s not STEM it all apparently fits in that category for you.
We all form our opinions based on our personal experiences, of course. My children have NOT had a professional, well-educated group of teachers for the most, and thus the last thing they’d ever want to be is a teacher. I, however, had some wonderful, super smart teachers in my life, so my opinion is different. The fact is, though, that the academic bar is quite low to become a teacher in certain parts of the country these days. One can be a C student in high school, fail the High School Proficiency Test a time or two, and still be admitted to a regional state university, earn mediocre grades there, and graduate as a teacher. We personally know people just like that, and they are lovely people but academically talented they are not.
The sort of student who makes it to an elite school is usually a striver–someone who pushes himself to do the most difficult and challenging things. For the reasons specified above, those kids don’t see the path to become a teacher as particularly challenging. Of course, we recognize that teaching itself is not an easy job-- if one is doing it well. However, one can do it very poorly with no consequences due to the power of the teacher’s union in states like ours, and regrettably some of us have experienced our fair share of ineffective teachers who cannot be fired. So if our opinions toward teaching are not as favorable, that doesn’t make us mean people. Many of you have had your kids in great private schools or public magnets, so perhaps your experience has been different. Regardless, none of the top students heading to elite schools with whom my kids were friends wanted to be a high school teacher. And if they had, their parents would have sent them to the state flagship, which has a good education department and is the teacher pipeline.
Lol, I didn’t even say my kid was pursuing it - I said if he wanted to be a hs history teacher, he’d be great at it! He’s looking at a bunch of different opportunities and paths right now which have different long term financial trajectories. Oh well! As long as he can be self sufficient, he should do what makes him happy. If that’s the highest paying option, great. If that’s the lowest paying option, great.
I absolutely could not give a fewer amount of you/know-whats whether everyone at the parent coffee klatsches thinks that’s a “waste” of an elite college education. Or whether his classmates are pursuing the millions at Goldman Sachs or the glory of Google. Good for them! I hope they all achieve what they set out to do. More power to everybody.
“The sort of student who makes it to an elite school is usually a striver–someone who pushes himself to do the most difficult and challenging things.”
So how come your kids didn’t become theater majors? Assuming they don’t naturally have acting skills, that would be difficult and challenging … Right?
“None of the top students heading to elite schools with whom my kids were friends wanted to be a high school teacher. And if they had, their parents would have sent them to the state flagship, which has a good education department and is the teacher pipeline.”
No doubt a lot of other parents in my kids’ high school would send an aspiring hs teacher to state u. But again so what? Goody for them. I couldn’t care less what other families do. You seem to care so much.
PG, to be fair to the canuckguy, I vaguely recalled that there were several “studies” that suggested that ivy-grads, as a group, was a bit risk-aversed. However, IMHO, risk-taking or risk-averse is neither vice nor virtue. Perhaps, only this country, populated with descendants of slightly-crazies that left their hearth and home to establish a new life in the raw New World, considers risk-taking as a great virtue.
On the other hand, I certainly do not agree that tech field is a lot more stable than medicine or the likes. I think one can be blind to the reality by just looking at the narrow go-go scene of CS folks in SF. What about UCSF outsourcing 600 IT jobs to India. Disney did the same thing a couple of years ago.
GFG is right - we are all informed by our own experience. Perhaps, I am naturally a worrier (my wife and kids said so). However, for the guy who survived more than a dozen layoffs since the last recession, I do not think STEM is all rose and gold. Just a month ago, we had another round and I lost a colleague doing my same function (she was in a different BU). She herself was a product of an Ivy decades ago. I reckons she was probably pulling in $200K-$300K a year. But, now, that’s all gone. Mercifully her older one is done with her college last year (the Ivy in NYC). However, her younger is a rising junior (I believe she is at PG’s D school in Boston). I think it is going to be difficult to find a tech job when you are in the mid 50’s. During these years, I myself have to let go of almost half of my team in this country - majority of them did not stay in the high tech field. On the other hand, we are managing an ever-growing empire of engineers in India/China. Recently, just hired someone in India for $11,000. How do you compete with that.
I just find it annoying to hear people deploring the state of public education on one hand and, on the other hand, being so dismissive when faced with the idea of investing in an “elite” education with all its benefits for talented young people who want to change that.
Maybe it’s because schools in our area are committed to paying educators well, but teachers in our community are seen as respected professionals and role models for the kids who go to our local public school (not a magnet school, just our local high school). While the high school does not rank graduates, the girl who walked away with the most scholastic awards on honors night when D was a senior was generally considered to be the very cream of the crop academically. She chose a prestigious and not-inexpensive LAC for college, where she’s majoring in math and music education.
