Nursing. You’d always have a job with benefits. Nurses are so in demand they can practically make their own hours. More and more guys are becoming nurses, as well. For those reasons. Good pay, too.

It’s true that a woman (or a man, for that matter) alone can live under conditions that you wouldn’t inflict on a spouse or children, but it is most emphatically NOT true to assume either that singles “have the luxury of moving home with mom and dad,” or that it’s possible to earn a living (no matter how meagre) AND pay for school AND run even the smallest of households without anyone else to relieve you even momentarily from any of those tasks, much less to offer a moment of emotional support — whatever in the world leads you to either of those assumptions?

Practical education is any education that isn’t mere job training. Job training goes out of date, sometimes even before you pick up your diploma. The “impractical” fields — the ones that teach you to think and reason and research and understand — even if they don’t lead directly to a steady job on the factory floor — are the ones that allow you to constantly reinvent yourself and your career, learn new things, and convince employers or clients that you are worthy of their taking a gamble on you.

If all you’ve learned is which buttons to push to make a particular computer program “go,” you might find a job pushing those buttons in the summer after you graduate, but you’ll be nearly useless soon afterward, growing more useless as each year passes.

Plus what Ardis said.

Wow! I wonder if you would stick me into the “impractical” box. I mean, I had no idea that I was only majoring in elementary education because I only came to college because I wanted to catch a husband. Oh, but wait, I’m a convert (in college, actually) so does this whole Mormon girl college joke degree thing apply to me? Oh, but I did join the Church at 19 and I did get married at 20, so maybe it does. But I had my major before I met my husband, so maybe not?

My dh got his degree in Spanish and Art (talk about impractical)and he’s almost finished getting his Master’s in Marriage & Family Therapy. I should be sure to tell him that he needs to get some marketable skills. Actually, it would probably be very easy for me to get a teaching job and make some decent money here in TX. My dh started college on a full scholarship for art. I guess he was planning on banking on my income.

Look, I get your point, and as the YW president in my ward, I’ve encouraged the girls to consider if they would be able to support a family on the income they would make in the career they choose. That may be an issue for them because we never know what life might bring. I also tell them to pray about what they choose, because Heavenly Father knows what’s best for each of us, and that’s not the same for everyone. He may actually want some of them to major in some of those “soft” subjects. I would never joke around with them about choosing a major based on a marriage prospect. Education and marriage are two of the biggest decisions they will make in their lives.

I’m sorry to sound upset, I DO understand what you mean, and I’m sorry for not really answering the question that you asked. I’ve had people assume that I only chose my major because I wanted to get married and be a mother and I wasn’t really serious about school. I can see how they get there as I married at 20 and now have 4 kids, but it’s simply not true. And to assume that I did so because I was counting on my husband to be practical and do all the “real work” so I could sit and home and go spend “his money”–well it’s hurtful and I think that attitude really devalues the form of motherhood that I have chosen. I’ll get off my soapbox now. I have some laundry to fold.

We still have a couple of very nice wars on, and, as a keen student of human nature, I boldly predict that we will have wars evermore. So martial skills are highly practical.

(Part I).

I think the conversation stops when you get to graduate school. A Masters/PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy is presumably a bit different from a terminal bachelor’s. So I think we have to limit the discussion to undergraduate education only.

Frankly, I think a BS in Management is an utter waste of time. It’s not even a business degree, even though the management grad has to take business classes. It’s certainly not an MBA. And it qualifies the recipient to do what, exactly? “Manage”? Manage what? Isn’t one of the great legacies of Nibley and Scott Adams (wow, there’s a combo!) that managers who don’t have any experience in a field suck?

I had a dual bachelor’s from BYU (they only award you one, but you get to say you have two), in a technical field and in a humanities field. I can tell you that the BS got me into a technical career and into grad school, but that frankly, BYU did a terrible job in presenting a few of the courses toward that BS (now I’m almost PhD, I can say that, and at any rate, the BYU program in question has gotten better). But I don’t “use” any of the technical skills I learned, directly. As Ardis says, some were obsolete the minute I walked across the stage.

I can tell you that the humanities/BA half of my double major has had a SIGNIFICANTLY higher impact on my career than the BS half. There’s simply no comparison. The ability to read/write/analyze is one of the most significant skills any technical careerist can have, and most new graduates in the sciences and engineering are terrible communicators. They can’t put together a technical document to save their lives. (One of the finest things BYU does is require the junior year advanced writing courses.)

It took getting a master’s in the technical field before I felt that my technical education had come up to the level of the humanities education.

(Part 3.)

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of while going to college to get an education and a degree that you want to meet a spouse. Men do that just as much as women do, even today.

