<p>My daughter loves her English professors and has thought about that path. She is encouraged and discouraged (a little) but ultimately it is up to her. If you know your options, eyes are open, and you can follow your dream, do it. </p>
<p>My niece went the lucrative path, was great in accounting/finance, got A’s in college, got a great job, CPA paid for (took just one time) hated it everyday, although she received great reviews and did her job well. After her 4-5 years were up, (they paid for her masters as part of the contract) she changed career course a bit, took a 40% cut in pay, and loves her new venture. She works shorter hours, under 50, has less stress, looks forward to going to work, and made adjustments in expenses. Some thought she was nuts, but now see she is so happy and sometimes doing what you love is more important than making a bit more money and being miserable everyday.</p>
<p>I think vicariousparent is a really good parent and the discussion is useful and timely.</p>
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<p>At first I was pretty offended by your post, but when I thought about it more realized you have what seems to me a good point. Leaving out the whole different discussion of whether faculty should “look” like the students they teach - this seems to me to go to the mission of the university. Is it to educate or is it to train someone for a job? Can it be both? Some professors think it is wrong to train students for jobs that don’t exist. Already many graduate programs have cut back significantly but the number of applicants is up. Should graduate programs exist in fields where there are no longer any jobs to speak of?</p>
<p>A few years ago, a family friend came to visit me in the NE to look at HYP and a few liberal arts colleges. She and her husband are both engineers with advanced degrees from their state university and own their own company. Their HS daughter had a perfect GPA and SAT and is charming and beautiful, loves literature, and wants to be an actress. The daughter didn’t come as this was just a scouting trip for the mom, who had never seen any of these schools and knew nothing about them. The mom told me she and her husband knew their daughter was never going to be an engineer or doctor or lawyer. They had decided she could minor in theater but she needed to get a “real” degree like English or History… something more marketable. After several days touring schools and reading course catalogues the mom was really enthusiastic about one of the LACs which she thought would be wonderful for her child’s interests. Then she asked me what these students do with a BA. It was a new idea to her that there wouldn’t be tables set up on campus for people recruiting English majors like there had been at her school for engineering majors. She asked, “why do people get these degrees?” I gave her some articles to read about the purpose and benefit of a liberal arts education. The next day she came down to breakfast and said, that as far as she could tell, her daughter might as well study acting as English. The next thing I heard was that the daughter had been accepted early at Tisch.</p>
<p>To me it makes a lot more sense to compare wanting to be a professor to wanting to be an actress or poet or any other sort of artist than to compare with being a doctor, lawyer, investment banker etc.</p>
<p>In any of these cases reasonable parents are going to be worried about their kids’ economic futures if they aren’t able to provide them with a sizable trust fund. :)</p>
<p>The outlook on employment for college professors may improve as the current crop retire over the next several years. There are thousands of colleges and universities in this country and abroad, and a talented, well-presented PhD who isn’t picky may be able to land a tenured position. I’ve been on hiring committees at my community college, and at least half of the interviewees, even after getting to the point of an interview, shoot themselves in the foot by doing stupid things such as not turning off their cellphones (really!) or mixing up their presentation pages (“my secretary prepared these, sorry!”) or other interview no-nos. If the OP’s D can get a position, college professor is a fantastic job and I would take it over investment banker or lawyer any day.</p>
<p>You have to work hard all your life. My dad always said to pursue a major/career that you enjoy and you will be willing to work as hard as you need to (and make trade-offs) to become successful.</p>
<p>My DD went off to college thinking she was going to major in art history and archaeology. OMG. I kept my mouth shut (which was hard). Now she is an English major (concentration in professional writing) and I am completely fine with that. Mostly because she really loves it – even the hard work she is putting in now, her soph year. Who knows where this will take her. My sister is an English professor at a local college (also adjunct at a grad school nearby and coaches her sport) and is sharing info with DD. Perhaps DD’s minor (Jewish studies) will take her in a particular direction. Maybe she will want to go to law school. Who knows. The goal is a happy life and enjoying every day – and she wouldn’t be doing that if I forced her into a major/career.</p>
<p>To the OP: RELAX. Encourage your DD to do well, to get internships and work experience. This will help HER clarify what SHE wants (and what she doesn’t want).</p>
<p>Not sure about the lawyer part…especially considering the current state of the economy. The impact has been such that even law school grad friends in the top third from T-5 schools are having trouble finding work in their profession these days. Not good when they have $180+ in law school loan debt…and that’s assuming no undergrad loans which is unlikely…especially nowadays. One friend has $350k+ in debt from both law school and undergrad and is worried even though he has a job.</p>
<p>Even before 2008, those in the legal profession I’ve talked with said landing a lucrative job at a big law firm or public interest government agency(especially Federal level) is like trying to audition for an acting gig…T-14 or even T-10 with good-great grades just to even audition with no guarantees.</p>
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<p>Even though I am in the camp that this should be the adult child’s decision without any parental/peer pressure, not sure about the above statement. </p>
<p>A lot of TAs, older classmates, and friends in academia have been hearing the above for the last 20 years while the employment situation remained the same or even worsened. </p>
<p>Then again, majoring in fields associated with steady careers like engineering/CS aren’t guarantees of such as several friends who did such majors found after being laid-off and becoming underemployed or worse…been on long-term unemployment. Some of these were top grads from schools like MIT, Cornell, CMU, etc.</p>
