Your kids first job out of college-where are they now? Was their college worth it?

Parents Forum
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Agree, overtheedge. D1 is working, manages her money and her life and lives at home, while waiting to see if her bf lands a career job and they can afford real rent. (Enough space that he’s here, too, they kick in on utilities, etc.) We have a hybrid of independence and family time/shared house responsibilities. We all enjoy it. But my other, D2, is an example of self-supporting, without really managing. She lives with her partner and roommates, they pay their rent and etc. She gets to work on time. But she needed me to help her with the deposit to change cell service (to get her off my bill.) Now, the group is moving and I honestly don’t think D2 has her share of the new deposit. I don’t want her to come to us for that.

Sometimes, just as when they’re little, they grow in leaps or go through times when we wonder where their heads are. We wait. I’m thinking D2 needs, ha, a Dave Ramsey seminar.

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Well, I want my kids to be able to live frugally out of choice, not from necessity. Been there, still there.

I have no problem w/ them living at home after college if they want to save money, BUT, they will also be expected to contribute to the household. We will not be a cheap flophouse for them.

AND, I do not plan on “helping” them out w/ bills they can’t pay, or lend them money for rent, etc. We will never have much, but if they come looking for money for something, I will expect a full accounting of their budget and where the money went. They will also get a lecture on wastefulness, if it is there.

I have already told them this, so there won’t be any surprises! :smile:

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I guess what I was hoping for, when I sent them off to college, is they would “learn stuff”, increase their capabilities generally, along the lines others have suggested, and have a socially, extra-curricularly and academically fulfilling life there that would serve as a springboard for same subsequently. In other words, to thrive there, as a coccoon, and to bloom into a wonderful butterfly. Probably after knocking around for several years afterwards, as many liberal arts majors do. In an ideal world they would identify their [initial] life’s vocational goals early in college, conduct themselves accordingly. go for it and get it, so there is no struggle afterwards. That’s something I might have fantasized would happen, but did not necessarily expect. It’s easier for the kids that decide early on "I want to be a [doctor, lawyer,architect, Indian chief,…] . but lots of liberal arts majors don’t know that.

So anyway one can hope for not so much a monetary ROI but a return function where the input is money but the output is a complicated “happiness” utility function of which money is just one component, weighted by that kid according to his/her own personal weighting system. But someplace in there should be the basis for them to achieve an economic “floor”- for them to move on in the world as self-sustaining adults. That basis doesn’t need to be a degree in accounting or something. It can be a group of abilities that will be recognized by someone, someplace, sometime, hence realizing the floor, at least. But I don’t want them to starve, for sure. I do want them out of my house, and out of our pockets. But it’s more than money; I want them to have a happy life. However they define it.

On that basis, my kids have not hit the “home run”- decided exactly what they wanted to do with their life during freshman year of college, conducted their entire college career accordingly, achieved their goal immediately, are already retired and bought us a nice new house, …(ok I’m getting carried away).

So to answer OP’s question I don’t think our investment in D1’s college was “worth it”.For her. As it turned out. She didn’t thrive there, to her full potential. What she’s doing now is partly in spite of that experience IMO. It was all on her own, and the innate abilities she came there with.

D2 has blazed her own path, right out of college. she had many opportunities during college, got a job she would not have had if she’d gone anyplace else, leveraged that into opportunities in totally different fields in a totally different part of the country. In addition to the skills she developed there and her own innate abilities, I’m pretty sure her college name helped her get some of those subsequent opportunities. She has not found her [initial] “true calling” yet, but she has proven that she has the tools to survive on her own. I think her college was worth it.

Last kid is just graduating, we’ll see.

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OP - How does your son feel about all this? Is he motivated to change his circumstances? Has he lost confidence as a result of experience in college?Or would post bac programs that might interest him have GPA barriers to entry even years after graduation?

I do not think it is right to pretend that GPA doesn’t matter, because sometimes it does, at least for my own child who is “GPA challenged.” But it need not define anyone for the rest of their lives, either.I think it might be a good idea to go over directions that might interest him, pinpoint a few viable ones, and chart your course from there.

In another thread, we discussed The Price of the Party and one of the points of the book that interested me was that students with helicoptering parents received a definite benefit, and that some parents continued to play an important role in getting their child back on a satisfying track after graduation.

I also think you would all feel better if he could get himself up in the morning and on his way without prompts. Perhaps a life coach could help all of you work on this, if he has the motivation to change.

Lots will of course depend on how depression has affected hmi, and how he has responded to intervention. There is pretty wide range of variation among individuals from what I can tell.

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@JEM I commend you for setting expectations and following through by pulling your son out of school for a semester. I work with and train a lot of recent UGs and the ones that have an understanding of expectations do so much better in adjusting to life after school. Parenting is often a set of increasingly hard choices but done well, it helps the DC learn to make hard choices themselves.

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a college education is something, now a days, every child should strive for. Doesn’t necessarily determine what they’ll do with the rest of their lives or if they’ll prove it was ever worth it. And a college degree is all you make of it. And, unfortunately, sometimes you could be the smartest kid in your school, but without the elite university on your resume, some businesses won’t even accept you. (This happened to my Dad, which is why he decided to get a Masters at NYU)

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I think that we are looking at and evaluating the wrong things.