Someone once told me that there’s nothing wrong with the “find-a-bachelor” and “MRS” degrees, as long as they don’t terminally lead to dropping out and getting a “PhT – putting hubby through”.

I met an old man once who made his living by selling pottery and ceramic sculptures which he made in kilns in his backyard. He never made very much money, he had very few possessions, he probably had no health insurance, but he managed to get by. Late in life, he married a woman who had no objection to his complete lack of desire for accomplishment. They were two of the happiest people I have ever met.

Unfortunately, I myself have never been able to shake the opinion that if I only had about 100% more income, I would be happier.

Love the passion, folks!

People are clearly mad at me, so perhaps it will help to add (and I’ll go back and make it clear in the post) that I also studied the humanities and got an education degree, so I was also one of those girls people thought were not a serious student. I currently teach elementary school (although have certifications for birth-adult education). I was not married at 21, or as a student at all, and you can pick whether it was because I was ugly, fat, or opinionated. Or all 3. But I hope it is clear that some of this is tongue in cheek.

Ardis–you are very right that not all single people have a safety net of parents with whom to live. Indeed, not all of the post can apply to all people. I do think that it would be easier to move back in with parents if you were single than if you had 3 kids, though (if you had willing parents). Or get a roommate. Some living conditions are just more flexible when there are fewer of you.

I whole-heartedly agree with this: “ones that allow you to constantly reinvent yourself and your career, learn new things, and convince employers or clients that you are worthy of their taking a gamble on you” and just want to point out that a single person might have the luxury of more time to “convince employers” or work in other capacities while they build up good will toward them than a mother in need of money to feed the family NOW. Basically speaking, I think a woman returning to work after a period of not work who has an outdated BS in Psychology could have a hard time securing a job that will cater for her family.

Sam B–true that a BA/S is often a great opportunity to widen horizons, etc. I would say that that is why so many Bachelors really don’t convert to a job without further education. No education is wasted and a mom or a law student or an accountant with a broad education is a wonderful thing. I also agree that you can’t chase trends (when I was a history undergrad, we were encouraged to go into academics and get our history PhDs to replace the retirees–I have little doubt that had I done so I would now be piecing together adjunct work and community college classes to cobble out a living) and it would be best to actually ENJOY what you do. But do it practically. For example, I have some siblings who have degrees in their passion: drama. Yet can they earn a living at that? So far, no. They could add on a teaching degree and do quite well, or do have trained in something totally unrelated to pay the bills so they can do drama in some other capacity.

HeidiAnn–I don’t think there is anything impractical about an education degree (so long as you keep up your certification while you are not working). I think you already have it all worked out, you just don’t like the way I said it. Fair enough. I am sure YOU are not like this, but I think women devalue themselves when they put themselves in a position of being unemployable or unable to support their families when need be. As queuno mentioned, having a bachelors in a field is much different from having a graduate in that same field. Most of the time, you become much more employable, as I am sure your husband is.

gst–good idea. Or enlist.

Scott B–I think mathematics is a great example. I know a woman who is an accountant and SAHM and she can pretty much work whenever she wants as much as she wants. Great field that many women don’t think of as flexible, but it certainly can be.

queuno–I think you made some important points: many fields that are impractical at the undergraduate level are much more employable with graduate degree in hand. While it is the saving grace of humanities majors everywhere that we can read and write, almost no one is looking to employ someone with a bachelors in French Cinema. I think your dad was right on: no education is wasted, and there is no risk of being an over-educated mother. It makes my heart ache when women drop out or (almost as bad) change their major to something that they can finish before hubby graduates, regardless of their interest in the field or it’s practicality.

TStevens–I always wonder how therapists can stand the whining! It must take a much better person than you or I! I already pointed out that I agree it is important to like what you do, but I am not sure I would advise anyone to “let the job take care of itself”–I say, work and MAKE a way for your passion to yield some income.

queuno (#13), no offense to your sister-in-law, but there’s a big difference between a degree program that aspires to give a broad intellectual foundation in liberal arts without remunerative opportunities tied to training (English, for example), and a degree in total bullshit (Travel & Tourism). If my kids want to study English, Philosophy, Art, French, fine, good for them. They’d just better not tell me that they want to study “family living” or “communications.”

And as long as we’re debating the relative merits of certain fields: http://xkcd.com/435/

Well, since death was mentioned, might I suggest that there will always be a need for morticians, prior to the resurrection.

Hey, it’s a job that doesn’t even require a degree.

Besides, wordwise, it’s not too much of a transition from “beautician” to “mortician,” right?

