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THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has disrupted so many aspects of our lives. I was reminded of that recently at, of all places, a bar in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, airport.
My wife and I were returning from our 40th wedding anniversary trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Our evening flight was delayed, so we decided to get a glass of wine at a small kiosk bar in the terminal.
The bartender was a young woman in her early 20s. She was friendly, knowledgeable and adept at serving several groups of boisterous seniors returning from the Myrtle Beach area. We struck up a conversation. She told us she had recently graduated from a local university with dual degrees in political science and women’s studies.
Her women’s studies major focused on a challenging topic: the history of women’s inequality and subjugation. She said she’d begun her college studies with the idea that she could use her dual majors to help the plight of women around the world.
But the combination of the depressing coursework, along with several years of COVID-induced isolation, now had her questioning her career choice. She said she was working as a bartender because it paid well—and allowed her to go back to school, where she could take some business and marketing classes.
Another young couple at the bar joined the conversation. The young man had just graduated from one of New Jersey’s state universities with a degree in criminal justice. He said COVID had badly disrupted the last two years of college, and had him also questioning his choice of a major.
When I asked him about his career path, he acknowledged that he didn’t have one. He said he was going to spend the summer figuring out his next steps. Like our bartender, he said he planned to work in the hospitality industry to make money while he contemplated his options.
It’s a similar story with some of the young women who have looked after our grandson over the past two years. I’ve seen how COVID upended their college plans. Several switched from attending out-of-state schools to our local college.
All these young people I met are friendly, intelligent, articulate, and able to hold pleasant conversations with my wife and me. They all demonstrate a strong work ethic, finding ways to make money while they figure out what they want to do.
Still, I worry about how the pandemic years have delayed their transition to longer-term careers and adulthood. The internet is rife with articles and studies discussing the impact of COVID on high school and college students, including decreases in graduation rates, increases in mental health issues and delays in attending college.
As a parent, one of the great joys is to watch your children grow up and succeed. This isn’t just about workplace success. It’s also about becoming adults, building families and taking their place as valued members of their community.
I’m sure many HumbleDollar readers have a wealth of experience navigating challenging career and life obstacles. I’ve had my share, and somehow came out the other side. I had the good fortune to work with, manage and mentor hundreds of young engineers and scientists. Watching them succeed is one of my career highlights.
I can’t think of anything I faced that compares with these past few years. The extreme level of uncertainty has made it hard to make plans. Engineers like me hate uncertainty because it’s so difficult to build a life on shifting sands. I’d be interested to know if other members of the HumbleDollar community share my concerns, and if they have any ideas for how to help.
Richard Connor is a semi-retired aerospace engineer with a keen interest in finance. He enjoys a wide variety of other interests, including chasing grandkids, space, sports, travel, winemaking and reading. Follow Rick on Twitter @RConnor609 and check out his earlier articles.
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We have a 20-something daughter who works in hospitality. She started working as a server while going to school and has now worked her way up to a more fine dining job with pay she can actually live on in Northern California—not lavishly, but she can get by, especially if she has a roommate(s) or romantic partner to share rent.
She dropped out of college with about a year to go. She had finished all of her general requirements at a community college and transferred to a four-year state school, but she always hated school and couldn’t settle on a major that inspired her, so she decided she’d rather just work full-time and stop floundering. Thankfully, she has no student loans, and because she took a relatively cost-efficient route to get that far, supporting her through school wasn’t a problem for us.
We were talking to my brother about her the other day, saying that we still hoped she’d go back and finish and that we’d told her we’ll finance it if she does. He’s 50 and also dropped out of college. It took awhile, but he now has a good job and career path. He asked “Why do you care if she finishes her degree? Does it matter?” Our response was “Well, it might, unless she wants to work in hospitality for the rest of her life. Some other job types have a college degree as an entry-level starting point because, among other things, it shows that you stuck to something and finished it.” He said “What about vocational training?” We said yes, we’d mentioned that as a possibility to her, too.
I’m still mulling all this over. Does it matter if she ever finishes her degree? Maybe, maybe not. I’m a professor, so obviously I finished several degrees, and perhaps that skews my perspective. The problem was and still is that even though she doesn’t necessarily want to be a server forever, she doesn’t especially have an alternate vision for her life, either.
I also remember my former Pilates instructor, a bright young woman who graduated in 2009 from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in something social science-y…and was making her living as a fitness instructor. She said she couldn’t find a single thing remotely connected to her degree when she graduated into the Great Recession.
Being idealistic about how to make your mark on the world may work for some people, but most I suspect, get a huge wake-up call when career opportunities and livable salaries don’t align with expectations.
