To the OP and others. This makes for a tough read when you DD is in University and this is what she is studying and loving. What would you have done different or suggest she should do to avoid this?
Following along thanks.
OP is looking for very very particular work in a bad market. With her qualifications, she has an enormous amount of lucrative work available to her.
Your daughter should research the realities of various career options before committing to any grad school programs.
She has an astronomical number of resources available to her to figure these things out: probably a career center at her school, her professors, and even just the internet.
It really doesn't take much to figure out what doors open and what doors close with various grad school programs. Just tell her that doing more school doesn't automatically make your job prospects better and that she has to decide carefully how she wants to utilize her education to build her career.
Point taken. She claims to like forensic psychology but not sure where that would lead her. My thing is she is going to the #2 Big Ten school out of State on a full ride and be a shame to waste a 250k scholarship for a 35k a year potential Job. I will see what I can find. But even so it doesn't seem like a 4 year degree would do her much anyhow in that the Psychology Field.
This is just my personal opinion, feel free to disregard it, but this is really her challenge to figure out.
Speaking as someone who did a psych degree myself, the process of looking for career advice, googling, talking to profs, learning the ins and outs of what grad programs I had available to me, what they would cost and what kind of careers they lead to. It was really the beginning of me taking control of my own career and realising that my future was in my own hands.
Again, my personal perspective, as I'm not about to tell anyone how to parent, but if it were my daughter, I would sit her down and discuss how important her upcoming life/school/career decisions are, point her to a few really good resources, and let her figure it out from there, with an offer of endless supportive talks and advice along the way.
I put literally hundreds of hours into researching what my future could be, what skills I could learn to be marketable, and how to network, and that process has served me spectacularly throughout my entire career.
The process of figuring out "what the hell do I want to do with my career" doesn't end at university. It's a career-long process, and the sooner she learns the skills to handle that, the stronger she'll be in the future if/when something happens in her career and she needs to make tough decisions and intimidating moves like the OP.
Had I not done my *own* research and made my *own* decisions, I would have continued on down the path that my mentors had decided for me and I would have been miserable.
An undergrad in psych won't lead to any job, that's absolutely certain, but that's not to say that it won't help her immensely in her career. People natter on about STEM degrees, but I've been in enough environments with enough range of people to see some of the distinct advantages that a background like psych can offer.
Certain degrees open certain doors and close many others. Other degrees open virtually no doors, but can make you stand out once you find your own doors to walk through.
The vast majority of "good" jobs out there don't require a specific degree, so if grad school isn't her thing, then she should start thinking about what kind of work she wants to do in the future because with a psych degree, she has an enormous range of industries and roles to aim for.
Lastly, she should be far more concerned with figuring out what type of work she wants to do and what it takes to build that type of career, because like OP, she's going to need to understand the level of sacrifice necessary for each of her options.
Everything in life is a trade off.