A typical consumer products, insurance, bank or pharmaceutical company- there will be HUNDREDS of employees who write for a living. Technical writing, Investor Relations, Executive Communications (speech-writing), marketing, advertising, packaging, package inserts; the government relations team will have a dozen writers (some with subject matter expertise in various regulatory areas in addition to strong writing and editing skills, others who are just strong communicators), a team of people in the HR function who write for a living- the intranet site, the employee magazine or publication, the people who explain changes in the benefit plan in a way the average employee can understand; if the company has a foundation or philanthropic arm, there will be a dozen writers employed there to do PR, grant reviews and assessments, etc.
On CC someone says “writing” and immediately the focus is on why journalism is a dying industry. I’ve hired at least a hundred people during my career who write for a living and not a single one of them was a journalist (although a few started out working at various publications.)
Architectural historians write for a living and show up in some unexpected places. They do need graduate degrees, however.
Without college, some people can become municipal workers - bus drivers, garbage men, police, etc., although in places like NYC, those jobs are incredibly hard to get. I’ve known many people who got those jobs and then did training or testing later to move up to very good salaries and benefits.
Two of my son’s friends from high school didn’t go to college. One was from a family/community that is very focused on education. It was a huge thing for his family that he didn’t go because he had all the stats and required ducks in a row. He got himself a job at a car repair shop, starting by sweeping and cleaning up. Good attitude. The owner decided to train him and he learned some very valuable skills. He completed two years at that job and was ready for college with a plan. He got into a tippy top school where he is now a freshman and is happy as clams. He swears that he can never be taken of advantage by an auto mechanic or salesman because of his insider knowledge, and he is really ready to be where he is now. He just wasn’t ready when he graduated from high school and would have made a mistake to have gone.
The other kid comes from a family with no history of college, so it wasn’t expected. He got a municipal job making dirt, but he learned what he would like to do three steps up the ladder and has returned to a CUNY at night. Also happy, good benefits.
None of my 6 grown nieces and nephews (aged 25-32) went to a 4-year college. 3 were super eager to have total and immediate control over their lives so went straight to work. One went into sales and has done well working her way up the ladder. Two went the vocational school route after a couple years of working. A mechanic and dental hygienists and doing really great. No one ever had any question that those 3 would make it no matter what path they followed. Their choosing not to go the degree route was not a crisis.
The other 3 have really struggled and we sadly knew that they would. One became a single mom early and tried a lot of different schemes unsuccessfully. She recently found her niche on Etsy… working directly with interior designers now and doing some wholesale work. We hope it grows into something that can support them all. The other two meandered in community college and different jobs for years. One tried a shady pharmaceutical tech program that ended in a lot of debt and no job prospects. One joined the Marine reserves but it never led to anything for him. They can’t manage to find their footing. Neither has worked in a couple years now.
My own kids go to/graduated from 4-year universities but they did learn valuable lessons from their big cousins. Make an active choice and go for it. It’s the meandering and trying to find yourself that screw you up.
@turtletime that is really true. Once you commit, the best thing to do is just finish. It’s hard watching young people make that mistake so often of just not completing their degrees.
I work with someone (in her late 50’s) who is smart, incredible work ethic, great people skills, terrific analytical skills and a wonderful writer. She has moved steadily up the ladder in this company but has maxxed out professionally because she doesn’t have a college degree. Is it unfair? Probably.
But this person is two classes shy of a BA. And no matter how many times people have tried to help her by showing her how easy it would be to finish (company would pay for it, she could go part-time, at night, we’d give her time off for finals) she hasn’t done it.
So CC- it’s not just young people who make the mistake of not finishing. It’s older people as well- life gets in the way, finishing up becomes a lower priority than just getting through the work week. All of which I understand. But the reality on the ground is- you have more options with a BA than without. Fair? No. But that’s the way it is. I have family members who have done what they describe as “bogus” Master’s degree programs because they are in licensed professions or work for local or state governments where getting a Master’s gets you higher pay in the near term, and a much more robust pension in the long term. Crazy. But that’s the system, so why not maximize your income even if you are doing the exact same job as before, just by getting a Masters???
@blossom that sounds like my SIL. Dropped out of U of Chicago two incompletes shy of a degree. Single motherhood. (Kid did great, got a PhD and is gainfully employed.) She’s done bookeeping for various private schools. She’s talked about going back to school for accounting, or just getting that BA, but she never has.
Technology creates and technology destroys. As people have pointed out, almost no one has figured out an economically viable model for newspapers. On the other hand, the advent and importance of social media creates a need for content. I’m hiring a content creator, albeit on a part-time basis. I’m hiring a writer. But, there are probably two key and related questions: First, do the jobs created have the same economic prospects as the jobs destroyed? Second, are there more jobs created than destroyed or vice versa.