I saw a statistic a while back that said a majority of college graduates were dissatisfied with their major. Many of them would have been better suited for tech school careers. 1-2 year programs that still had 6 figure income possibilities, many of whom I knew in the electrical field. Practical education that could be utilized virtually anywhere someone wanted to go.
On the other hand, colleges are more than happy to sign you up with only a cursory exploration as to whether or not you are suited for the career you’ve expressed interest in.
The current student loan crisis is directly related to people having huge balances from education not related to anything they are doing now. Proceed with caution the road to education.
In my experience as a recently retired business professor, very few students enter college with clear career goals. However, a large number are well aware of the career opportunities offered by the different majors, and many never consider majoring in the Arts.
During my time as chair of a management and marketing department, I met with numerous students who transferred from accounting, finance, or a STEM field to management or marketing after realizing that they lacked the requisite quantitative skills to succeed in one of those fields. Most of these students graduated with several job offers (with the exception of the Great Recession). I also encountered quite a few students with good quant skills who realized were dissatisfied with their initial choice and decided to switch to a different major with good career prospects (e.g., accounting to finance, engineering to finance or business analytics).
A large part of the student loan crisis is from loans made by worthless for-profit private schools (e.g., Trump U) and from people who dropped out of community colleges.
Among four-year students, for-profit enrollment leads to more loans, higher loan amounts, an increased likelihood of borrowing, and an increased risk of default. Two-year for-profit students also take out more loans, originate more student debt, and have higher default rates. We present evidence that these debt and default outcomes are driven by higher for-profit tuition and a negative effect of for-profit enrollment on labor market outcomes. Our results point to high costs and low returns to for-profit enrollment that generate worse student debt and repayment outcomes. These findings have important implications for public investments in higher education as well as for how students make postsecondary choices.
Student Debt and Default: The Role of For-Profit Colleges
Luis Armona, Rajashri Chakrabarti, and Michael F. Lovenheim Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 811 April 2017; revised October 2021
What does fretting and whining and wallowing in self-pity get you about life’s challenges?
How about welcoming life challenges as a means to become your better self challenge after challenge, setback after setback? Don’t be a victum of your own self-defeating attitudes and actions!
Don’t resort to drugs and alcohol to drown out your misery.
I recommend reading the book: Stoicism written by Jason Hemlock.
Buy it as a gift to your young adult children.
Since when is questioning your career choice whining?
I agree that things are very difficult for today’s young people (as well as everyone else). However, I think the employment situation was worse for those who graduated into the Great Recession. My two nephews graduated from Duke in 2008 and 2011. Both spent their first several years in jobs where employers had lowered starting pay and cut back on benefits. Both now have good jobs but are several years behind in wealth accumulation.
Personally, I am more concerned about the impact of the pandemic on children who have yet to reach college age.
There is no doubt the pandemic has disrupted many young lives in various ways. However, in the 2 examples you gave both young people were able to finish their degrees and they are now questioning their degree choices. I’m not sure how that’s necessarily due to the pandemic, but rather just poor choices when they entered college. I’m saying this from experience. In my youth my first degree was in education which was a poor choice for me. It wasn’t until I went back to school and earned a computer science degree 10 years later that I finally found my vocation. But that error was mine. During my career I’ve seen many people who chose poorly when selecting a college degree (assuming a good paying job was part of the end goal). I suspect that’ll (unfortunately) continue to be the case going forward.
Regardless of the uncertainty that young people today experience, most have access to a strong jobs market. Then too, society at large is generally understanding of a delayed path to adulthood (for example, living at home) and susceptibility to mental health issues. Those societal allowances were not so evident in decades past. Each generation has its own challenges.
I see it, in part, as a growth experience. When things are easy we don’t grow so much.
Richard, I can’t think of anything on the scale of the Pandemic that so affected peoples lives and careers either. You pretty much have to go back to WWII for that.
Human beings are very resilient so I suspect the setbacks of the last two years will be overcome and some people may even derive some benefit from the experience.
While nothing on the scale of COVID, people have suffered setbacks that have taken years to recover. I was in the National Guard back in March 1968 and one night President Johnson announced he was activating 25,000 guardsman for Vietnam, me and my company being among them.
Not being married and still living at home at the time, I was one of the lucky ones. Many of the guys were married with children and mortgages. If they were not in the guard they would not have been drafted, now many lost their jobs, couldn’t pay their mortgages and attempted to live on a privates army pay.
Back in those days the safety nets – and sympathy – for citizen soldiers did not exist. For many their careers and finances were set back decades. About 3/4 of our company ended up in Viet Nam further stressing the families.
Certainly not on the scale of COVID – except for the families involved, but they too learned to cope and recover from a lousy two years in their lives.
Our ability to adjust, helping neighbors, doing without some things, experiencing hardships together may all turn out to be positives someday. LET’S HOPE