Partnering for Success : Getting Involved in Your Child's Career Planning, Defining College Goals

Getting Involved in Your Child’s Career Planning

If you are a boomer or post-boomer-era parent, you probably have some reservations about playing a part in your child’s career decision making. You believe in freedom of occupational choice. You reject a European-style system of education in which young people take a test at age 16 to determine whether they will go to university or into vocational training.

Because of this, you don’t place much emphasis on career planning in high school. You believe that should happen later, when your child is in college. You don’t want anyone—yourself or others—to pressure advanced students into premature decision making. You don’t want anyone to suggest that students with lower academic skills settle for less than a four-year degree. You question whether any eighteen-year-old can make an informed career choice, as many of the jobs he will hold have yet to be created. You believe that all young people should have the chance for higher education and all young people, especially your child, deserve a second chance. And you are willing to commit your tax dollars, as well as your personal savings, to fund these efforts.

At the same time, you are worried about money.

One year at a four-year private college now costs approximately $40,000 in tuition, fees, room and board and books. One year at a state’s main, flagship public institution now costs approximately $20,000.

This means that you, as a parent, are looking at a $160,000 investment in private education or an $80,000 investment in public education for your child to earn a four-year bachelor’s degree. This is provided your child can finish a degree in just four years. You are aware that the cost of college has exceeded the rate of inflation for the past 20 years, and you believe college costs will continue to increase. You know that students cobble together financial-aid packages to reduce the sticker price of college, but you also know that students and their families are borrowing money at increasingly high interest rates to pay for a college degree.

Because of all this, you feel torn. You want your child to be free to make his own choices, but you know poor choices are expensive. You are eager for your child to go to college, but you also want your child to finish in a timely manner. Your long-term economic goal is for your child to become an independent adult who has a good job and is self-supporting. But how is this supposed to happen? If you, as a parent, should keep your hands off when it comes to guiding your child’s career choice, how is that career choice to be made?

Your answer, if you are like most boomer-era parents, is “by going to college.” You believe that college is the place your child will find himself. If you just get your child into the right college, everything, including a good job, will all work out.

If the economy today worked the way it did when you were in school, this would be a reasonable expectation. Thirty or forty years ago, anyone could roll out of college with any major and expect to land a good job with benefits. The U.S. economy was structured to absorb unfocused college graduates. Management ranks were expanding. Companies were willing to bring young people into organizational hierarchies, train them to accomplish organizational goals, and move them up the corporate ladder. These companies offered stable jobs with good benefit packages.

Consider Jeff’s experience.

Jeff graduated from State U with good grades and a bachelor’s degree in history in 1975. His work experience included editing the sports section of the student newspaper, managing a public swimming pool, and working as an orderly at a hospital during the academic year.

At the beginning of his senior year in college, Jeff went to the career placement center on campus. This was the office where seniors went to find jobs. He signed up for eight on-campus interviews. Five of these interviews were for “manager trainee” positions with local companies and national corporations; two of these interviews were for administrative positions with large government agencies hiring for their expanding regional offices. All the job opportunities had good starting salaries and comprehensive benefit plans.

Jeff was hired by a regional telephone company as an accounting office supervisor. This was a first-line management position. Jeff had no formal training in business. He was part of a group of new hires that included five women and two men, all of whom had college degrees. Jeff later learned the company was under pressure to hire women for management-training positions. The company had been fined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for paying male manager trainees more than female manager trainees for doing the same job in the 1960s. Jeff was assigned to the data processing unit, where he was trained to supervise 12 clerical employees processing daily service orders for the company. He saw his first computer, an IBM 360/60, which occupied a space the size of an executive office suite today.

Jeff acknowledges that there would be no way he would qualify for the same job opportunity right out of college today. Deregulation of the industry, technological changes, and fierce competition in the telecommunications industry have completely changed the hiring landscape in Jeff’s organization.

Jeff’s company is no longer looking for liberal arts graduates to train to “do it their way.” His company is looking for a few select college graduates who can “hit the ground running.” These candidates must have excellent grades in a business, finance, or computer information systems major and proven work experience in a corporate setting in order to qualify for an entry-level job comparable to the one Jeff was offered 35 years ago.

How can you help your child navigate this changed job market? If you can no longer assume that a college degree, any degree, will guarantee a foothold in today’s economy, what can you do to help your child get focused?