My student's family won't let her study what she wants

Question

Yesterday I had a tearful encounter in office hours with the most avid participant in the math class I teach, in which she related the following situation.

She is an international student whose parents are well off by local standards but have made significant financial sacrifices for her to study abroad at the university where I work. Part of the plan was that she should have a scholarship, but it has recently been denied on the grounds her grades are not strong enough, and as a result she will have to switch to a nearby university in the fall. Part of why her grades aren't strong is because she is a very specifically focused student: professional mathematics is all she really wants to do with her life. She already knows. When she is able to do what she wants, she just studies math. She works extremely hard, but at end of the day she couldn't care less about her other courses and views the struggle to get good grades as a distraction from what's important to her.

Her parents disagree that there is any future in math for her. They tell her it's not worth it and that she's bad at it. They're medical doctors in a country where teachers are treated poorly, viewed as people lacking the talent to do anything better, and are worried that a career in math would be both unremunerative and undignified—which might be the case in her home country, but my student also doesn't hope to return home. Nevertheless, for because her parents are footing the bill and because she's not willing to openly defy them, my student will finish a pure CS major when she enrolls in her new university, and won't be allowed to enroll in any future math courses during undergrad.

I watched her just crumble as she told me this, weeping and apologizing for it, unable to make eye contact. She's about to embark, without any choice in the matter, on a course that's going to make her miserable for years, if not longer, and moreover, from what I know of her, she is just the kind of person who should be in math.

I've told her there's nothing anyone can do to stop her from learning on her own, and that absolutely no instructor would refuse to let her sit in on whatever math course she wants, so that at most this will be a hiccup resulting in her getting a sort of bachelor's degree she doesn't really want at the expense of what she'd rather do, and that at the time she's financially independent, she can really study what she wants, but one could tell she's not completely buying this. She's devastated, and I can hardly blame her.

What can I (or anyone) do to help in this situation?

Answer 1

Some thoughts:

• Suggest counseling. They are much more likely to be able to help support her in expressing her goals to her parents, understanding their position, and perhaps in negotiating some sort of compromise with them. Family relationship issues are likely to be a pretty common concern for college students, and a university counseling service will have had lots of experience with them.

• Suggest talking to the financial aid office. They may be able to explore other options for funding if she decides to go on without her parents' financial support, though admittedly there may not be a lot of options for international students.

• Talk to your contacts at the other university. See if you can connect her with someone who may be sympathetic to her situation, and who might be able to help her with some of the other things mentioned here.

• Help her explore degree and course options. Is there some other degree offered by the institution that might represent a compromise between what she wants and what her parents are willing to pay for? Are there ways for her to take more classes that she's interested in?

• She needs to be able to succeed at things even when they don't interest her. You write "She couldn't care less about her other courses and her grades". Regardless of the degree she pursues, this is a recipe for disaster in US academia, where breadth is considered essential and degree requirements are designed accordingly, and overall GPA is widely used as a metric of success, e.g. for graduate schools and jobs.

  (I am guessing from your terminology that you are in the US. If not, please correct me.)

  She doesn't have to like all her courses, but she does have to be able to push through and do her best work even in those she dislikes. That's a necessary academic and life skill, and as a faculty member you may be able to help her develop that skill. Counseling services may also help with this, if she has some emotional resistance to get past.

• She might find these courses more interesting if she gives them a chance. Even pure mathematicians can benefit greatly from knowledge about other fields, and you or other faculty members might be able to help her see connections with things that interest her more.

Answer 2

I have had a small number of students in the same situation over the decades.

My first rule is: Don't get between the student and the parents. That's a complicated and stormy dynamic and I can't do anything but harm there.

My second rule is: Advise the student to cede to the parents for the undergrad degree. To the student, the 4 years of undergrad study seems like a lifetime, but it's really just dust in the wind. I say, "Suck it up for a couple more years. In grad school you'll get tuition waived and a stipend and you won't need your parents' support. Do what they want now. Do what you want in grad school."

But mostly, don't mess with parental authority. It's a nuclear volatile area.

Answer 3

This is obviously a very difficult situation that raises tricky issues to do with psychology, parenting, and the sociology of the unnamed country the student is from, which are far above my StackExhange pay grade. I feel rather at a loss to suggest any concrete measures that would tip the scales in the student’s favor in a situation involving such powerful forces of adversity and delicate sociological factors.

However, one thing that I feel may be worth exploring is the student’s parents’ actual state of knowledge regarding the value of a higher education in mathematics. Are they aware that Forbes magazine declared “mathematician” to be the number 1 job in the U.S. in 2014? Or that the American Mathematical Society has a web page listing many examples of industries employing mathematicians? That page has links to many additional resources touting the virtues of mathematics as a career - for example, this web page on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website, which taught me interesting statistics and facts, such as:

• The median annual wage for mathematicians was $105,810 in May 2016.

• Employment of mathematicians is projected to grow 29 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations.

