So I’m told. What are those, monstro?
Hmm. I wish I had something more authoritative to say here, but consider this: maybe it’s a parent/guardian/adviser’s job to impose some idea of “better” - and not the collective “better” I’ve been bashing here, but the “better” some of us have figured out.
What if choosing a major, a school and a career with the highest chance of personal satisfaction is weighted over a school with a bigger name, higher costs that will bite your wallet and theirs, and turn them out into a peaking but uninteresting field? What if the idea that they can do better than choosing maximized income is included? What if their real strengths and interests are considered, and not the filtered list that makes an admissions board caper with glee?
Just saying. (Also saying that if this little exercise seems like the tip of an iceberg, it may just well be.)
Well, my kids is accepted into a very middle of the road college. Maybe slightly below middle of the road even. It’s not a bad school but it has no name recognition to speak of. In short, there will be no Alma Matter bragging rights. But the nursing program is good. It’s her choice and she chose it freely and eagerly. She seems committed to the decision. As committed as any 17 year old can be in this situation. She’s not having any angst over the education path she should be taking as the prospect of spending the next 4 years living away from home 50% of the time is obviously very enticing. I’ll be paying for some of that education but she’ll be getting loans for the other half because I want her to feel “vested” in the education she is choosing for herself and not treat it as a sabbatical from living at home. However, part of me wonders if 18 is too soon to be living 4 hours from home. Part of me wonders if it’s foolish to spend this much money on the “experience” given that two years of community college followed by two years of proper college for a Bachelors in Nursing will be just as good from and education perspective and still gives her a two year college experience.
In no particular order:
- Fit. If you’re gonna be at a school for four/five years, you might as well tolerate it, at the very least. If you’re miserable there, you likely aren’t going to make valuable contacts or very good grades.
2)Program. Just because your school has a good reputation overall doesn’t mean that every major they offer is competitive. I went to an engineering school. When I was there, they did have some students who majored in stuff like history and English. But the programs were teeny-tiny. How many “valuable contacts” can you squeeze out a two or three professors and a handful of classmates? How many opportunities?
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What you intend to do with your degree. Do you intend to go to professional school afterwards? Or do you plan to jump in the labor force right after you graduate? If it’s the latter, maybe you shouldn’t worry about finding the cheapest school. Maybe you want to focus on the most “premium” school you can get into, since you’re only going to have one diploma on the wall to flash.
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Your values and desires in life. Is maximizing your income important to you? Are you a competitive person, in both ability and personality? Is resigning yourself to a bottom-tier institution going to stick in your craw for the rest of your life? Then maybe it’s worth throwing caution to the wind and valuing a school for its namebrand over its low, low cost. But if you are frugal and don’t have an competitive edge (e.g., you know you aren’t willing to move outside of your hometown for employment), then it probably doesn’t make sense for you to shoot at the stars. Neither of these approaches are “right” or “wrong”.
Most kids do better in away-college than parents think they will. That said, there are advantages to a few more cushioned years at home for kids in continuing education. (Fewer worries about money, more parental guidance.) My experience is that most community colleges offer excellent undergrad courses, sometimes better than the cattle-call ones offered by even the most prestigious universities. This is more true if, for example, your community college has a Nursing or pre-RN track.
We have six kids and interesting personal educational histories ourselves and have gone all over the map in this. I can’t say a four-year resident program at an affordable school is the wrong choice. But if you’re having second thoughts about your child’s choice, and a good 2-year school is an option, and saving money and keeping her close and stable is desirable… well, don’t discount your judgment in favor of this “four-year college experience” bushwah.
I assume people have always done this and still do. You think not?
She’s a good kid with her head screwed on fairly tight. But I’m a dad and so I worry.
My wife did have the full 4 year US college experience at an excellent private college with brand recognition. It wasn’t perfect because it was a bit cloistered (in retrospect) but she really enjoyed it and believes strongly my daughter would benefit greatly from the full experience. I do see her point as well, despite my pragmatic tendency to just view college as a stepping stone to the rest of life/career prospects.
But this helps. Thanks AB.
I think the evidence is good that some large percentage of the college-bound begin by looking at the highest demand and salaries expected around graduation, and choose that field or specialty without concealing their reasoning, and that some perhaps larger percentage does the same thing but dresses it up with elaborate justifications.
