American families: when did you start talking to your children about higher education?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Don’t need answer fast. I think it was assumed that I’d go on to higher education, both of my parents have graduate degrees, but I only have an undergraduate degree.

I have a young nephew who’s about to enter 3rd grade. Is there ever a good way to talk about colleges and the importance of education and doing well, but putting zero pressure on the kid?

For me, college sports was my gateway and it was good that Georgetown was my target even though I completely sucked at basketball! I kinda knew that I had to work hard in school to make sure I could get admitted to Georgetown. To me, that’s fine since it’s an excellent university. And I had the time of my life touring Washington DC as a kid. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up there, but did at least get admitted.

My nephew lives near Berkeley and Stanford, should I talk to him about those places?

Edit: Both his father and mother have degrees. Dad has just an undergrad like me and mother has a graduate degree.

2

Personally I’d leave that up to the parents, and/or the kids. Your nephew can talk to you about colleges whenever he feels like it, and his parents can talk to him about colleges whenever they feel like it.

I don’t have kids but as a college professor I hear from lots of students about their higher-ed journey. Oddly, not one so far has ever complained that they didn’t get enough input from their families about the importance of education and doing well in school to get into a good college, etc. etc. :laughing:

(To be fair, there are in fact plenty of first-generation college attendees who mostly didn’t get that sort of family advice, but they tend not to complain about it, because they know damn well that their parents had enough to do just getting the kids through school housed and fed.)

3

Start?

I never knew a time when I wasn’t expected to go to college. My grandparents were farmers. The Depression was a hard time for everybody. Despite that I had 3 uncles that got grad degrees and went into the education business. But I knew I was going to college as far back as I can remember. From literally day one in college I realized I also wanted to go into education. Got a PhD, became a prof. etc.

So pretty much the same thing with our kids. They automatically knew that a college degree was the main plain.

4

Thank you, I probably needed the bucket of cold water dumped on my head. I do love him and want the best, but yeah, he probably already knows by osmosis.

I will be visiting my old university later this year, he will probably see the photos on social media.

When do academics start getting important for kids? I don’t think I got letter grades until around 6th grade, but I do remember my off the charts reading level in elementary school.

5

Aw, I didn’t mean to be unsympathetic about it! I think of course you can talk to your nephew about your enjoyment of your own college experiences, just as you’d tell him any other Uncle dalej42 stories. And it’s great to talk to kids about academic and otherwise intellectual subjects that they’re interested in.

Where I think stressful pressure often comes in for kids is with families trying to connect the dots between the college experience and the academic subjects with specific achievement goals: “if you want to have these qualifications and these experiences, then you have to get these grades in school.”

I have seen a few kids kind of fall apart, grades-achievement-wise, upon entering college after getting terrific grades pre-college. Because the point of grades as far as they were concerned, and by implication the point of the subjects where they got the grades, was to get into a good college, and a huge amount of their family life was scaffolding for that project.

Once they’ve finished the project and got into the good college and the academic-achievement scaffolding is no longer part of their daily lives, what’s the point?

IME the absolute best thing anyone can do for the success of a child’s future college academic experience is to encourage them to enjoy academic achievement and curiosity now, for its own sake. Then college can be the goal on the distant horizon that will give them lots more of what they enjoy.

You liked solving combinatorics puzzles in Math Circle, or learning how to draw faces, or finding out how ancient peoples traded amber for ivory, or doing combustion experiments in science class? Well, when you get to college you’ll be able to… (take a whole course on this topic, study life drawing in different media, go on an archeological dig for ancient trade routes, work with the real scientist lab equipment, etc. etc. etc.)

As for when assessed academic achievement starts getting important to kids in its own right? I’m not sure. Thinking back to my own childhood, ISTM that the goal of “getting straight A’s” was sort of a sport or challenge separate from my actual enjoyment of what I learned. The content of individual school subjects was fun and interesting, but “doing well” or getting high grades was a goal largely independent of the content, or the fun and interest. I, and all the other so-called “smart kids” I knew, would work as hard for “good grades” in classes we didn’t care much about as in ones we did. (Of course, I was a competitive little bitch from day one, pretty much, and academic achievement is an easy sell to kids with that mindset.)

6

Both of my parents had PhD’s and I grew up assuming that that was the normal state of things. (grocery clerks had 7 years of study and a dissertation on optimal bagging). It was only somewhat later, that I realized this wasn’t the case. The fact that I grew up in Los Alamos also probably contributed.

However since I was a smart sciencey kid, I always assumed a PhD was likely in my future.

7

I would totally support providing state funding for this course of study, optimal bagging is a crucial science and art!

8

We didn’t really start “talking” to our kids about higher education, but almost every family vacation we took included visiting some sort of college or university. We saw the chapel at the Air Force Academy, the scale-model of the solar system at Colorado University in Boulder, various museums and art displays, football games and theater performances at my alma mater, etc. It was our hope that the wide variety of things they saw would spark the idea that higher-ed is valuable and interesting.