I second many of the comments on here. There are jobs such as welders for whom demand exceeds supply. A former client in Wyoming spent considerable time trying to attract and retain welders and I think the local university or CC had a program specifically for welding. There has been a stigma against “work with hands” and yet there are categories of these jobs that should continue to pay well and should not be stigmatized as somehow less.
However, there are many reasons to go to college if one does so purposefully. In my experience, the jobs that people take today will not exist in ten years or will morph into other jobs requiring other skills. What college can help people learn is the intellectual dexterity to solve problems even as the problems change and the ability to learn how to learn. I think I learned these skills and know others who have. The two main jobs I have had since I graduated from graduate school didn’t exist when I was grad school let alone college. The same will be true for many of today’s grads. I don’t know how well colleges do this. I wonder whether some schools do this better than others. One of the best people I’ve known in this regard attended Hampshire College. I knew him in grad school and I was impressed by the way he taught himself new things/skills/fields. When I took a job as a business school professor, I decided to teach myself finance and corporate strategy. I later took a job on Wall Street and one of the tools I used to evaluate companies was an understanding of corporate strategy.
I love Shawbridge’s post. But I think it leads to a conclusion (possibly) which the folks on CC consider uber elitist- which is it’s less about the college and more about what you study. CC approves of CS, engineering, medicine (being pre-med if you’ve got money and the grades, nursing or allied health if you want a faster route to paid employment), accounting, and a couple of other occupations. CC does not approve of studying Classics or history or urban planning or Renaissance Studies (anything with “studies” in it is suspect) but somehow recreational studies is ok (because at some schools it’s called recreational management).
Nobody wants their kid stuck folding sweaters at the Gap after finishing a BA, but all those petroleum engineers and aerospace engineers and “e-commerce” majors get caught in the downswing of an employment cycle in their sector, and folding sweaters starts to sound more appealing than sitting in your parents kitchen sending out thousands of resumes. The engineers usually end up ok- they can pivot to Civil, or find a job which requires strong quant skills but is out of their particular industry. But lots of other pre-professional degree holders get stuck- elementary ed majors who want to stay in Philadelphia just as Philadelphia and the surrounding areas have a glut of 52 year old teachers who aren’t leaving until their retirement packages kick in. And pity the new grad who just completed a Master’s in Special Ed when there’s a glut, and is told “what we really need is Bilingual”. Oh shucks. This country still has a nursing shortage at a macro level, but some parts of the country have a glut, and not everyone wants to work in rural Oklahoma or West Virginia where the needs are critical.
I understand the temptation to encourage your kid to take the safe route- become an accountant or at least major in “business”. But there are no guarantees in life. And after decades of recruiting and hiring for large corporations, I maintain that it’s likely better for society to have a happy and productive (fill in the blank) than a miserable and not-very-good-at-it accountant or software engineer. Many of the roles I fill now didn’t exist ten years ago, and we need people at the first rungs of the management level who can demonstrate a facility to learn, to teach, to get comfortable with ambiguity really, really quickly. And write well. And be analytical.
Thanks, @blossom . I usually find Blossom’s posts insightful as she (he?) is active in hiring and sees the labor market and career paths in action in a way that I only dip into and out of as an observer – I’ve got my own little companies and one works as advisors to senior management of companies on non-employment related issues.
As I think Blossom realized, I was not advocating at all for the limited set of career paths favored on CC but instead for a recognition that graduates need the skills to confront increasing uncertainty, change and disruption in labor markets and markets in general. I don’t think we should be thinking about college as direct vocational training (unless someone is really interested in that specific vocation but even there, the risk that the job they are training for doesn’t exist in 10 years is probably pretty high).
That said, I do believe it is a good idea for college grads to include in their quiver of tools at least one that will help them get job interviews – in some ways, given computer sorting of resumes, the hard part is to get in to have the conversation. Folks with very connected parents can probably get in the door anyway, but for others, the question is how to get in the door to begin with. What’s a good arrow for the quiver to go along with a) intellectual dexterity and b) the ability to learn new things on one’s own? Data analysis? Fluency in Arabic? Engaging writing? @blossom would know better than I, but the choice of arrow undoubtedly depends upon the person.
As an example, ShawSon was captivated by behavioral economics. I suggested that he take a math course every semester because it would be good intellectual training but also because it is hard for people to judge the intellectual prowess of those who are econ majors (an econ major’s course load can be easy or hard). In contrast, there’s no easy version of a math major. I knew as someone with a PhD in a mathematical field that he was really good at conceptual reasoning generally and that he was likely to be very good at advanced math. If he wasn’t going to grad school in econ, most people don’t really know what a math major does, but they know it is hard. If he wanted to go to grad school in econ, they would care more about his math proficiency than his econ knowledge. So, he became an accidental math major as well (fortunately, he found it pretty easy, and as a seriously dyslexic kid, appreciated the fact that he didn’t have to do much if any reading). I suggested he take one course on coding (which he declined) and learn about data analysis, which he did in a probability course that counted for his math major and a couple of econometrics course that were part of his econ major but also in jobs as a research assistant.