Thus, the one concrete idea I can think of is for either you, the student, or maybe a senior professor at your university (if you are not one yourself) to communicate some of this information to the student’s parents, in writing or over the phone or Skype or maybe even a face to face meeting (if that can be arranged). I would be a bit more understanding if they wanted to discourage their daughter from pursuing an educational track with poor employment prospects (though that would still be sad and tragic from the student’s point of view), but as it happens, math is actually an extremely useful and even lucrative profession these days — so I’m wondering if by giving the parents some actual data about how attractive math can be as a career it just might be possible to persuade them that a comfortable life and their daughter’s personal happiness are not mutually exclusive goals.

In any case, good luck to you and to your student.

Answer 4

Depending on her mathematical interests, it might be worth looking for career options at the intersection of mathematics and computer science - there's a lot happening there, and some of it even pays quite well ;-)

My father has been a "Professor of Computer Science" for most of his career, but to a large extent he's a mathematician who uses computers as a tool and who applies mathematics to getting more out of computers.

Areas like operations research combine computing and mathematical concepts, and there's high demand for people who can master both.

Answer 5

1. Computer Science and Math are close already, especially if she chooses specializations like theoretical computer science. Tell her that many of the subjects can be seen as applied mathematics. And later in work she will probably need at least programming anyways. Other subjects like set theory, logics, signal processing, cryptography, automata and formal languages, complexity theory either contain large amounts of Math or can be useful for a mathematician. I think Math is even one of the biggest reason for CS students to drop out at my University. If she for example takes a Bachelor Thesis topic like cryptography she can do Math for half a year.
2. She can still do a PhD in Math with a Master in CS.
3. She can still study Math after studying CS.
4. She can still study Math in parallel to CS and also online during semester break.
5. In Germany we have a main subject and a "subsubject" ("Nebenfach") where you can take whatever you want with a much smaller amount of hours, is that possible there as well?
6. If all that doesn't help and she really wants to change the subject and it is to expensive to pay for studying on her own she can try to come to Germany where studying is nearly free (around 200 € / semester). There is a "Studienkolleg" where foreigners learn German for a while and then they can attend University.

So I would not try to convice the parents, it sounds as if they have their fixed opinion, but instead try to sidestep the issue and give CS a chance while choosing as many Math or Math-like courses as possible. If you want to support her more, can you give her a job as a teaching assistant or something similar? Also for the relation with their parents I would refer her to student counceling, they will be better trained to help with this sort of problem.

Answer 6

Theoretical Computer Science (and issues like finite automata, formal grammars, complexity theory, graph theory) are mathematics-laden to a degree where they prevent a number of people from making careers in that area.

Many courses labelled "Computer Science" are instead glorified programming courses particular in undergraduate tracks. If your student focuses on the right kind of courses, she'll have a career in Computer Science involving a whole lot of heavy-duty mathematics. It may not be kind of "Computer Science" with good job prospects in her home country but may fit the currently prescribed course of action.

Answer 7

Seems clear that the relationship between parents and daughter is a major factor, and some answers are missing the fact that this is a bigger thing with her and with her home culture than it would be in USA or Canada.

Her parents may be rightly, or erroneously, trying to do what’s best for her. Or they may be trying to protect themselves from the embarrassment of having an unsuccessful daughter.

However, IF she is willing to risk a break from her parents, might there be someone in Canada who would vouch for her to obtain immigrant status? My parents are far from wealthy, but their “sponsorship” was enough for a young lady from an Asian country to be allowed to stay. That’s USA, though, and her parents were not opposed.

Answer 8

Well, life is hard.

I think unless you're able and willing to directly fund her, you can't help her and she'll have to help herself. The main ways to do this would be:

1. Persuade her parents. It sounds like she's given up, in which case you'd probably have even less chance of being successful.
2. Get a loan of some kind, or another scholarship. Your institution (or the new one) might have some scheme to help students facing financial difficulties. Alternatively, there might be a scholarship out there for mathematics students. I did a quick Google search and found this; something similar might be available for her.

Having said that there're some caveats. If she breaks with her parents to fund her own education, she'll likely be facing lifelong consequences. This might be culturally acceptable in some countries, but in others, their relationship could be permanently damaged.

The other issue is that if she's completely convinced she wants to be a mathematics researcher, her career path won't be lucrative for quite a while - perhaps until she gets a permanent position. She might have difficulty paying off loans. This is also risky in the sense that if she later realizes how hard it is to get a permanent position in mathematics and / or how different graduate studies is from undergraduate, she might get depressed looking at the student debt she's accrued - all for naught.

On a personal level, I'd suggest she follow her parents' wishes. The risk of permanent damage to their relationship is too high, and besides they have her best interests at heart. She can still have a fulfilling and possibly better-paying career outside of mathematics. You could even show her the compound interest chart and how fast exponential growth is, and suggest that she start saving money after graduation. Eventually, she can fund mathematics research directly. She might not be able to do it herself, but she can still have a direct positive impact on the field.