Guess what? Nothing is secure. Work is hard. There just is no magic bullet to career success or financial success. Such is life.
It seems to me if this continues most people in the 3 countries soon will be equally rich or poor while those at the very top get super rich. Why do we have to hire engineers in other countries? Do Boeing or F-35 fighter jet markers hire foreign engineers working in a foreign country? Off topic somewhat.
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It seems to me if this continues most people in the 3 countries soon will be equally rich or poor while those at the very top get super rich.
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Unfortunately, I think this is the trend. The people who manage to hold on to management jobs can leverage inexpensive engineer resources to accomplish much. However, it seems that there is no place for “average” engineer in this country.
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Guess what? Nothing is secure. Work is hard. There just is no magic bullet to career success or financial success. Such is life.
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I guess this rubs me the wrong way. I don’t think people are looking for magic bullet and I think most of us are looking for some semblance of stability. We “winners” can throw up our collective hands and says life is what it is but we then should not complain about the rise of Trump because we are, I think, just seeing the tip of the push back from the “losers” of this economy.
^ There definitely has been increasing inequality, insecurity for the masses, elite competition, and even absolute decrease in life expectancy/quality of life for the lower end in the US in recent decades. We are in a second Gilded Age
You can imagine the turmoil that all causes society. I’m afraid it will get worse before it gets better, as well.
Peter Turchin is worth a read.
Because UCB the median income is wildly misleading.
I know you are just playing dumb. Income and wealth are very different measures. A person without wealth making the median income in Palo Alto cannot afford to live there just like SF and many other places.
I’m more than a little surprised that parents presumably with kids in top schools and probably very affluent are surprised that most parents want their children to be able to maintain that same standard of living. It’s not controversial.
So let’s discuss being a teacher. It’s a noble profession but the truth is that probably all of you have children in good school districts. Most public schools are very poor and the average HS student is barely literate. Add to that the fact that incomes are 100% based on seniority and not performance. This means it’s a job with no potential for career advancement based on performance. Not really a place that’s attractive to most top students.
Data 10
51% of Yale students receive need-based financial aid from the University.
At Stanford University, 48% percent of full-time undergraduates receive some kind of need-based financial aid and the average need-based scholarship
You also have to keep in mind that at the rich top schools the FA amount is often rather small because the family is relatively affluent.
Pizza you can think whatever you like. But please tell us your child’s major.
“Guess what? Nothing is secure. Work is hard. There just is no magic bullet to career success or financial success.”
“Honey. My kids will be set no matter what profession they choose. (They don’t know this yet, so don’t tell them.). If my kid decides to become a high school history teacher (which he would be awesome at), he doesn’t need to worry - his eventual kids’ college education will be taken care of.”
I totally agree with this statement but it seems very far away from being a HS teacher.
Ellie the local cities are broke and the teachers unions are big part of that. Illinois is in the worst financial shape for a reason and now it seems the Chicago teachers are about to go on strike again despite high incomes. The concept of striking for more money rather than earning it based on performance just isn’t consistent with most of the families and students attending elite schools.
Nevermind.
Ellie I have asked no directly personal questions. I live in a very affluent town in coastal CA. There is wide variation between families and students at the group of elite schools. The only school I saw mentioned in this thread was NU and it is a great school with many top programs. But the average student is still somewhat different from the very top schools. Not so much in test scores but in other achievements. The dorms in these schools are filled with olympians and students with major achievements. The idea that the parents of such people are going to encourage their children to be HS teachers just just strikes me as a very odd statement. This thread is about the Ivies/Stanford/MIT and a few other schools so it’s about the top .1% of students.
Actually, YOU want this thread to be about Ivies/Stanford/MIT. Look at the first post. The article is about “elites” defined by Barron’s selectivity index, the first tier of which includes more than 70 universities. Or did you not catch that?
And are you saying now that you do not consider NU or other schools like it to be “elite”? What’s your basis for that conclusion? Because I think a lot of people would disagree with that.
So many misconceptions.
@SAY, the average fin aid package for those who receive fin aid is actually quite large.
Also, MIT isn’t filled with Olympians. Neither are Cornell/UPenn/Brown/Columbia.
Actually, none of the Ivies were among the 25 most represented schools at Rio this year (and obviously MIT wouldn’t be either), so what the heck are you talking about, @SAY?