9

[quote=“dalej42, post:1, topic:969577”]
Is there ever a good way to talk about colleges and the importance of education and doing well, but putting zero pressure on the kid?
[\quote]

If mommy and daddy went to college, then the kid already knows he will , too.
If mommy and daddy make sure he does all his homework, then the kid already knows that education is important
If when he brings home his report card, mommy and daddy check it carefully, then kid already knows that getting good grades is important, and doing well in life is important.

All you need to do is be a good uncle.
At this age, make learning fun for him. (Trips to a museum, tell him the science/math behind how his bicycle gears work.) As he gets older, tell him general stories about how much fun you had in college. And when he’s 16 ish, tell him specifics about different type of colleges, campus life, dormitories and fraternities.
But no pressure.

10

One of my papers mentions the well-know bin packing problem, which is NP-hard. It’s why I like to do my own bagging at the grocery.

11

Both my kids were self-motivated, and liked getting good grades and learning for their own sake, not for going to college necessarily. Since I have a PhD and my wife has a Masters, and could have gotten a PhD if she didn’t hate doing research, college was expected, like it was when I was growing up.
We also were able to help with homework when necessarily.
I think we started talking about colleges when they were in high school.
Whatever we did worked, since they have 8 degrees between them.

12

I would suggest another factor is peer pressure. Even at the very beginning of schooling, children sort themselves, one factor being academic acumen. I can recall very distinctly being aware of who the brainy kids were even in first grade. The idea of higher education seeps in eventually and gets discussed widely.

13

Yeah, I don’t have kids, but this was me as a kid. I always did well in school, and it was always assumed that I’d somehow go to college. My mom was the “valedictorian” of her primary school, but her family was too poor for her to go to college. And since she was one of the older kids (of seven), she had to start working a regular job (not the soda jerk job she had in high school) as soon as she graduated. I don’t remember it being pushed so much as a general expectation – a low level buzz of the need to go to college.

As you’re not the day-to-day parent, I don’t know if there’s much you can do besides answer his questions if he has any.

My Aunt Jeanne (married to my dad’s brother) went to UCLA (as did my uncle), and she worked there as a biochemist. She took my older sister and me to see a play at Royce Hall when I was little. I loved the campus, and I really liked my Aunt Jeanne, so this was probably the single biggest influence on me going there (well, in addition to taking classes during my high school senior year).

14

Even though neither parent went to college, it was somehow always assumed that I would. I have explained elsewhere that when I graduated HS there was no money and I got no scholarship. Student loans were not common in those days. But through a couple of good happenings I wound up with a PhD in math and became a professor. My wife has a BA and a couple of MAs and it never had to be mentioned that the kids were expected to go to college. It was unimaginable that they wouldn’t.

15

My dad worked at the local university as a member of the facilities staff. I was probably still in preschool when I first visited him at work, probably when my mom and I would pick him up to go somewhere out of town.

At that age I was more interested in the campus and the buildings, but my parents probably already had the expectation that I would one day go to colleage. As I got older, I would also attend events at the university, including open house events for engineering students, plus cultural and sporting events.

I did not attend that university, but I did get accepted. My parents and I decided that university would not be a good fit.

In my elementary school, the top students (10%) were already identified in 1st grade, as we had a gifted program. There were plenty of other students who went on to university besides this group, of course.

16

Christ on a crutch, I was told, over and over, that I was going to go to university. University of Toronto, I was told; no other school was acceptable. And if I didn’t, it was all on me, you loser, you son-of-a-bitch that could not cut it at high school. How dare you have to go to York or Queen’s instead of Toronto?

It was all on me, from Day One, starting in about kindergarten. My father was the first to get an education beyond high school (BA from University of Toronto, 1951), and I was not allowed to think of anything else. I would also get a degree from U of Toronto. I guess I made my parents happy.

I’d like to drop this topic because it brings back too many unhappy memories, too many shouting matches about what I’m going to do after high school. Let’s just say that university is not the be-all and end-all.

17

I specifically remember being 5 years old and my dad talking to my older brother and me about him wanting to ensure that we would be able to go to college (in state) if we wanted to.

My parents were lower middle class. My dad was a blue collar factory worker, but he and my mom saved, and scrimped so they could help us with college. I was fortunate enough to get many merit scholarships and grants that offset most of my college expenses. Neither of them were able to attend college, but it was important to them that we go.

I think it’s natural that parents want to provide more opportunities for their kids than they themselves had. I have one son that has a college degree, and my two younger kids already have it wired into their plans to go to college.

18

One of my aunts was a biochemist working at UCLA. When I was a little kid (5?) she took me and my older sister to see a play at Royce Hall. I fell in love with the campus and decided on the spot that was where I was going to go. And I did.

19

My mom had her mind set that I was going to be a lawyer or a Business Man. Nah, ma that ain’t gonna happen. School was easy and boring and I wanted to take shop and autobody/mechanics ROTC. That Was Not Allowed, I was NOT going to be…one of Them!!! It was assumed I was going to go to college and get a degree.
I started talking to my kids when they turned 12. Start thinking about your life. Start trying things and figuring out what you want to do or what you end up doing will figure you out instead. I don’t think I coukd make a living, pay 15 years of child support for 3 kids and own a home if I had started out in life any later without college or vocational school.