Mark & Juanita wrote in message ws.com...
In article ,
says...
On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 03:50:48 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

I have been following this thread and would like your comment and
suggestions how to prepare your daughter for her future career. Let
say she will be attending high school this Fall. Should she targets
for an engineering, Social study, IT, CPA, Medical or others career?

Thanks


My opinion only. What does she enjoy? What does she absolutely not
like? That has to be considered in her decision as well as
employability -- it won't do any good to have a medical degree if she
does not (to the point of despise) working with biological organisms.

That said, considerations to take into account:
1. Medical -- despite all of the outsourcing going on, the people in
this country are going to get sick and need care. In addition, the
population (on average, due to the baby boom) is also aging, so more
medical professionals will be needed for quite some time.
2. Engineering: The primary job of a good engineering school is to
teach students to think and solve problems. As a person with an EE
degree, I find myself doing work in numerous fields. However, one must
not limit oneself to thinking that your career will be spent solely
designing or doing "turn the crank" engineering work -- that, at least
from what I have seen, tends to limit career opportunities and also in
the extreme case, I've seen people who insisted on remaining "circuit
designers" laid off because that was all they knew, their skills did not
keep up with technology, and they were not competitive with new-hires.
This does not imply that engineers have to move into management to
continue career growth, but leadership in a technical sense is a
requirement for continued career growth.
3. IT: I don't know -- you've seen the discussions regarding outsourcing
of IT support. IT management is probably a potential employment source
and there are people who will absolutely have to be in this country to
do some support functions, but this will probably not be a growth
opportunity for a while.
4. A&S degrees (Social studies, etc.) I cannot really comment one way or
another on this subject -- I just don't have any good data points.

You should add teaching to the list. I know, many have heard the Union
propaganda that teachers don't make enough, but that is (in many
areas) an outdated view. In Pennsylvania (which is rated 14th in
teacher salaries) the average teacher salary is $59,000 and the
average work year is 187 days. In western Pennsylvania the starting
salary with a BS or BA is around $34,000 with substantial raises until
the 15th to 19th year (depending on the local district) when you hit
an average of $78,000. This is in addition to a great retirement
package, medical and other benefits as well as about the most job
security you can have. Then consider the fact that in the US we bulked
up on teachers in 1968 to 1976 as the bulk of the original baby boom
passed through (and the public finally accepted hiring enough teachers
to support all the kids). These folks have been hitting retirement and
will continue to do so for a number of years causing a shortage.
Combined with the 3rd wave as baby boomers kids are now starting to
have kids and the demand for small class sizes (PA's average teacher
to student ratio is now 1 to 16)and the demand for teachers should
continue for a number of years. Unfortunately, like many such "high
demand" careers, there is always the possibility that by the time
someone who is currently in high school gets through college the
demand may have been satiated (i.e. like all those poor kids who
finished 4 years of college with an EE degree in the last year or
two).

Dave Hall