High Paying Careers for Our Children

By Dan White

Our schools must focus our career training on skills that provide the greatest chance for each student to achieve independence, stability, and economic success.

When I started UCLA, I was pre-med studying to become a doctor. In my final career choice however, I decided to focus on building electronic trading systems for the corporate bond and credit default swap markets. Of course, this career choice did not exist until a few years after college. There is nothing my parents could have read or anyone they could have spoken to that would have anticipated this possibility. However, they still enabled me to make this career choice by insisting that I worked hard to study math and science. They also made sure that I was skilled in computer technologies.

As parents, we know that there will always be doctors and lawyers who will have high-paying jobs. I learned about doctors and lawyers as a toddler at about the same time I learned about teachers, firemen, policemen, auto-mechanics, and nurses. These careers will probably always exist. However, for each of these traditional jobs, there are probably 100 more jobs that may be better choices for our children when they enter the working world. I believe that many of the best jobs for our children do not yet exist. As parents, we encourage our children to prepare for a better future. However, we sometimes face a challenge to provide them with a tangible view of what future they are working for.

There are many reasons to have a job + including having a positive impact in the lives of others. Another large reason is money. For some, making money will provide the best tools to apply additional resources to changing the world for the better.

As part of a better educational environment, we must lead our children towards making the best decisions in preparing for the future. Therefore, we need to make sure they have good information on school and career choices.