<p>cobrat: one of the great things about the STEM fields is that you learn the difference between probabilities and certainties. I spoke in probabilities; you attempted to rebut with lack of certainty. Funny, really. (Yes, people who drive Volvos and wear a seat belt sometimes die in a car crash, and people who drive half-tanked home in a Pinto with failing brakes may get home safely that same night, but you’re not going to say that chugging a pint of vodka and driving a death trap is a viable transportation plan. Well, maybe you would, but the rest of us wouldn’t.)</p>
<p>An unemployed engineer who has always wanted to be a writer can do so. An unemployed writer has a really hard time becoming an engineer. Common sense.</p>
<p>UCBAlumnus: “What level of parental control over a dependent-for-college-financial-aid-purposes* student’s choice of college and major is appropriate and reasonable?”</p>
<p>Better question: what level of parental control over school selection is appropriate and reasonable? Is it wrong to say, “I’ll pay $200,000 for Cornell, but I won’t pay it for Slippery Rock”? If that’s not wrong, why is it wrong to say, “I’ll pay $200k for pre-med or accounting, but I’m not paying it for creative writing”? Why is it wrong for a parent to say, “I simply do not think that X is worth the money, so I will not spend my money that way”? (Also, explain how that is manipulative or on par with groping a stranger’s thigh, 'cuz I don’t get it.)</p>
<p>I cited my engineer relatives’ experience/advice to their children to point out that engineering or other “practical fields” may not be as financially stable as so many people…including parents assume. STEM graduates…including engineering/CS grads do experience layoffs/highly constrained hiring of new grads during downcycles of their respective industries. </p>
<p>One of the things I also recalled was hearing about many accounts of their engineer classmates/colleagues driving taxis, waiting tables, or becoming SAHDs. Many also remembered half-sardonic jokes about physics or ChemE majors(including PhDs) waiting tables and driving taxis because no one was hiring them in the 70’s.</p>
<p>Personally, I knew many engineering/CS majors who graduated at/right after the dotcom bust who ended up unemployed or working retail, barista, or food service jobs for years. </p>
<p>You also fail to consider that many who may be inclined to be gifted writers may not have the skillset and/or the desire to study engineering/[insert other practical supposedly financially stable career here] or make it a career. </p>
<p>What if they are weeded out because they don’t have the skillset/desire to study/continue on to pre-med(high weedout rate in intro/core pre-med classes) or engineering/CS? If forced into the major, their options are now narrowed due to mediocre/failing grades in courses from majors they may not have had the skillset or desired to pursue in the first place.</p>
<p>However, the question is not whether the parents have the right or ability to make such interventions (which they do unless the student gets a near-full ride merit scholarship, based on how the financial aid system works), but what types of interventions do you consider to be appropriate?</p>
<p>For example, some people may see the parents’ forcing the student into a particular major or pre-professional plan to be too extreme or intrusive, but may find it appropriate to limit the choices in other ways (e.g. not allowing the student to attend a higher cost or higher debt college if going into a major that has poor job prospects in all parts of the economic cycle). Others may have different thresholds of what is appropriate parental intervention.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that your parents have every right to decide how they want to spend their money. If they don’t want to pay for XYZ College or for ABC program, that is totally up to them. Whether any of us agree with them is not the point. It doesn’t matter. They can place whatever limitations and conditions they want. It is up to the OP and any student to make the decision as to whether they will abide by the conditions and get the support or find a job and slowly earn ones way into independence and whatever course of study they can end up supporting themselves. The golden rule at work. The parents hold the gold.</p>
<p>The thing about this is that a child must become an adult. The adult must eventually cut off the child for the child to mature into a successful, independent individual. The father in this case is saying, if you are my dependent, you got to do things my way. I may not like this because I find it too manipulative but I don’t dispute this parent’s right to spend money as he chooses nor do I dispute the child’s right to choose his own path in life even if it’s misguided or leads to low income opportunities.</p>
<p>Someone has to tell this kid to grow up. There is an Occupy movement of people who feel entitled to other people’s stuff with no responsibility to behave a certain way to get it. We need to put an end to this attitude. </p>
<p>It begins by saying to someone, I dont think you are making the choice I would make but its your life, you own it and you should fund it and live freely accepting full responsibility for all the good and bad that results.</p>
