What a Post-Secondary Counselor Wants Parents to Know: Answers to Your Most Common Questions
Last Tuesday, I sat across from a mom and her 17-year-old daughter in my small office at the public high school. The mom’s notebook was open to a page of scribbled questions, the top one underlined twice: “Is creative writing a stupid major?” The daughter, Lila, slouched so low in her chair her hoodie fell over her eyes, and picked at a frayed seam on her jeans. She’d already told me she didn’t want to talk about it, that her mom made her come. This is how most of my days go. I’ve been a post-secondary counselor for 12 years, and the questions I get haven’t changed much, even as college costs and job markets shift. I get more or less the same five questions at every meeting, from parents who are scared they’ll steer their kid wrong, and kids who are scared they’ll let their parents down.
Lila’s mom said she just wants her daughter to be able to pay her own rent, not be stuck living at home at 25. She’d heard over and over that arts degrees are useless, that Lila should pick something like education or nursing that guarantees a job. I don’t tell parents to just let their kid follow their dream no matter what—that’s useless, empty advice. What I do tell every family who asks this question is to pull up three entry-level job postings for the major the kid wants, right then and there. We did that that day. The first three that popped up for entry-level creative writing grads were content marketing specialist at a local healthcare company, technical writer for a regional construction firm, and junior communications coordinator for the state park system. None of them paid six figures, but all of them paid more than the entry-level teaching jobs Lila’s mom was pushing her toward, and all required a bachelor’s in any writing-related field.
The concrete step I send home with every family here is simple: do this exercise together. Read the job descriptions, talk about whether your kid can see themselves doing that day-to-day work. If they only like the idea of being a famous novelist and don’t want any of the other roles a writing degree opens up, then you can have a real conversation about next steps. It’s way more useful than arguing about “practicality” with no actual information to back it up. If you’re still on the fence after that, have your kid do one 10-hour-a-week internship the summer before senior year—no pay required if it’s for a small local business or non-profit. That’s enough time to test if the field fits, no big commitment or expense.
A couple weeks before Lila’s meeting, a dad named Mike came in alone, because his 18-year-old son Jake refused to step foot in my office. Jake graduated last spring, works 30 hours a week at a local brewery, and says he doesn’t want to go to college. Mike’s question was blunt: “Is he just lazy, and how do I force him to get on track?” I hear this at least once a week. Most of the time, it’s not laziness. It’s that kids have been told their whole high school careers that college is the only acceptable next step, but no one ever broke it down into something that doesn’t feel huge and terrifying. Jake told Mike he didn’t want to take on $30,000 of debt for a major he doesn’t even know he wants. That’s actually a pretty reasonable take, I told Mike.
The concrete advice I gave him was to skip the big “we need to talk about your future” conversation—those always make kids shut down. Instead, next time you’re grabbing takeout or driving to pick up groceries, ask two low-stakes questions: “What’s the best part of your job at the brewery right now?” and “What’s the worst part?” Mike came back a week later and said he tried it. Jake said the best part was testing new recipes and helping the owner develop seasonal brews, and the worst part was knowing he can’t get a raise or take over running the brewhouse unless he knows more about food safety and small business. So Mike suggested they go tour the local community college’s small business management program together, just to look. No pressure to sign up for classes this semester. Jake agreed. They’re still sorting it out, but that’s way further than they were two weeks before.
Last month, a mom named Maria came in crying after her son got an acceptance to a private liberal arts school out of state. The aid package left $28,000 a year that the family would have to cover. Maria works as a custodian at the local elementary school, her husband fixes cars, and they have two other kids at home. She kept saying she let her son down, that she should have saved more, that she ruined his chances. This is the question that weighs on me most, because parents carry so much unnecessary guilt here. I didn’t tell her it would all work out—that’s not helpful. I pulled up the graduate outcome data for the same environmental science major their son wants at our in-state public university. The average starting salary for the private school grads was $54,000. For the in-state public, it was $52,000. That’s a $2,000 difference a year, for an $80,000 difference in total debt. The tip I give all families here is simple: check the actual outcome data for the specific major, not just the school’s overall reputation. Nine times out of 10, for most fields, the long-term outcomes are almost identical between a well-regarded in-state public and an expensive private school. Starting at community college for two years before transferring also isn’t a consolation prize. I’ve had dozens of students do that, and they end up with the same degree from the four-year school, half the debt, and employers almost never ask where you started.
I don’t have all the answers. Every kid is different, and every family has different limits. Last week, I got an email from a student I worked with 10 years ago. She took two years off after high school, worked at a coffee shop, started at community college when she was 20, changed her major three times, and now she’s a pediatric nurse making more than I do. She said she never would have figured that out if her parents had forced her to go straight to college out of high school. The biggest mistake I see parents make is treating post-secondary like a one-shot deal that has to happen by 18, on the exact plan everyone talks about. Most of the time, it’s just the next step. It can be small, it can change, and very few wrong turns can’t be fixed later. We closed Lila’s meeting by saving the job postings to her mom’s phone, and scheduled a follow-up for next week if they had more questions. No final decisions needed that day. That’s enough, more often than not.
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