<p>If he is really intent on doing advanced education to find a job there are many schools that specialize in career education (in addition to teaching, engineering and such) with majors like Pharmacy, Construction Managment, Golf Course Management, Ski Area Management, Hospitality, Nursing, Automotive Technology, Criminal Justice, Manufacturing Technology and tons of other “career” type majors. Pharmacy is tough and takes more than 4 years but the outcome is definitely career oriented and the starting salaries are quite nice. These colleges are not the liberal arts schools, but look at the non-flagship publics. There are just a wealth of possibilities for a student who is more focused on career education rather than education for education’s sake.</p>
<p>The hypocrisy surrounding this issue can be outstanding–if college is supposed to be about simply being educated and doing what you love, how is it that we have other threads bemoaning (and rightfully so) how hard it is for college students to find jobs? I’m doing a “what you love” field (psych) coupled with a slightly more practical field (social work)–chosen not for practicality but simply because I think the UG training in both fields can compliment each other. I know I need (competitive) grad school to work in my desired field, which is fairly practical (school psych). Looking at admission rates, I sometimes wonder why I didn’t just go for a degree in accounting ;). I’m really involved with my field for undergraduate and I do truly love it, so it’s worth it right now, but the lack of practicality does counteract some of my basic instincts. The love wins out, at least now.</p>
<p>My parents support my route only because they’ve always seem to have thought I would be the type to earn a doctorate (though they would prefer a JD) and because they know how I’ve gone above and beyond simply my major to prepare myself for grad school–if I wasn’t the type to aggressively seek out research experience and internships, research grad school, etc., they might feel differently</p>
<p>I don’t think it is hypocritical at all. At least for the 30 plus years I’ve been out of college there were always two paths: either you went for a liberal arts degree and the learning aspect of college or in preparation for an advanced degree or you went and learned a skill. It’s still the same way, except now, kids want to go to a liberal arts college AND learn a skill that effectively gives them a career upon graduation and land a relatively high paying job with lots of resonsibility at age 21. Pharmacy is a great example. Kids that want to be pharmacists go to schools that have pharmacy programs…they don’t go to a liberal arts college and study English. If you want to be a CPA or a Finance manager go to a strong school that has a strong Business degree. It’s really not that difficult…you are correct. If you want to be a social worker than go to a school that offers that and so on and so on. And yes, there are certainly undergraduate majors that don’t lend themselves directly to a j-o-b after 4 years without some additional preparation or a lower status job and some years of on the job experience…those are the majors that cause the hand wringing on the forums, I think.</p>
<p>Pharmacy is pretty much saturated at this moment. Too many schools are opening. A real can of worms is about to open. In many major cities, there are no openings for pharmacists.</p>
<p>There is a balance in getting an arts degree that carries some skills.</p>
<p>Nova - aaah, you may not be able to GO to the exact city you want to go to when you graduate unless you are willing to go and wait/find a job. Forgot to add “must be able to find job in city I want to live in” to my list of things young people seem to want from an undergraduate degree. I wanted to live in Boston after college. I had done my internship there and wanted to go back. I wanted (at that time) a career in advertising. Best advice I ever got was everyone in advertising in Boston said “no jobs here, go to Minneapolis or Kansas City”. I had never in my entire 21 years of life ever thought about living in Minneapolis let alone Kansas City. Some of the world’s best advertising in the world came out of Minneapolis in the five years after I graduated with my BA and I was there. I didn’t know diddly about Minneapolis, didn’t know a soul there. It’s cold there. It snows there. And people make fun of the midwest. The eight years I was there were some of the best in my life and I went to grad school with company assisted tuition. I graduated college in the middle of a recession in the height of the boomers graduating college in record numbers…jobs were not easy to come by for kids with a liberal arts degree without grad school. My engineer parents were probably wringing their hands and wondering what the heck they spent “all that money on Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke” because it took me 3 months to find a job. You do what you have to do if you want to do anything.</p>
<p>Construction Management sounds interesting. I know S mentioned it in passing. I agree with the response that internships are critical, follwed by a good job placement program. My S is not going to comb the yellow pages looking for an internship and I know nothing about construction… or anyone in the field. What’s the employment potential? I mean the US infra-structure is in tough shape and there is stimulus money being thrown around… right?</p>
<p>Mortuary science. Think of all the boomers who will croak in the coming years.</p>
<p>Actuarial science. Usually a field within statistics or mathematics.</p>
<p>You might want to read the review of “You Majored in What?” here, in a Boston Globe column today.</p>
<p>[‘New</a> Global Student,’ ‘You Majored in What?’, ‘How to Love’ provide different ways of learning - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/06/07/new_global_student_you_majored_in_what_how_to_love_provide_different_ways_of_learning/]'New”>http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/06/07/new_global_student_you_majored_in_what_how_to_love_provide_different_ways_of_learning/)</p>
<p>The author writes about staying open to “wise wandering” in college and career, that “Unexpected events and new conditions can change your career path and open up choice.”
She also says “Forget trying to force a preordained order into your life,” and let the order be “revealed” to you.</p>
<p>In my opinion and experience, the earlier you try to impose that false sense of order (major or career choice in early high school, for instance) the more you miss out on freedom of choice, that can actually lead to what you should really be doing.</p>
<p>Mathematics. It is flexible and can be applied to just about anything (business, engineering, etc).</p>
<p>Construction Management isn’t so good in a recession. Home building is down and commercial building is down. S has a friend completing his master’s in construction science in December, after which he plans to enlist in the Marines and attend Officer Candidate School to become a Marine officer.</p>
<p>There are jobs in criminal justice (probation officer, police officer, etc.). Have your son go to your city or county’s website and look at the job postings there. That’s one way of seeing what jobs are available. You can also look at websites for any large employers in your area. For instance, here in Houston we have a large medical center, so looking at listing at the various med schools and hospitals can be interesting. They aren’t all medical jobs; some are administrative.</p>
<p>Speech Pathology…lots of options for employment, and it’s a shortage area, not nearly enough grads to fill the vacant positions. You need a Masters Degree to get licensed, but it’s well worth the time and effort.</p>
<p>One thing to consider with this approach is that the majors that trip off the tongue–engineering, accounting, pharmacy, nursing–usually yield jobs with good starting salaries, but salaries that hit a ceiling for most pretty soon. So you’ll make some money, but most in these fields never make a lot of money. I think it’s important for kids to understand this.</p>
<p>We were surprised to learn 4 years ago when S was shopping for a college that Geography majors did surprisingly well in job placement out of college. Especially those that get a class or two in GIS. At one very large Virginia college, the word was that all their seniors graduating with a Geography major had multiple job offers. It’s a broad field that encompasses interdisplinary coursework in social sciences and physical science.</p>
<p>S ended up at a college that didn’t have the Geography major and while he loved his college, he still wishes he could have majored in it. </p>
<p>H & I were both rather amazed by the job market for this discipline…planning jobs, government jobs, environmental firms, the list of potential employers is actually quite large. For a person looking to combine the social and physical sciences, it can be a good match.</p>
<p>“Especially those that get a class or two in GIS.”</p>
<p>There are jobs for those with GIS skills related to supercomputer modeling but I think that those are for folks with Phds.</p>
<p>In this economy I will work for 50% of my current salary, which I have told my management.</p>