I talked to a friend last weekend about her philosophy major son who was adding a business minor on the side. It got him an internship last semester that might be getting him a job this summer. No one can argue that life insurance sales has anything to do with philosophy, but neither does unemployment (and moving back in with your parents is only implied with a Phil degree, not required. )
@blossom I don’t disagree with you, but my response was directed toward the poster who continually referenced the newspaper industry, specifically as a columnist. Good writers are always needed, but they will have to look beyond print journalism.
Good ANYTHING’s have to look beyond. Nobody knows when the next disruption is coming, which was Shawbridge’s point. I have a friend who is a travel agent whose income went from hefty to non-existent and is now coming back (slowly) as she re-brands herself as a concierge/travel consultant. Nobody needs her to book their flight and hotel to LA or Vegas, which was bread and butter. Everyone goes online- even her corporate clients use an online platform for business travel.
But if you want to know what’s the hot show in London this winter, or the best childcare at a ski resort in Colorado, or the easiest way to book a destination wedding in Aruba and make sure your marriage license is going to be legally valid… she’s your expert.
But it’s slow rebuilding even though the old business model died in about 8 months!
My radiologist is in Mumbai. How scary is that for the medical establishment? Who saw THAT technology coming? And my health insurance company’s help desk (where you call about drug interactions, symptoms, etc, not the billing and customer service) is off-shore as well.
Don’t go to college (yet) if you are struggling or beginning to struggle with emerging mental health issues, or emerging issues with executive functioning, ADD, etc. Wait until you are correctly diagnosed and/or able to focus on daily life skills that you are going to need in college.
You might think you can white knuckle it, or that because you are smart and were able to slide through high school without ever really learning to study you’ll be able to do the same in college. You might be on a slippery slope or on the edge of a chasm of one of the kinds of mental health issues that crop up around this time of life, or be experiencing anxiety or depression that hasn’t been addressed yet.
The kids I personally know who did not find success in college, at least not right away, or not yet, are those kids who had either emerging or undiagnosed mental health issues, or who had undiagnosed ADD/executive function issues. They are smart kids. Smart enough that, whatever else was going on inside, they had been successful in high school. They got to college and failed their classes. They didn’t attend classes, they couldn’t study or complete assignments. They hopped a train to NYC for a week bender. They slept until 4 every day. They were undone by anxiety or depression or bipolar issues. They had no concept of how to take notes, study, or make a plan to complete a paper. They couldn’t organize their lives without the external organization that high school automatically provides.
In all honesty, all of those kids (in my limited experience) had flashing red signs of problems ahead when they were in high school, but their grades were “good”, and their parents assumed that once they got to college they would be OK. They were just immature. Or bored. Or forced to take classes they didn’t like. Or their teachers were too demanding. Or the coach didn’t understand. Or they had normal teenage anger. Or just wanted to play video games. Or school started too early. Or they were just slightly experimental with drugs. Or they deserved to stay home from school whenever they felt like it…
And while all of those things might be true, these kids were practically screaming that they were’t ready for a residential college.
And, if those problems do crop up, take a semester or two or five off to address the underlying issues. Residential colleges are too expensive to play around with several semesters of failed and incomplete classes.
Are you saying columnist only writes for newspapers? I don’t think I was the one who continuously referenced the newspaper industry, someone made that assumption. I just looked up on the columnist:
The only thing I said was a columnist may not be replaced by AI (personal point of view), whereas a reporter may be.
@eastcoascrazy that is a great writeup. I’ve often struggled to put it into words when people have asked for advice. It’s advice no one wants to hear, though, oftentimes. But you express it so eloquently. Mental health is a huge issue on the other side, too. Some kids start out OK and mental health issues kick in during that vulnerable time around age 20/21 after they seem to have been doing well (because that is a typical age for onset of serious mental illness). I went to school with so many people who were later diagnosed with bipolar, schizophrenia. They could not have predicted that at 18 necessarily. It’s a huge factor in why I’m nervous for residential college for my kids even though they seem fine now.
So I got my hair cut and colored the other day, and ran into my neighbors at the grocery. My ER nurse friend said, “I love your hair! I told her where I go. Her husband, an ophthalmologist laughed and said, “you know you two pay more for your hair than I get reimbursed for cataract surgery.”
)