Answer 9

I'm assuming this is a US question. I would suggest the student a double major: math and economy, CS and economy, for instance. Also, I would suggest to try biasing the subject of the other major towards math applied in economy, which is something banks and overbearing parents love.

Answer 10

Hopefully I can provide a different outlook here as I’m a CS major trying to get into software development, not an academic. But this question touched me so much I had to answer.

It’s less common, but certainly not impossible to get a job as a software developer as a math major. So she may be able to sell that to her parents. She should tell them that employers will like to see that she did so well in such a hard subject and it will give her an advantage over CS majors (this is probably stretching the truth a bit, but not a complete lie).

I’ve also heard that medical schools and law schools like math majors. But I don’t know enough about either of those to verify if it’s true.

So I would say plan A is for her to try and convince them that there are other things she can do with a math major besides academia.

Plan B would be to find a compromise. Maybe applied math or statistics. From what I understand those are heavy on the math, but a little more practical than pure math.

And if all else fails, CS involves a lot of math too. Especially when you get to the more theoretical side, such as algorithms and language theory. If she’s going to get a masters or phd, that’s even better as she can focus more on the mathematical side and less on the hardware side. Find out if she has any interest in machine learning, data science or artificial intelligence. She may enjoy it more than she thinks.

Answer 11

The main problem here is what is going to happen in the new school. If she doesn't study and do well she might as well be defying her parents.

1. She could talk to her parents about taking say 1 extra course in math at the same time as she does her main course. Offer to pay them back after she graduates. However, this will likely fail as she blew off her other courses and her parents have learned she can't be trusted. If she had established good faith with her parents by completing the existing courses with good grades this would be an easy sell.

Maybe if she succeeds in the new school this can be revisited.

2. Get a part time job somewhere and pay for her own math classes. Danger: She has to do well in all her classes or this will back fire. Her parents will see she failed again, and probably cut her off and bring her home. Where she will have to take up a terrible job in her own country until she is old enough to strike out on her own.

Your only hope of changing things is to prove math is a viable career field. Using actual job listing and a significant body of evidence.

Another issue is "doesn't hope to return home". The big question here, is does her parents know,understand, and accept this fact, because it is critical. Their main argument is that in their own country her math skills will be wasted. If her parents were to accept this, then she could produce articles from countries she is thinking about moving to on how math and/or teaching is highly valued in that country.

However, "doesn't hope to return home" I am assuming she is there on a student visa or some such permit. After that expires then what? Will she have already applied for citizenship in the new country? Otherwise she will be forced to return to her country. The citizenship process can be multi-year process, hope doing her homework on this process now.

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Maybe its time to impress on her how badly thing can get if she doesn't temporarily do what her parents want. Then if she turns her grades around maybe her parents will be receptive to what she wants.

We aren't give hardly any cultural information, so I am just making up a worst cast ending.

She fails, or does not succeed to her parents expectations, they bring her home. Then what probably no math jobs, and she will be forced to take another job, maybe even a house maid. Maybe even forced into an arranged marriage, have children and never do math more advance than the math needed for cooking dinner.

I am not a fan of scare tactics, but if she does badly another semester her parent are going to be mad. They may take action that make her life 10x more miserable than they are now.

Answer 12

I just read the question and realized that it could be quite a specific case if your student is from China. If she is from China, do NOT try to convince her to go against her parents will. I've been teaching thousands of Chinese students and majority of them study what their parents chose for them, not what they want. Their family culture is very complicated. Parent-child bond is pretty much sacred and maintaining it is essential for the child happiness in life.

What I do is usually find a way they can use their passion in the profession that was chosen for them. Math is easy actually, it is used everywhere. She can apply math to any profession. Give her some ideas, examples, advice on math applications in her field. Chinese parents choose professions for their children mostly using two criteria: expected income and lifestyle suitable for their culture. It's not that bad if you think about it.

Answer 13

I'd council not getting too involved in family conflicts.

However it sort of sounds like they're of the belief that math can only lead to a job as a math teacher and are trying to push her into a "safe" major.

Perhaps giving the student some tables of income projections by major along with the kinds of jobs they open up might give her something to reassure them with.

Math does pretty well on that score and in her shoes I'd probably be asking "why are you asking me to step down into a (likely) slightly worse-paid, slightly lower status career path? If I was training to become a doctor would you demand I step down to nurse?"

http://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/physics-projected-as-top-paid-class-of-2016-math-and-sciences-major/

Answer 14

With all due respect to her parents and difficult situation, it is she that must do the academic work, and later, practice in a field she finds rewarding. I'd hope her parents wish her to find happiness long term, yet they believe she 'doesn't know what's best'.

There's no easy way to combat this, but here is one potential route: 1) Student states unequivocally her desire for a different path 2) Student proves sincerity by applying for (but not necessarily accepting) financial aid to render her independent of the parents support.

The parents can then either double down and allow her to incur debt, or back down and let her follow her interests.