Unfortunately, the outcome of a college education is based more on the person with the degree than on what the degree is in and from where the degree is obtained.

A barely passing, graduated by the skin of their teeth engineer will struggle to get a job in this high demand occupation. There are kids with social work and art degrees that go on to have very successful and prosperous careers. Personal trainers make no money but there is a small group of them that make millions.

Was college worth it is more about how it’s used and integrated into one’s life.

Even a job with benefits is not much to ask for and there really is little motivating about it. We do it because we have too but it’s rarely an inspired path. To work under several layers of management, performing a daily ritual someone else prescribed in a place some else decides with people someone else has chosen.

The question is was college a right fit for us. Most of the genius inventions man has ever devised come from people without college degrees. It wasn’t needed to invent the wheel, fire, Egyptian pyramids, calculus, Roman architecture, language, cars, electricity, Apple computers, Microsoft software, or Facebook.

A degree is only worth it if you set your sights low enough to make it worth it.

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I can’t read all the thread right now, but I will say I think it would be unfair to judge whether or not a college was “worth it” based on the graduate’s first job. Five years down the road, maybe, but some careers go in cycles with respect to how easy it is to get a job right out of the gate. Graduate during a downturn, and things may not go as smoothly as someone who graduates when there is an economic need for their education.

And hindsight isn’t even always 20/20. No way to know that an individual would have done better at any particular given school.

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This is very true, Nrdsb4, there is no way of knowing how students life would evolve if they attended a different college (or no college at all). Many successful careers result from a combination of inherited intelligence, acquired work ethic, family, education, and many other factors, including lots and lots of luck. And so many of these things cannot be changed or controlled. But this gives me even better reason to do everything I can to improve possible outcomes for my kids, including paying the highest college tuition I can afford for the best college fit. And if the kids did their part by taking full advantage and making the most of opportunities they received, I consider this to be a great ROI regardless of their occupations or salaries.

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You don’t go to college to get a job. You go to learn how to think critically and to acquire an intellectual foundation from which you increase your chances of succeeding at whatever you do. The question on whether it’s worth it is an individual one, and depends on the value you place on education and how much you had to pay to acquire it.

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You are very optimistic kollegeguy. I went to college because I hd a roofing job and realized I wouldn’t do much better than that without a degree then I went to marine corps recruiter who cinched the decision to go to college for me by showing me a video of marine corps boot camp.

I chose the college I attended because I visited and they said there were 4-6 girls for every guy there and they were all so hot.

Along the way, I got an actual education and career out of it.

Thinking critically was last thing I was there for. And intellectual foundation was the furthest thing from my mind at that time. It would be nice to rewrite history and say that though.

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I didn’t say most college students go there for those reasons, the majority certainly don’t which may be why they are disappointed with their outcomes.

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I think a lot of the “disagreement” on this thread is stated nicely by @kollegeguy – WHY do you go to college? I think that answer is different for every student and every family. Some do go to college to learn critical thinking skills with the belief that those skills can be applied to any kind of industry or job and they believe that college is your time to acquire knowledge about any number of things – be it math or history or finance. I think for folks in that school of thought – it isn’t about what job you get right out of college (or even 2 or 5 or 8 yrs later) or what money you’re making; it’s about learning and growing and believing that once you find the “right” industry for you, the money will come. I think those families are less likely to “regret” spending money on an expensive school even if their kid is a bank teller bc they believe that the education will eventually launch him into some other direction.

Then there’s the other school of thought – and I’m unembarrassed to say that’s where I fall – you go to college to get a professional job making good money. I’m all about “practical” and employable majors – whether it’s finance or engineering or pre med with an actual acceptance in hand to med school. I think it’s about going to as high ranking of a school as possible and getting the highest paying job possible (within reason – if an elite undergrad education will cost you 200k in debt, go to state school; if you can’t stomach the thought of the highest paying job you can get – take the 2nd highest one or the 3rd highest where you can envision at least moderate happiness). Maybe it’s the finance major in me – but even at age 16 when I was thinking about schools – I knew I wasn’t the “academic” type who wanted to learn for learning sake; I wanted to learn how to build financial models bc I knew that was a skill set I could rely on always and then I ended up going into law again with biglaw/securities/corporate finance being my goals because I knew the employability and paychecks in those areas would be what I wanted and because I knew that debating justice and constitutional law and human rights was just beyond boring for me (but I do NOT fault my law school friends in non profit jobs – there is a HUGE need for what they do, much moreso than another securities person).

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Nicely worded. But put me in the first category. And my humanities kids, while not earning the sort of top dollar a Google or WS type would start at, are both doing interesting work, both smack dab in the business world, same as some biz major might aspire to. Very happy with the breadth and depth their majors offered, vis a vis their interests.

Why do you suppose most colleges, even for future bankers or STEM, still have requirements outside the major? Perhaps someday there will be more institutions where someone just goes to study, eg, finance, more like professional trade schools. Eg, for the wannabe CPA, two solid years of accounting and only the related courses-? But I think there’s value in the rounding: a capable employee and an educated individual. Remember, life is more than the job, no matter how much we like the work and pay.

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Exactly, well rounded and being able to think and “learning to learn” is quite different from learning accounting. One is education, the other is a skill.