The ones who choose something less than their maximum potential (that is, a field that has lower pay and lower lifetime earnings than another available choice) are the ones who have to spend the rest of their lives explaining why they “aimed low,” no matter how good a fit or how satisfying their choice is.
If you’re disputing that degrees have become job tickets and it’s considered idiocy to go for any but the highest ticket you can possibly reach, regardless of any downside, I would completely disagree.
Well, duh. 
#2 daughter went to a very select prep school and chose (rather out of the blue, and for some of the bad reasons I’ve listed) to major in Chemistry. She was/is a qualified science geek but had no prior interest or demonstrated affinity for the field. She was accepted at UC Berkeley and spent a year there. Hated the school, hated the town, hated the mega-classes at the 101 level, hated everything about her major. Getting very sick with the flu around midterms didn’t help.
Quit Berkeley and enrolled at the local CSU in Economics. Went from there to a succession of State jobs and is now an analyst for a very intriguing division of the State, her fourth major promotion in about seven years. Loves her work madly. Got there through a degree from a low second-tier school (to be charitable) that she paid for herself, as she went, with about 33% support from us. Graduated debt-free.
Her alternative to Cal was a very small, cozy college much like the elite women’s schools in the Northeast. We’ve talked about what would have happened had she gone there, and other than the trauma of being at a mismatched school her first year, the conclusion is it would have led to a very dull and unsatisfying life.
#1 son… well, seven years at an elite STEM school got him pretty much nowhere. He’s doing well but his Physics degree is a dust-collector.
It’s all about the student, and picking the road that gets them to the best all-around adult path they can reach… which is NOT always, or maybe not even often, the path with the highest paychecks.
It would be great to have actual evidence.
And this might make a great poll. I’m curious which Dopers chose their college/majors based on perceived ROI and which ones were more “pursue my dreams and have the college experience” types. Then see who has the most regret about their decision. Maybe the results will surprise you.
All that would surprise me would be if there were any meaningful results at all. Selectivity on selectivity in your proposal, there.
There’s also a high level of self-deception to get past, if you were going to poll, say, an open field of 2nd-year college students or new grads or whatever. I doubt that many see their choice as an utterly cynical and grasping one limited by personal financial returns. There is also the issue that many who do have absolutely no feeling it’s a poor basis for making the choice - of course everyone wants the maximum lifetime income they can achieve. Add four years of rationalization and “success” as it was predefined, and what’s the counterargument? (Lost, but that’s my whole point.)
There is research showing that going away to college is definitely better for low-income, first generation and other disadvantaged students. It’s beneficial to be away from family obligations and with a peer group that understands how to navigate the system and sees being a student as the norm.
But you aren’t providing evidence to support your argument. I know this is IMHO, but why should the advice you’re throwing around influence a high school senior who is trying to decide among Stanford, Grinnell, and University of Kentucky?
I try not to extrapolate too much from my experience. I didn’t have to pay a dime for fees and tuition because I intentionally went the public, in-state route for college and I had scholarships. And I was too clueless to have a “dream” and I’m too pragmatic to care about “college experience”, so that made the decision easy for me. I chose a major that I liked, that I was in good at, and that I could see having a career in. I didn’t do any research into how profitable this theoretical career was, though. And the end result is that I’ve turned out pretty okay. I’m not makng oogles of money, but I’m comfortable and I have a rewarding career. No regrets from me.
But maybe if I had gone to Cornell or another big namebrand, I would be rolling in dough. Maybe instead of being “pretty okay”, I’d be living the best life evah!!! As well as your daughter, if she had stayed at Berkley or had gone to Fancy Northeast Women’s College. Just because the route she chose brought her to a rewarding career and a nice paycheck doesn’t mean that the other routes were all doomed.
Most Dopers don’t have a problem being honest about themselves. Sharing tales of regret is a common pastime around here. So I don’t think a poll would be too self-selecting. Although, I’m guessing it would skew “old”. College students and recent grads are living in a different reality than previous generations did.
I disagree. I teach high school juniors. I talk to kids about majors all the time. While I would agree that future earnings play a significant role in their thinking, all of them take other things into account as well: their own aptitudes and interests, their cultural/social expectations, and ideas about status also play significant roles.
Now, they aren’t particularly good at reflecting/weighing/considering all those things, because they suffer from being stupid. But they aren’t simply looking at future paychecks. Honest to god, tons of them haven’t really figured out yet that they are going to have to make a living one day soon, and that the quality of that living can vary widely. Instead, they tend to vaguely assume that “normal” will continue forever, whatever their own normal is.