<p>This is why we have kids coming home to live, staying on parent health insurance in their twenties, Occupy Wall Street and weak children in general.</p>
<p>@PoppinBottlesMGT making an analogy between you and your penniless neighbor and a father and their child is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly. I know it’s an old cliche, but honestly, unless you have kids of your own you will never understand or be able to speak on this argument with any legitimate viewpoint. Not trying to sound condescending, but there are feelings and worries involved when you are a parent that you can never even remotely understand if you are not one.</p>
<p>Writer (and parent) here. OP has received lots of well-meaning but uninformed advice. And some not-so-well-meaning advice. </p>
<p>First - it is correct that the publishing industry (which involves editing, not writing - so completely different) is circling the drain. The written word, however, has never been stronger. Many people, especially those who did not concentrate in the humanities, are not effective writers. (They may feel differently but I also edit technical materials written by others and…no.) OP if you are willing to consider all types of writing, there is work to be had. I can’t comment on fiction as I’ve never been involved in that.</p>
<p>Second - medical school debt is an important issue. Is your father saying he would pay your tuition and expenses for professional school? Most new physicians spend the first decade of their careers trying to get out from under that debt. If he expects you to pay for medical school, that’s at least $200,000 that you’ve just saved yourself by trying a career that interests you more. I haven’t seen any of the many commenters who have predicted financial disaster for you, should you follow your own path, address that important issue.</p>
<p>If you go back and read what the OP said, her dad never said it HAD to be med school, he just wants it to be something that has potentially better and more lucrative job prospects upon graduation. Surely she and her dad can come up with some kind of compromise that makes them both happy.</p>
<p>Haven’t read the whole thing, but the answer is simple. </p>
<p>1) Major in what you want
2) Take the premed requirements - view them as your work study. It’s what you need to do to put food on the table and keep you enrolled. Talk up medicine because you have to. It’s your job.
3) Make sure that he knows that med schools love humanities majors because medicine is about patients and people not about science. They view the premed requirements as sufficient science. Find and bring him documentation to that effect.
4) Get your degree.
5) Live your life and disappoint your father. Write about it. Get therapy and get over it. Write about that too.</p>
<p>As a parent, I think “appropriate and reasonable” means:</p>
<p>1) Telling your children how much you will pay to send them to college. This amount may be $X per year, $X total, the amount of tuition to the most/least expensive state university, or “any amount” – whatever is affordable. In some families, “affordable” may mean less money than the expected family contribution.</p>
<p>2) Requiring that your child go to a college that provides a basic, standard education and that does not violate your moral and/or religious values. For example, we would not pay for our children to attend either Liberty or Bob Jones because of their anti-evolution and other fundamentalist religious stances – and we are Christian.</p>
<p>3) Refusing to subsidize a student who is not making adequate academic progress (i.e. slacking off and making bad grades) and/or breaking the law (underage drinking).</p>
<p>I think “inappropriate” would be:</p>
<p>(1) Limiting the schools to which your child can go to the top X schools, your alma mater, or another such criterion that is about your own ego more than the needs of the child.</p>
<p>(2) Requiring the child to study a certain major(s) or head toward a designated career.</p>
<p>Forcing a child to go into a major that he/she hates or for which he/she has little aptitude is overly controlling. Some people have as little interest and/or ability in math or science as others have in music or art. There is a large need for speakers of Arabic, Farsi, and Mandarin. What would we think of someone who refused to pay for a child’s college if that child didn’t major in Arabic? Why should refusing to pay if the child doesn’t major in engineering or follow a pre-med track be any different?</p>
<p>Then again, the people who control the purse strings can certainly make the requirements. No one else has to think they’re appropriate or reasonable. They may, however, be a very effective way to alienate one’s child.</p>
<p>Well, the point of view of a parent is an incredibly biased one. I get that you feel very entitled to this power, but your position doesn’t make your more qualified to determine the ethics of the situation, if anything I think it makes you less qualified. I’m sure parents have felt the same way about a lot of similar strongholds society has taken away, like arranged marriages and whatnot, none of which did a lot for their children’s happiness I wouldn’t imagine. </p>
