Any parents out there who paid $200K+ for college, kid did great, and now can't find job?

[Anonymous]

Did they have internships prior to graduating? What experience do they have? It’s not the career centers job to find them a job, it’s to point them to resources. Honestly English degree without a direction towards law school is pretty worthless. It might as well be history or philosophy. A PP mentioned temping and truly that is what your kid should do. Tell the temp agency they want to work at a large corporation / Fortune 500 or large non profit. That will get them in the door and hopefully it will convert to a full time job. I don’t know what you mean about your kid not wanting to be underemployed. But any job paying 55-65k on a permanent role is worthy.

[Anonymous]

I feel like getting a job with a humanities degree is all about who you know. You always hear about low-paying jobs in publishing houses held by rich young women.

[Anonymous]

What do you do with a BA in English?

https://youtu.be/LqIVHzusbGI?si=M9mC_egp-V2eeb1W

[Anonymous]

My niece graduated as an English major. She is doing well now working for tech companies. She keeps getting recruited by other companies (doing non tech).

She worked a lot of low level jobs, one unpaid, while she was at NYU in NYC.

Overall, she has done well with her English major and it led to employment with the tech companies but she had to be willing to work as underemployed starting out and while in college.

[Anonymous]

I see where the offspring gets their entitled attitude from.

An English major complaining about underemployment?! Lmao is that a joke??

[Anonymous]

Teaching, Temp, Admin Asst, Tutoring--she needs to start with something and keep looking

Government job

[Anonymous]

peace corps. and then apply to graduate school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - major was English -- a beautiful major. The world needs more English majors.... especially from schools well known for their English & humanities departments. That should translate into many jobs in media, publishing, etc.

And yet your experience (as well as many others) is that the world does NOT need more English majors, and there are NOT many jobs out there for them even if they attend good schools.

Lesson there for other kids who are choosing majors…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:peace corps. and then apply to graduate school

great idea!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:troll post

Definitely not a troll post. Many thanks to all who have responded. Very helpful in trying to figure out how to encourage and guide this kid (she's a really good kid!).
It must be about the major in part -- and expecting too much from a first job...

Thoughts on high school teaching? Or is teaching an absolute no-go career now?

I have been encouraging my college sophomore to teach English in South Korea or Japan to get different experience for couple of years.

great idea!!

[Anonymous]

Has your child ever worked? At a paid job, not a volunteer ours, and not for a family friend.

Friend's child is in the same boat but has literally never held a paying job. Not any summer lifeguarding, food service, camp counselor, etc. Hard to get a job when you have literally never had one before at age 22.

[Anonymous]

Pretty sure your child will end up going to law school in couple years. I feel like half my law school class were English majors.

[Anonymous]

What kind of internships and/or summer jobs did they have OP?

[Anonymous]

I was an English major at an Ivy back in the day. All of my English major/Comp Lit friends were “underemployed” when we graduated. We sweated it out and we are all doing from just fine to fantastic now. Even the ones who didn’t go to grad school are making good livings in interesting careers. But we all had to hustle.

My best friend thought she won the lottery when she quit her coffee shop job because she got got a temp “office” job at a university which then led to a job in the development office, and now she’s the head development officer for an arts organization that is a household name. Just as one example.

[Anonymous]

I ask because I was an English major, and worked part time at college, and had full time summer jobs. Had no problem finding a position after college.

Have seen so many college graduates who haven't ever worked even a part time or summer job, and they have quite a shock when they do finally get their first full time job.