<p>This argument has been made for the last 25 years (the 1989 Bowen and Sosa study gave us all much hope back then), but the supposed freeing up of tenure-track slots via retirement never has materialized. I don’t think it will. Not only are older professors not retiring in large numbers because they can’t afford to; colleges are also moving away from tenure and toward a fixed-term contract model of employment for full-time faculty. Colleges want the flexibility to lay off faculty or reallocate lines to different parts of the university depending on enrollment demand. Tenure is a big impediment to that flexibility.</p>
<p>I think tenure will survive vestigially at a handful of elite institutions but it will not be available at the majority of places.</p>
<p>(I’m speaking of the humanities here, as I don’t know about other disciplines.)</p>
<p>It’s her life to control, not yours. She is the one that is going to work for her degree and career. She needs to make her own decisions and if she make mistakes, she needs to learn from her own mistakes. If she does complain to you when she gets older that you didn’t ‘force’ her to do anything, she doesn’t have the right because it was her decision.</p>
<p>I was talking with a friend who is an English professor at a small Catholic college. Apart from being in an urban area on the East Coast, it is not particularly desirable – not wealthy (indeed, budget-challenged), not terribly prestigious, students very focused on practical things, not at all selective. It has a tenure track position open in English, requiring a PhD in English. With a week to go before the deadline, they have received over 700 applications. Some of them may not be qualified, but most absolutely are.</p>
<p>Think about it! Harvard gets about 17 applicants for each undergraduate slot. The tippy-top PhD programs may get 40-50 applications per slot. This is 700 applications and counting for one chance to be on the bottom rung of the lowest ladder.</p>
<p>Hey, we had that many applicants for a single spot as a $42k lawyer for the state. Some of them from top 14 law schools. </p>
<p>My d. says ALL her friends in the humanities Ph.D. programs at her school that she knows of have found jobs. Not all of them tenure-track, but they are all working. Now, true, it is a top 5 school in most humanities areas (including hers). And, yes, there were about 50 applicants or so for every slot in her program, and that continues to increase.</p>
<p>It’s true that doctors aren’t unemployed. They can always take on $250k in debt for medical school, and then cough up another half a mil or so in debt to set up a private practice. Add on undergraduate debt, and they will be close to 50 by the time they dig out, at the age at which a 30-year RN will be able to retire comfortably. (I am pretty sure that my wife, a third-year nurse with AA degree and an RN, will net more this year than my doctor does after the latter pays off her bills and mortgage. The doc says she makes more - net - from renting out her space than she does from her very well-established practice.)</p>
<p>My kid’s an art history major and I was an English major. So maybe I’m biased. But I definitely was able to find an appropriate career with an English major. There is a lot of flexibility with an English undergrad degree. For instance, it’s ideal for law school. Or being an English teacher. Actually, a number of teachers at area high schools have PhDs in English or history. (For many, the pay and benefits are better than being an adjunct). They still have doctorates and they still have good and meaningful careers.</p>
<p>There are MANY things one can do with a strong writing background, whatever way the wind blows in the future. We have always supported our kids to make choices that work FOR THEM. It is THEIR lives–we live ours. So far, there are no regrets for us or for them. They know they have our unconditional love and support. Their triumphs are their own (tho we will cheer them on), as are their challenges (tho we will send care packages). </p>
<p>Ultimately, our kids need to find themselves. If your child shows ambivalence or uncertainty or wants guidance, certainly you can point out the pros & cons of what is being considered but let them weigh and value what works for THEM. No one weighs things quite the same as anyone else anyway.</p>
<p>I think it’s poor for anyone to blame the support or lack thereof for why they did or didn’t choose a field. If you want it enough, you pursue it. If you can be easily swayed, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be? I’ve “reinvented myself several times.” My neighbor completed med school after her last child graduated college.</p>
<p>Most people at elite LACs and/or ivies major in liberal arts and don’t become a professional (doctors, lawyers.) There are many lucrative firms that recruit english majors, particularly at good colleges.</p>
<p>Does majoring in English necessarily mean writing more than majoring in something else? English major programs appear to be mostly about literature, not about writing skills, which are typically required for all students (although many schools offer writing skills courses only or mostly about literature, rather than other topics like history, science, etc.).</p>
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<p>But wouldn’t any writing intensive major (not just English), preferably with a greater than typical exposure to technical subjects, be good for this purpose?</p>
<p>(No, I’m not saying “don’t major in English”. But it would be a mistake to assume that English majors have a monopoly on writing skills.)</p>
<p>“She’ll never be in as much debt as a doctor who goes into private practice.”</p>
<p>I have zero debtrelated to private practice!</p>
<p>I only got to page 8, but it’s not like “we” haven’t had this discusion before. I agree of course, that you can’t prevent your kids from resenting you for SOMETHING, no matter WHAT you do, but I also think you should pay at least SOME attention to your instincts based on what you know about your child. For most of us dyads, that means just wait.no need to DO anything. </p>
<p>This is assuming you are not any more irrational than the rest of us, when it comes to being mother. </p>
<p>I am wondering if most participants on this thread are moms, and if a lot of dads won’t bother ruminating about, questioning, nor discussing their beliefs about this.</p>
<p>"How’d you manage that? (oh, wait, you’re a shrink, right?) "</p>
<p>Yes.A psychiatrist…that’s still a doctor, right? But for an MD very little overhead. Anyway, I worked for an HMO for awhile, then gradually transitioned to private practice by renting office space by the hour.</p>
<p>True. I should have said “primary care doc”. </p>
<p>In our state, psychiatrists are about to run into big problems. The Mental Health Division is about to reduce the number of patients the state pays for by about two-thirds, the Basic Health Plan (for the working poor) is about to be eliminated, and there is a proposal to eliminate all pharmaceutical payments for Medicaid clients for the next 18 months. The first two are pretty sure to happen; the last will end up in some kind of compromise which is still likely to cut the amount spends on pharmaceuticals by about half.</p>