<p>My younger daughter who is a senior in high school and is chosing colleges to apply to sent me this link a couple of days ago: UW</a> Advising - Majors and Careers
I wonder what parents attending this forum think about the message that this university sends to high school kids.</p>
<p>I think it's spot on. I say this as someone who majored in Biology and is now in the rare book world, and as the mother of a Classics major who has very little idea of what she wants to do later in life.</p>
<p>I'm with Booklady. Well done!</p>
<p>Booklady, wouldn't you feel better if your daughter knew what she would be doing later in life after four years of college education? I am not even speaking about the cost of that education...</p>
<p>The article didn't discourage being career focused. It just pointed out that your future career need not be limited by your college major.</p>
<p>I think the best you can hope for is to study something that you're really interested in, period. What's the alternative, studying something you're NOT interested in? Life is so unpredictable, but if you are engaged, enthusiastic, challenged... it's GOT to lead to good things.</p>
<p>I don't like the idea that a 17 or 18 year old college freshman needs to choose what they'll be doing at age 30 or 60. </p>
<p>I didn't read the whole thing, but I think the article sends a good message. I'm currently in a very liberal arts-y major with basically no bearing on the "real world," but I spent Friday at a recruiting event for women at the JP Morgan office in downtown Chicago. I could fulfill pre-med requirements and go to med school, I could go to law school, grad school, or whatever else. My interests can change and develop; I am not limited by my major.</p>
<p>I started in such an unfocused way in undergrad and dropped out because my Dad was very sick and I didn't want to build up debt. I eventually went to nursing school at Cornell and then a masters in psychology and a PhD. My son will have the luxury of exploring every option--but I think I ended up in a great place anyway.</p>
<p>I think that the article sends a wrong message by making kids think that there is no relationship whatsoever between their college major and career. I find it untrue and misleading.<br>
Selecting a major is not about asking kids to decide what they will do at age 60, it is about making them think what they will be able do at age 22 once moms and dads stop paying 45K a year for studying something "very liberal arts-y". Also, I will dare to say that being engaged, enthusiastic, challenged... may not be enough it today's world if you don't have adequate knowledge.
The fact that many of us achieved something against the odds and changed our career paths later in life does not prove that there is no relationship between your major choice and professional achievements.</p>
<p>I agree- although I think in this day and age it's not unreasonable to expect that you might go to school past undergraduate years. Today's college degree is yesterday's high school diploma in some ways. I totally plan on my kids attending grad school as part of their total education process. But my hope is that they find something they're interested in and pursue it. If they're undecided after UG, then I'd advise to work a few years and then see. I believe at this point, my oldest is pretty keyed into a path; my youngest- we'll see. He may need to graduate, work a little bit, and then decide where it is he wants to be.</p>
<p>
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Booklady, wouldn't you feel better if your daughter knew what she would be doing later in life after four years of college education?
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</p>
<p>No, actually I'd be a bit disappointed if she knew now (she's only a sophomore). I imagine she'll eventually wind up in graduate school, and perhaps in academia. But who knows? I hope she'll try out different jobs and find one she loves. </p>
<p>The attitude in our household is that an undergraduate education is for exploring various subjects, learning some in depth, and becoming a well-rounded human being and a citizen of the world. If you know what you want to be when you grow up, that's great. But college is not, first and foremost, vocational school. YMMV.</p>
<p>I think that you are mistaken on how the current job markets and professional school admissions work today, Momochka. Unless you are majoring in a pre-professional or technical field, your major does not need to have anything to do with what you do afterwards. It's harder for a math major to break out into the art world, and it's harder for someone like me to be a banker, but either is very possible, and for majors that aren't on the extremes of the spectrum, it really doesn't matter. Students need to be knowledgeable about their options and pro-active about finding and getting opportunities. They need work experience, and then internships that lead into job offers. A liberal arts student looking at a quantitative field needs to be able to clearly communicate quantitative skills and interest, but s/he does not need to have a quantitative major. I'm saying this as a student who hears this message--that major doesn't really matter--all the time from all sorts of different firms and professional schools. If JP Morgan accepted me into a rather exclusive recruiting event focused on i-banking and sales and trading as the liberal arts major that I am (which I emphasized in my cover letter at one point), and then said several times that they welcomed all majors, and if numerous other firms in different fields said the same thing, well then I'm pretty apt to believe them. </p>
<p>I also really don't appreciate your sly implication that my choice of a liberal arts major is immature, not thought out, spoiled, or whatever else you meant.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The attitude in our household is that an undergraduate education is for exploring various subjects, learning some in depth, and becoming a well-rounded human being and a citizen of the world. If you know what you want to be when you grow up, that's great. But college is not, first and foremost, vocational school.