;)

Good death and disability insurance is a more sure way to secure the family then hoping a wife’s academic career will be just the right thing she needs fifteen years down the road to start providing income for the family at short notice.

In graduate school I met a young professor of chemical engineering who was already becoming someone of note in the field. It was instructive to me that her undergraduate degree was in economics.

“Outside of academia, and after as little as a year or two post graduation, do employers really care what your major was, as long as you have the degree?”

Thanks so much for bringing that up. I think that is true of many, many jobs.

I agree with John Mansfield that decent insurance can be a better plan than the stay-at-home parent being ready to jump into the workforce at any given moment. But that only helps if one spouse dies or is disabled, unless someone knows about lay-off insurance.

I don’t have any particularly pratical skills if I need to go back to work (and it has been seriously discussed before, with my husband being laid off at one point and disabled at another). The plan is for me to return to school for a masters degree. We’ve spent a lot of time educating my husband and we’d be willing to do the same for me if we needed it.

The jobs I’d recommend to any young woman are: pharmacist, nurse, or dental hygienist (sp?). Watching my friends who have those careers, they seem perfect for the ability to find ways to set your own hours and they make a decent amount of money. I don’t think I’d ever recommend being a teacher (I have a teaching degree). If you don’t teach, your certification lapses and you have to go back to school to recertify. The pay stinks. You have good benefits and summers off, but either you have to be very frugal or you have to work in the summer to supplement income. Plus, most teachers either work quite long hours and/or they bring work home with them, so not really great for spending time with your kids when you’re home. The one caveat to my suggested careers are that it seems you have to keep your toe in the field – not working very much, but at least a few hours a month and developing a relationship with an employer who’ll let you pick and choose hours also helps immensely.

As someone who graduated with degrees in German and English and now works in a completely unrelated field (Networking Security), I don’t really see what you study in college as necessarily determining your field of work either (as many have already said). In fact, there isn’t really a degree that would lead you to my field of work though often employers look for someone with a Computer Science degree. My guess is that there are a number of other fields that are the same, so I see the marketable skills thing as completely separate from formal education. I say study what really interests you and also learn a marketable skill … maybe you can combine them, but if not, don’t worry.

JES–good suggestions. I would also say that people who don’t actually want to teach but enter the field for perceived benefits (the summers off is something of a myth) will be disappointed with the field, likely be unhappy, and probably an underwhelming teacher. It is practical for some, but not all.

DKL–you seem to have lots of skills acquired or developed outside of that formal education–I am guessing you will always land on your feet. Good luck.

RickFFM–thanks for your point about some jobs not having a specific path or corresponding major; I guess we should all be open to learning new skills and taking divergent paths. Again, that is great advice for people already working, harder for people who plan to take several years/decades “off.”

Naismith–thanks for clarifying.

queuno,

BYU must have had a pretty crap CS program if you think that the description Ardis gave of quickly obsolete button pushing applies to it. I’ve heard BYU CS people denigrate their programs before, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone be so harsh.

I was actually going to suggest a CS degree as a great degree for women in that you can get a job right out of college, you can find part-time work, and you can often find telecommuting work. Also, while languages come and go, if you got an actual CS education, your skills will be applicable to whatever language happens to be in vogue if you decide to leave the job market and re-enter a decade later.

DKL,

What are good industries to be in both before and after Jesus comes?

I think that gst’s idea is a great one, given that there will be an increase in wars and violence up until the point that Jesus arrives. One would make enough money in the meantime to last the thousand years of peace that Jesus brings.

Also, it is possible that Jesus will bring “peace through strength” and that war machine types will be working overtime through the millennium.

DKL–you are so cool. You would fit in so well with us liberals.
I did the best Mrs. degree ever at BYU: I married my professor, thus guaranteeing him his job (since single professors were not being retained at BYU), getting myself free tuition, and making myself look super intelligent just because I was (am) Bruce Young’s wife. If anyone doubts my intelligence, I just send them his resume.

Nursing. It is only 2 years of education after high school to be an RN, and pay is very good for the amount of education required.

My wife is helping the world prepare for the millennium by getting a masters in biochemistry. She’ll already understand DNA and how to replicate people and stuff so that when we’re all sweating through that class, she can go back to learn how to make quilts. In the meantime I work as a computer programmer to support her habit. She’s in it for both the education and as a back-up in case I happen to fail (our record on car and bicycle accidents seems to reinforce this possibility). Plus she wants to do something with herself. Perhaps, if and when that time comes, she’ll discover that she likes to be home with kids. Or maybe not. In any case, as her companion I feel it’s my duty to help her be whatever she wants to be. And she supports me in the things I want to do too. That, to me, is what marriage and family are all about.