I grew up in a very affluent town in New Jersey. My parents moved to a little house on the wrong side of tracks, so we could attend the fancy public school in town. But with their blue collar roots and my dad's professor salary, my parents never really fit in. My mom would come home from PTA meetings with stories about the strutting moms who would brag about their son, the doctor and their daughter, the attorney. The strutters had big plans for their other kids to go to Harvard and choose the doctor/lawyer route also. By eighth grade, most of my classmates had memorized Barron's list of elite schools and had begun SAT test prep classes.
Well, doctors and lawyers are no longer the blue chip professions. It seems that the definition of "prestige" has shifted. "Especially among young people, professional status is now inextricably linked to ideas of flexibility and creativity, concepts alien to seemingly everyone but art students even a generation ago."
The Internet has also helped kill the status of doctors, because they no longer have a monopoly on information. Anyone can log onto WEBMD and come armed to their appointment with print outs of the latest studies and reports.
The article really overstates matters. A good number of my college students are applying to law school next year. You don't hear too many kids saying that they are planning on launching a computer start up after graduation. The path towards being a lawyer or a doctor is more well traveled and less risky.
Still, this small shift is very interesting. I'm amused that the snobby PTA moms in my old town can't brag as loudly as they used to. I love that prestige is now connected with flexible living, rather 80 hours in an office. I love that creativity and entrepreneurship is prestigious.
Question of the Day: What careers would you steer my college students towards?