[/quote]
Well said. I agree.</p>
<p>While choice of a major is not a limiting factor in most cases, lack of a vision for future is detrimental. While a person who wants to pursue a career in medicine can choose any undergraduate major, he/she has to acquire the skills and credentials to get into medical school during the four years. Career indecision because of lack of exploration is not desirable. Parents have the responsibility to help their son/daughter think through their choices and build a career path. When we look at the society as a whole, career indecision at the end of four years of undergraduate study should be an exception and not a norm. Today's society places too much emphasis on following the heart. As long as the mind that goes with the heart has the maturity to think through the choices it is ok to follow the heart. When mind is left behind, following the heart will most likely result in failure.</p>
<p>I'm thrilled to see a large research university putting out this kind of message! A college freshman who truly knows what she wants to do with her life is a little scarey to me! Following that path seems kind of like marrying the first guy you date: sometimes it works out, but not without doubts and second-guessing. I would think that more commonly it doesn't work out so well. </p>
<p>I teach graduate students, and I have no doubt that the students who took a path that wasn't clearly aimed at this graduate program are just as likely to succeed as the ones who were. And the meanderers are often more interesting to teach, and more likely to challenge and engage with their fellow students. </p>
<p>That said, I know there are some students who will be very successful in following a different path - one that is tailored to skills rather than knowledge, expertise that is useful in a concrete, career-related sense rather than learning for learning's sake. In my former career, those people were very desireable employees because they were more predictable, possibly more reliable in terms of just getting the work done with minimal drama. The people who stood to make lots of money from their employees were less excited about the egg-heads who did excellent work but frequently paused to ask whether they were doing meaningful work, whether they had made the right choices. But the egg-heads made the workplace more interesting, and gave the firm a certain status/reputation it wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed. It takes all kinds of students, and there are all kinds of views on the purpose of education.</p>
<p>As I posted on another thread- its one thing to say you don't expect a college education to find your kids a job.
But when you observe more than a few kids- with degrees from expensive colleges working at jobs that they could have gotten with a high school diploma, working cyclical jobs- and not being able to get into any grad schools or being too burned out to even apply, it shifts your thinking a bit about colleges.</p>
<p>Perhaps those who have their own degrees and found that eventually things sorted out have a better perspective, but for the many parents who didn't attend college themselves, but who have made sacrifices so that their kids can attend, it is discouraging, because they hoped that college would give their kids a leg up. They are now finding it takes more than the diploma.</p>
<p>Hi all, I'm the "younger daughter" referred to by mamochka (hi mom!). Mom, correct me if I'm wrong, but basically the conflict comes down to this:</p>
<p>Despite having majored in the humanities, both of my parents work in the computer industry (which neither of them particularly like), and they make a lot of personal sacrifices to earn a living for my sister and me. Through their own experiences, they have been led to believe that the job market is extremely limited in most professions that are not math/science related. I hear the phrase "out of 100 Political Science majors, only 1 find a career in that field", which leads them to suggest, that if you start out majoring in something like finance or computer science, that will make life a lot easier for when you undoubtedly end up there anyway (quote mom: "I wish I majored in computer science, my job would have been much easier").</p>
