That makes a lot of sense. A large part of the stigma from my perspective is that people who are the stereotypical "want to find themselves" in college in terms of careers (not wanting to learn new perspectives on life or whatnot) seem to gravitate towards the humanities instead of, say, engineering. That would be what I would actively discourage, and it seems from your feedback that you wouldn't be a big fan of that either. If my children seemed inclined to go into a more "unspecified" humanities like philosophy or something as compared to, say, history to be a history teacher, what would be the best way to go about looking for how that could apply to jobs. It's a new concept for me because I kind of started with the end in mind on my career. I could see that not being the case in my hypothetical situation - i.e. where I would need to do the nudging towards solidifying what they actually wanted to do with their degree.
That's not exactly what I'm saying.
What I'm trying to say is that kids need to be taught that no matter what education they pursue, that they need to put in a lot more work than just getting a degree.
If a kid is industrious, creative, and good at networking, they're going to be successful no matter what they study and they will find a way to utilize their education for their long-term benefit.
It's spot on that the aimless kids tend to gravitate towards less defined humanities degrees. However, it's a huge disservice to generalize anything about those degrees because of that.
History isn't fundamentally more useful than philosophy, and I encourage you to let go of this notion of any degree being more or less useful than any other. It all depends on what the person does with it.
If a kid comes out of university with only the education they went in for, then they have completely and utterly failed to maximize the opportunities that school provides.
I work with A LOT of medical professionals, who are the stereotype of getting a degree that leads to a high paying job, and even they suffer if they don't learn proper networking and general career skills.
The best thing you can do is not try and program your kids that certain degrees have value and others don't. It's to educate them as to how the working world functions, which jobs require what education and why. There are many many many jobs out there that require a university degree, but that don't care what degree you have...why??
What valuable skills does a degree actually confer?
Why do some careers require specific degrees?
Are careers that require specific degrees vulnerable to over saturation??? (The answer is yes btw)
What doors close if someone doesn't have a degree?
If you don't know all of the above answers and don't actually understand the broad world of employment yourself, then don't pretend to be an authority on it for your kids.
Teach your kid to turn to seek out expert knowledge before making decisions, talk to a career counselor, do research, etc, etc.
Thanks for the explanation. I will keep it in mind for my kids. I went into engineering knowing I liked it pretty well and that it would probably be a good paying job. I left school into a pretty good job market and immediately got a job that has lead to a pretty good career. I do not want to assume that my kids will be just like me, though, because it worked out well for me.
Please don't take this as a criticism, because it isn't, but if your personal experience is the extent of your knowledge of how education and career trajectory are connected, then you are not particularly well equipped to provide your children with meaningful guidance with respect to their professional futures.
Even if they wanted to follow the exact path that you did, the world is changing so rapidly that "go to school for engineering and then get a good job and have a good career for a few decades" probably won't even be an option for them by the time they're trying to forge their own careers.
I field a lot of bad career advice given by well meaning parents in my work with medical professionals and it can be downright heartbreaking, especially AFTER they've spent hundreds of thousands and a decade of their life pursuing a career based on outdated perceptions of their parents, which is often frankly BAD information.
Meanwhile, I see tons of industrious, smart kids making major successes of themselves in all ranges of industries because they're...well...industrious and smart.
If you want your kids to be equipped with the best information, then give them the best and most up to date information. Either learn yourself or bring in the expertise of a professional, but don't feed them generalizations based on a very limited set of data from a decades old source.
Lastly, I want to share a little from a personal perspective what benefit my liberal arts background has done for my career.
In this increasingly multicultural and global economy, my courses in anthropology, history, religion, psychology, philosophy, psychology and linguistics has helped me immensely with respect to communication, management, and client relations, which has opened A LOT of doors for me.
I've seen careers live and die on matters of cultural awareness. I've seen a major client won over by someone having a knowledge of traditional cooking from their home region, and I've seen a career utterly crushed by someone being ignorant about middle east history and working for a new Persian boss.
Now, you don't *need* a liberal arts degree to be well informed, but shiiiit, it sure does make it a lot easier.
The point is that there is real and tangible career value to broader humanities studies, even if it just makes someone more well rounded and generally knowledgeable. That stuff matters. Well rounded, knowledgeable people aren't born that way, they need to learn it somewhere, and some learn it in university.