<p>I’m sure sexual assault victims largely agree only a victim can understand what they are dealing with, and that very well may be true, but there is still a good reason why such trials are decided by impartial peers and not a panel of people who identify with the victim’s emotions. My opinion is at least as valid as anyone in this thread’s.</p>
<p>@PoppinBottlesMGT… sorry if I offended you. But I don’t think the OP’s situation can be compared to your penniless neighbor OR an arranged marriage. And if you read what she wrote in her post, her dad did not DEMAND med school, he is just saying that if HE is paying for her education he expects her to choose a little more wisely. She’s an adult and ABSOLUTELY has the right to walk away, fund her own education, and do as she pleases. There is no ethics involved here, really… she’s not a hostage, but if she chooses to continue to accept support from her father, she has to live by his rules. I can’t get a home loan without paying for an inspection and buying homeowner’s insurance, whether I like it or not. I can’t get a job at my local school district without a drug test. I can flip them the bird all I want, still not going to change the fact that it is what they require to give me their money. And whether you or the OP like it or not, MOST things in life come with strings attached, especially when money is involved. So, perhaps it’s not so much having children that teaches you that, but GROWING UP.</p>
<p>I read her post, and earlier in the thread I more directly addressed it with more applicable and practical thoughts. But there was also a mood of “my kid, my money, this is my decision,” which I also wanted to address. I think I provided some great links and sources as to why parents shouldn’t be involved in that decision, too. </p>
<p>I’m not offended at all, btw, and am a little worried that I am coming across as more harsh than I’m meaning to. I just wanted to make sure I was understood as to why this isn’t a debate that non-parents should be shut out of.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think, “the world is a rough place where people are pressured and manipulated” is a valid defense for pressuring and manipulating. Yes, that’s the way a lot of things are, but the whole point is to try to do things better and more ethically. Which is why I advocate not taking money from a parent who wants to tell you what to do with your life.</p>
<p>@PoppinBottlesMGT, perhaps I didn’t make my point effectively either. I’m not saying you should be shut out of the debate, but that you cannot even begin to understand the motivations behind a parent’s actions unless you are a parent yourself. It’s a complicated job, and sometimes as a parent, you find yourself doing and saying things you would have never imagined prior to having kids.</p>
<p>I sympathize with your position, but I just think that what that means is what we already know: parents are in more emotionally complex positions than their children. And doing what I and a lot of top psychological researchers think is the “right” thing is really difficult. I can’t understand the position exactly, and I’m sorry if my empathy is only expressed on one side.</p>
<p>All very interesting stuff – things we have struggled with in our own family. Daughter was NMS and could have gone to several schools for free. Daughter was recruited athlete and passed up some scholarship offers from some very fine schools in favor of an ivy. We can afford this readily, but we actually have no illusion that the ivies offer anything beyond many of the schools she passed on. However, she’s ecstatic about her situation and she seems bound and determined to make the best of it. Do we worry about her future and the marketability of her major? Yes. We’re parents and I think it’s what we all do. But we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably time to trust this kid who’s made so many good decisions and has worked so hard to get where she is. We are the bank and thankful for the good fortune that has made it possible. The only “skin in the game” that she has is her own future, and we have relegated ourselves to the role of consultants as this kid grows up.</p>
<p>As for the physician thing… we are. It’s been a very good life, and though things are changing, it’s about the most certain well paid work you will ever find. That said, if it’s not a path you want to take, then by all means, don’t. It’s a long, fairly hard and increasingly expensive route to take before there’s any pay off.</p>
<p>This is what is wrong with many Boomers. They are out of touch with reality and have no idea how much the cost of education has skyrocketed. It has gotten to the point where a lot of schools are not financially worth it. While tuition has increased, real salaries have declined.</p>
<p>And it is more like $300k+ in loans by the time of repayment. Most physicians don’t make that much money in comparison. If you take on 300k in loans and only make in the early 100s to mid 100s, you will be living like you are in college for a long time.</p>
<p>I make $200k and have $150k in student loans and every time I make a monthly payment I become annoyed for the rest of the day. Most kids have no idea what it’s like to take on this much debt; it’s a huge burden and people making 60-70k with no student loans struggle less financially for a long time.</p>