<p>So what do these staunch careerists do with a kid who just has no desire to go the college route that is being so prescribed. So you have a very good college prep kid with great test scores, and he has no desire to be a business, stem, math, science major. Really wants to study lit. Has always loved. it. The parent should make college funds conditional on that major. Tell the kid he can’t go to … well pick your school, Sleep Away State, Hamilton College, Dartmouth, Harvard, none of these because you aren’t going to pay, that he goes to Local State U and works part time if he wants to be a liberal arts major. Umm, I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I don’t see a lot of "STEM uber alles " posters on this thread at all or suggesting that anyone not in STEM is going to be “flipping burgers”. Anybody with any common sense at all knows there are lots of good jobs out there for non STEM kids. If your kids are not in a STEM field, more power to them. To force a kid into a STEM field where there is no interest or aptitude is folly. You’ve challenged many posters on other threads as to why they care what other people or their neighbors think. If you are happy with what your major was and the majors of your kids ,why do you care about what you think other people think about non STEM majors or what their job prospects are? So, your thinking is that anybody who promotes STEM is guilty of a “fear-basis to their thinking.” Sorry, that is a real stretch.</p>
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<p>Well said, Apprenticeprof.</p>
<p>It is interesting to me that the buzz word of lately is passion. Passion, passion, follow your passion! As if many teenagers really have a serious lifelong passion that they can make into a career. How many of us here had an intense passion, that we got to major in, and made it into a successful career that we are still doing today? If you did, you are extremely lucky. How many of us are even doing something even remotely related to our undergraduate majors?</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that a kid should be forced into a specific major because Mom and Dad think it’s best. Most people know their kids. However, you can try to influence them into picking something that may fit well for them, and it’s a bonus if there are great job prospects.</p>
<p>I’m not talking “Passion” here. One of mine did have a “passion”. He wanted to do MT. That was an overriding goal of his from age 16 on and he really wanted to pursue it. </p>
<p>The others, nope. No idea what they wanted to do. But one could see that for some of them, STEM was not gonna happen. They may not have known what they wanted to do, but studying math as the main subject was definitely something they knew they did NOT want to do. </p>
<p>You want your kid to be a CPA? So you have him take Accounting 1, and I do believe that is a good course for any and all kids to take, along with Econ. At least some type of business course that will familiarize a kid with the terms and processes that just are not going to taught in high school, most likely and in most liberal arts courses. But if the kid barely get a B or C in the course and hated every second of it, you really think you’re gonna make a CPA out of him? You push the kid in Calc or Chem on the college level, and if he doesn’t like it and can’t force himself to put the time into it, he’s not going to do well in it and have no desire to take the next course up. There are those who might go along with the plan since they have nothing else in mind to do and do well, and if that’s the case, fine. But if you’ve got one fighting that rope, even if you succeed, it may not be a good resolution. There are doctors out there who don’t like their jobs, got into it because of parental pressure, and though some may be fine with it, there are those who are resentful and probably should not be in the field. As a parent, I don’t want to be part of this sort of scenario. It can happen for any number of reasons, but I’ll remove myself from such situations. That, I can do as parent. </p>
<p>Influence is fine. Pushing when there is a lot of balking so you gotta get out the big stick, is not so fine. A carrot is fine as long as that stick is not there.</p>
<p>“They think very literally and linearly – hence my comment about gee, the engineering major starts out at $10K more than the classics major, but so what …”</p>
<p>I think we should at least be honest with our kids. 10K, really?</p>
<p>Let me take an example from 2012 grads at my sons school.</p>
<p>English major (no stats for classics major)-Max starting salary 67K. Median 40.8K.
About 1/3 employed, 20% seeking, most of the rest going to grad school.</p>
<p>Mechanical engineering major-Max starting salary 100K. Median 63.5K.
Half employed, 8% seeking, most of the rest going to grad school.</p>
<p>Computer science major-Max starting salary 135K. Median 95K.