<p>I don't disagree with any of the above; sadly, in our generation there really is a much smaller need for the research professions etc. However, in my case, I don't agree that my parents' logic works. I am a good student, all A's, well-rounded etc. However, I--sadly--do not have many academic passions. For me, math class, history, English--it's all the same, preferance wise. I'm not ready to go into a specific major like economics or computer science or finance and I don't want to sign up for something I'm not passionate about, because there's no way I'll ever be competitive with someone who IS passionate about that field. There are fields that DO interest me, sociology, political science, philosophy etc. that my parents deem "too risky" to pursue because they won't make a competitive candidate for a career. Personally, I think the skills you learn from a psycology major or a sociology major can serve you well in any career ranging from advertising to law, but fine, I see the point. In that case, I think I'm just one of those lost souls that needs to apply undecided. </p>
<p>I think it's important to remember, that by 18, students are not completely unrealistic. I would not go off and major in music theory, even though I've played piano for 11 years. I would also not go major in French, even though I'm in love with the language. I UNDERSTAND that in order for those to lead to a high-paying job, you have to be BRILLIANT or EXTREMELY lucky. I definately don't want to waste 50K per year following a dead end. However, I feel like poltical science or sociology or philosophy are not irresponsible or immature, after all, diplomacy affects all of us--regardless of whether we're president or not. No matter what I do, I'm going to have to be able to work and cooperate with people. And an understanding of philosophy is VITAL for any intellectual development. I believe that anybody that wants to work hard enough, will find a job. And anybody that wants to be successful, will be successful. After all, both of my parents became extremely successful in their professions, even though they never had any formal education in that field. If I come out of college, confident in my intellectual and emotional development, I am sure that I will have no problem finding a job in a similar financial company as my mom or whatnot.</p>
<p>...and that's not to say that I WON'T major in economics, I just want it to be my choice. I too would feel uncomfortable coming out of college without having learned any concrete skills, I just need time to figure out how to go about it... I'm trying to avoid as much calculus as possible! ;-)</p>
<p>mamochka - You're worried about HER?! :D</p>
<p>helenrez,</p>
<p>Perhaps your mom's mind will be put slightly to rest if I tell her that my H was a passionate political science major who came to the conclusion his junior year that he couldn't really understand politics unless he became an economist. He did, and he is quite a successful economics professor and consultant. He never cared about money or success when he was young, but it happened anyway just as a result of following his interests.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, he takes a rather different approach with our kids! He thinks it is great that my son is absolutely sure of his major as a freshman and he worries that our daughter will not make up her mind by college. Parents just like to worry.</p>
<p>You sound like you have a great future--whatever you do.</p>
<p>OP's name suggests she came from USSR. There were no "undecided" college freshmen there, you were expected to pick something and stick with it. Often your path was predetermined by your parents. Obviously, this is not the case here. D should be able to take a variety of classes and discover her passions in the next four years.</p>
<p>Parents and high schools should work hard to help their students find their passion. As a business owner and lecturing professor in the arts, I have to say that, for careers that require talent, the earlier and more deeply felt a student's passion is, the more likely they will be successful. I have had students and interns who have graduated with expensive science degrees that their parents pushed them into and they are now going to expensive art school. They rarely do as well as those who have been pursuing their talent since high school. Great careers can be had in the entertainment industry, but only for those with the best portfolios and auditions. Universities that do not emphasize portfolios and professional development in these creative fields do their students a great disservice. It is unrealistic to give students the idea that they have only to complete 4 years of X number of units to be prepared for the competition they will be up against when they get into the real world. The point here is not to prepare people to make the most money, but to be able to spend their lives working at something they really truly love doing. My D is studying for a career in the arts, by the way, in a very competitive program. I believe art, music, acting, writing etc. are the hardest and most challenging professions to attempt, with possibly the least monetary reward. Speaking from experience, though, we wouldn't be doing anything else.</p>