Choosing a college major: Parents have a balancing role
Parents聽are often told 鈥� by magazines, television news shows and Oprah 鈥� that they are doing things wrong.
Don鈥檛 give kids regular milk; give them organic聽or they鈥檒l turn into mutant cow people. Don鈥檛 use plastic cups; they contain BPA, which gives children gills. Don鈥檛 keep your toaster so close to the bathtub.
But even if your kids are grown, gill-less and on their own in college, there鈥檚 still something you might be doing wrong. It involves preparing them to (hopefully) enter the workforce.
The thinking used to be relatively simple: Go to college, get a degree, and then you鈥檒l find a job in your field. But between the bad economy and the diversification of job types available, today鈥檚 college students need more guidance to hone their skills and prepare to find work.
Elliot Lasson, executive director of Joblink of Maryland Inc., a nonprofit employment organization, recently wrote an interesting blog post on this subject. He highlighted several areas in which聽parents聽can provide advice.
One is balancing idealism with realism.
鈥淲hen we talk about college students especially, they are going into the world to make the world a better place, to change the way things are, to rock the boat and change the status quo,鈥� Mr. Lasson said in an interview. 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 great and聽parents聽need to support that idealism, but it has to be a balance. At the end of the day, if a kid wants to be able to move out and live independently, they鈥檙e going to have to pay the bills.鈥�
To that end,聽parents聽and students need to remember that there鈥檚 a difference between a degree and skills. Companies are now less focused on what kind of degree you have and more interested in what abilities you can bring to the table 鈥� right now.
鈥淪omeone with a degree in English can鈥檛 hang up a shingle and say, 鈥楬ey, I鈥檓 a graduate of English from Northwestern University. Come talk to me,鈥� 鈥� Lasson said. 鈥淲hat is it you can do? There are jobs involving writing skills 鈥� technical writing, writing for the Web 鈥� that did not exist even 10 years ago. The end-all now is how you leverage that degree in English or philosophy or whatever from Northwestern or Brandeis into something that you can actually use to be competitive in the job market.鈥�
This requires considerable forethought. There may be critical job skills a student can hone well before graduation, but聽parents聽and students can鈥檛 wait until senior year to start identifying them.
鈥淧eople still tend to think the person goes to college, they wander around and see what interests them, they get a major, they switch it a few times, and probably three months before graduating they think they鈥檒l figure out exactly what to do,鈥� said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. 鈥淭hat won鈥檛 cut it anymore.鈥�
Research is key to helping students figure out which of the 18 billion possible career paths might make the most sense. Carnevale noted that the glossy college catalogs students receive don鈥檛 come with charts that say what kind of money a person in a certain major might make and what jobs are available.