It’s hard to convey how small these kids’ worlds are. I honestly believe the average high school senior could not list 25 distinctly different jobs that require a degree, and they have no sense how those jobs pay relative to each others.
And that’s just it. It is my argument, and this is IMHO. I’m throwing this out for discussion, not trying to win an academic debate by piling my cites higher than yours or get published in the Journal of Economics. Argue back any way you choose.
Fair enough. My opinion is most people pick a college for fairly rationale reasons, although I agree paying more is not always the best choice. No dispute that it’s best not to get too far in debt if you don’t have to.
I don’t see high school kids trying to figure out what path leads to maximum lifetime earnings. 1) they don’t care about that, just want to make enough to at least get by and 2) they don’t have the expectation of earlier generations that “hard work and good opportunities will lead to financial success.” On one hand, they are skeptical of the American Dream, on the other hand, they’re dismissive of “financial sucess” as a priority. Maybe the two hands are connected.
I know my kids didn’t give a hoot about that.
I’ll accept that you’re a good teacher and have the best intentions… but are you a guidance counselor or college advisor? Even back in my day I had much wise advice from teachers I admired, but walking into the guidance center had a flavor of, “Okay, let’s get *real *now…”
I have six kids, and have contributed to raising others. The oldest is… 43. I’ve been around the roller-coaster for five or six full rides, still have three to go, and have been involved in education through family connections for most of my life. Point being, you don’t have to tell me how… well, ignorant is a harsh word, but yes, most high schoolers still think the prom is going to be the biggest event of their lives. (And that $10/hour is rolling in dough.)
It is these short-sighted weens who suddenly have to make a decision that will shape the rest of their lives, and I contend that many do it badly because of the pressure to consider potential income over many other factors. I’ve sat in guidance sessions and seminars, listened to counselors, college reps and advisors, and for all the pious prattle to the contrary, the unending push is to be all you can possibly be… measured by your paycheck. I am sometimes shocked at how raw and unadorned this push is.
We’d have to expand this discussion too much to get to my real point, which is that we’ve built a culture wherein maximum possible earning, enabling maximum possible consumption, has obliterated nearly all sense and sensibility. Changing the college guidance culture to get these young, ignorant, malleable, shortsighted and clueless proto-adults to consider a larger and different picture is essential. A few class sessions of pious verities doesn’t count, not when the guidance counselor is happy to start with projected earnings charts in “guiding” a student to a major.
I don’t disagree with anything in the previous post. Left to their own devices, my kids had no concern whatsoever with maximizing paychecks. Still don’t. I don’t know what advice they got from professionals at their High School, but if it was as you describe, it didn’t take.
However, I doubt it matters much. Kids at any college will be exposed to all kinds of things and will find their path after many detours. Such is life.
Probably 90% of my kids have not spent a an hour total talking to anyone-certainly not to a guidance counselor–one on one about their choice of major. It just doesn’t happen. When they are 10 or 12 or 14 or 16 they latch onto some major based on random advice from someone, or because they admire someone in particular, or because it’s related to their favorite subject in school or, yes, because someone told them they’d make a lot of money that way. But it’s not an informed choice. It’s so poorly informed that it almost cancels itself out.
I don’t doubt that there are tons of kids getting the message that choosing a college and a major is all about trying to enter a financial market and make the right investment. And I agree that it’s appalling. But I disagree that that’s an overwhelming paradigm; tons are simply not savvy enough to even understand these implications. And there are not an insignificant minority who are even advanced enough to look at the question “what do I want to do with my life?” with meaningful sophistication.
And while I certainly believe that putting six kids thorough the process is a deep exposure–I am one of six myself–I will tell you that I’m not some vague presence in the life of my students. I’m pretty involved in their college application process, often by default when no one else is. This is not an impression formed from listening to a couple kids talk in the cafeteria.
My nephew attended (and my niece still attends) a pretty good, but not great, public high school in Connecticut. There were guidance counselors but what my nephew didn’t get from the guidance counselor or the college counselor is some sense of how good his prospects were for college. Were Yale or Wesleyan realistic possibilities for him? Or should he try for the University of Connecticut? I went to a different, more college-oriented public high school and I remember getting very specific advice as to which schools were reaches, which were safety schools for me and which were in the middle.