The vast majority employed, 5% seeking, 15% going to grad school.</p>
<p>They won’t even release the salary statistics for those majoring in the arts.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t advise a kid who wasn’t interested in math/science/tech to go into fields that require it. But if they are equally interested in those fields, why would a parent not recommend it? Why is there anyone on here that actually thinks that technical fields don’t require problem solving and critical thinking skills?</p>
<p>" So you have him take Accounting 1, and I do believe that is a good course for any and all kids to take, along with Econ."</p>
<p>I’m wondering about that. My younger son signed up for an accounting class next year (with no interest in accounting), because his adviser said it was a useful class to take. That seems like a really tough class to take, with no particular interest in it…but I wasn’t going to object. </p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve read a single post where parents said they were pushing their kids to major in things they weren’t interested in, and had no ability towards. Did I miss them?</p>
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<p>This is the key. There are some who are equally capable AND equally interested, but many just aren’t. It’s difficult to take lack of interest and lack of talent and still be successful to the same level those with interest/talent have. They could start and drop out (students who seem to have the worst future). They could also very well be those 5% “seeking” and that doesn’t do them any good. Being miserable on the job for oodles of years doesn’t help either.</p>
<p>For the student who fits the jobs - yes, recommend those fields - but not as a blanket for all or even most. Money isn’t everything.</p>
<p>“Influence towards” and “withhold funds if not” (which is the subject thread - not pay for certain majors) are two different things.</p>
<p>I have tried to “influence” my history-major son to consider adding an economics major since he’s at a school with a strong econ program and I think for his interest in govt and public policy the econ major can’t hurt. But he got into an honors program that better fits his interests, so all I can do is advise and counsel. I’m certainly not going to withdraw funding.</p>
<p>My daughter doesn’t have a compelling interest area or “passion” and she decided on econ because she does enjoy it and I think it’s as good as any from a marketability standpoint, but if she decided she wanted to go major in (say) art history – as long as she understood the relative <em>short-term</em> marketability of those things, I wouldn’t withhold funding. </p>
<p>No one is saying that students shouldn’t be made aware of <em>short-term</em> relative marketability of art history and classics versus engineering, economics, business.</p>
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<p>A kid who isn’t particularly INTERESTED in computer science and doesn’t have a natural talent for it isn’t going to make that $95K median salary when he is competing against kids who DO have that passion and natural talent. This is just an argument to be aware of what’s what, not to make your musical-theatre or art-history kid become a computer science major.</p>
<p>Regardless of what a student’s career goals are, it is important that the student grow intellectually and develop valuable skills of one kind or another during the college years. I have not read through the entire thread, but it seems that what is missing from the discussion is the recognition that at the great majority of schools, particularly at the great majority of public universities, the only really difficult classes are the STEM classes and so those are the only classes that are capable of prodding most students (excluding the few that are completely self-motivated) into putting in the effort to grow significantly.</p>
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<p>Many STEM kids I see - the truly STEM focused - have far more problems with their humanities classes. It wasn’t that long ago that I was talking with an Accounting major and he related to me how tough his Theater class was because “he just couldn’t see what the theater kids saw” with regards to costumes, etc. A hard sciences major had his 4.0 blown by his writing class (he got an A- in it).</p>
<p>There’s a reason why one should major in what they are naturally gifted at. What is “hard” differs.</p>
<p>“A kid who isn’t particularly INTERESTED in computer science and doesn’t have a natural talent for it isn’t going to make that $95K median salary when he is competing against kids who DO have that passion and natural talent. This is just an argument to be aware of what’s what, not to make your musical-theatre or art-history kid become a computer science major.”</p>
<p>Yes. Which is why I followed the salary statistics with the sentence, “I wouldn’t advise a kid who wasn’t interested in math/science/tech to go into fields that require it. But if they are equally interested in those fields, why would a parent not recommend it?”</p>
<p>I still don’t understand why people keep insisting that there are those saying that students should major in things they aren’t interested in or good at. This is a straw man argument. But I have the feeling that I could say that 100 times on this thread and others will still be bringing up that bogus argument. </p>
<p>So I give up. I’m going to breakfast and indulging in some hash browns and bacon. If my kids ever manage to drag their butts out of bed, they might just get some leftovers.</p>
<p>I know a number of parents who are very pushy and insistent as to what schools, majors they want their kids to be attending and pursuing. What any of them will do if their kids simply refuse, I don’t know. From past experience, when they get “hit”–kids flunk out, have breakdowns, refuse to take the courses, have melt downs, they have backed off. When the reality hits them that they may have a kid on the couch or in a homeless shelter, they back off. But these parents talk big until it happens. I love Mike Tysons take on things, “Everyone has a plan until they (sic) get hit.”</p>
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<p>You have got to be kidding. Can you create great works of art? Compose music? Can you do creative writing? Can you find nuances in the classics that haven’t yet been thought of? Can you figure out how to communicate a certain emotion through the tilt of your head or how you deliver the lines you speak? This is exactly the obnoxious snobbery I’m talking about - how “oh, those other classes are so easy, I could get A’s in them with one hand tied behind my back.” Here you go. Here’s a blank canvas, an empty theater stage, go create something of value that people want to see and see how easy it is.</p>
<p>I’ve made the argument that writing/composition/English classes are difficult. At our public institution our grades in the English Department are among the lowest, and composition is a requirement. So kids can’t just drop it. I really contest the ideas that humanities courses are easy A’s. even Art History intro courses require the memorization of hundreds of images. Language courses are rigorous too. Music Theory is notoriously difficult and many budding musicians have to take it more than once to get their degrees.</p>
<p>The CS people I know really do have a natural affinity that can’t be taught. I know CS majors who struggled through it who only earn a pittance.</p>
<p>It’s no doubt that society rewards folks who are numbers based more than folks who are language based, and the easiest thing to count is money.</p>
<p>But are we really ready to say that only those things that can be counted are worthwhile? I notice that we are expending a lot of effort to talk to each other.</p>
<p>^^^^^ I was someone who scored 170 points higher on the Math part of the SAT than the Verbal part, but still at the public university I attended (UT-Austin) I found the STEM courses to be more difficult than the Liberal Arts courses. I suspected that the difference would have been greater for the less lopsided student. I knew many other students who had similar experiences at my school and at other public universities.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, those courses were easy A’s at UT. I am sure they were not at Northwestern, but you seemed to have missed that I was talking about the average public university, not an elite private one.</p>
<p>Oh. Well, you made a sweeping argument that “at the great majority of public universities, the only really difficult classes are the STEM ones.” Did you perhaps mean to say, “In my personal experience at UT-Austin, I found the STEM classes more difficult than the humanities”? Maybe a good rhetoric / persuasion / debate class could teach that :-)</p>
<p>^ You must have missed the part where I made the claim that the same held true for many students I had known who had graduated from other public universities. Oh, well.</p>