Education Pathways for Children of Highly Credentialed Professionals
When the next chapter belongs to your child, not your résumé
You have spent years doing the long path.
Demanding universities. Hard, lonely exams. Long evenings in libraries while other people were already cashing bonuses and booking holidays. You did what serious families, serious schools, and serious firms encourage: an honours degree in something unforgiving like economics, finance, law, engineering, mathematics. Then a demanding designation. CFA. An actuarial fellowship. A professional accounting title. Real estate or valuation credentials. Professional engineering.
Now there is a young person in your life, somewhere between late high school and their early twenties, staring at the same horizon where you once stood. University brochures, college programs, internships, gap years, maybe a trade or a start-up idea. Teachers and relatives are very sure about what counts as “a good path.” So are the rankings. So is LinkedIn.
Inside your family, the stakes feel high.
You want them to have options. You want them protected from regret. You know that certain doors in finance, law, engineering, medicine or consulting open more easily with the right degree, from the right place, at the right time.
You also know, quietly, that a life can be bent badly out of shape by an education path that fits the family story, not the person. A prestigious university on a league table does not automatically make it a suitable place for your son or daughter: their temperament, their health, their curiosity, their faith, their need for belonging and good teaching.
This service sits in that tension.
It is for families where the parents are heavily educated, and the son or daughter is trying to find a path that is actually suitable for who they are, not just for the logos on the hoodie or the firm you happen to work at.
The familiar pattern
In many of the families I meet, the young person is bright, diligent and often intense. They learn quickly, care about doing things properly, and feel the pressure of “not wasting” their abilities. On the outside, they can look like the ideal candidate for the same path you took: high marks, strong references, a school that already talks about law school, investment banking, engineering, or graduate school as the “obvious next step.”
On the inside, the picture is rarely that clean.
Sometimes they are quietly excited by those paths and afraid to say so in case they “fail.”
Sometimes they are quietly repelled by those paths and afraid to say so in case they disappoint everyone.
Sometimes they genuinely have no idea yet, because they have never had a calm space to explore what they want without performing for someone else’s expectations.
Parents live their own version of the tangle: a wish to be supportive without pushing, a fear of watching their child choose something that closes doors too early, and a private question about how much of their guidance is love and how much is anxiety. Many also carry ghosts: the degree they regret, the job that nearly broke them, the credential that cost their health, the move that looked brilliant on paper and quietly hollowed them out. Those ghosts sit in the room even when no one says their names.
This service does not pretend those ghosts aren’t there. It also doesn’t let them quietly steer another person’s life.
Suitability, not just rankings
Old advice still circulates: “Get into the best school you can, then everything else will follow.” Rankings, glossy brochures, LinkedIn posts and family pride all lean in the same direction.
You know from your own life that this is, at best, incomplete.
A highly ranked university can be the wrong size, the wrong culture, the wrong city, the wrong teaching style for a particular young person. A smaller college can be precisely the right place for them to grow. A co-op program, a local university, or a mix of work and study can be a better fit than a famous name that leaves them lost and anonymous.
So we start with a different question:
What kind of learning, in what kind of environment, among what kind of people, would be suitable for this particular person at this particular moment in their life?
That question may still lead toward a demanding, well-known university. It may point toward a college, an apprenticeship, or a slower route that leaves space for health, faith, creativity or family responsibilities. It may acknowledge that another degree is not automatically the answer, and that sometimes the next right move is experience, not more classroom time.
Suitability is not anti-ambition. It is ambition that remembers there is a human being inside the CV.
What we actually talk about
Every family arrives with its own mix of hope, fear and history. A typical pattern looks like this:
We begin with a conversation with you as parents, to hear your story, your hopes, and how you see your son or daughter. Then I meet your child on their own, so they can speak freely without managing your reactions. Later, if everyone agrees, we may have joint conversations.
With your son or daughter, we explore questions such as:
What do you actually enjoy when nobody is watching or grading you?
Where do you lose track of time in a good way? What does that suggest about interests and temperament?
How much load can you realistically carry right now, given your health, attention, and emotional life?
What does “a good life” mean to you in ordinary days, not in slogans?
What does the idea of university or college feel like: exciting, dutiful, terrifying, confusing?
With you as parents, we look at:
Where you are supporting, and where you may be trying to repair your own past through your child’s choices.
Which fears are grounded: debt, immigration rules, labour markets, professional bottlenecks.
Which fears are amplified by status pressure, social comparison, or your own unfinished business.
The tone is calm, curious and practical. Nobody gets labelled. Nobody is shamed. Nobody is told what they “must” do. The aim is clearer seeing, and then steps that feel honest for the person who has to live the outcome.
A different kind of third voice
There is no shortage of voices around your child.
Teachers see a narrow slice of their life and tend to recommend what worked for previous star students.
Social media turns other people’s offers and acceptances into a highlight reel.
Relatives drop in with “back in my day” wisdom that belongs to a different labour market entirely.
What is often missing is a third adult who:
understands high-pressure professional paths from the inside
respects serious education without worshipping prestige
can speak both the language of CFAs, CPAs, JDs and engineers and the language of health, meaning, and suitability
refuses to treat your child as a project, a hedge, or a legacy plan
That is the stance I take.
My own path runs through an MPhil in economics from Cambridge, the CFA designation, institutional investment roles, global CFA teaching, and then a deliberate pivot away from the kind of life that slowly drains health and curiosity. I have watched thousands of highly educated people climb into narrow lanes and later wonder why they feel stuck.
That experience gives me range. I can talk rankings, admission odds, and professional gates with the same seriousness as sleep, faith, friendship, and the danger of living a life designed for someone else.
Who decides
Agency belongs, ultimately, to your son or daughter.
You may or may not pay the bills. You give or withhold consent. You live with the consequences alongside them. That matters. But they are the ones who have to wake up in the dorm room, sit in the lectures, carry the workload, and build a life from the education they choose.
So the goal of this work is not to produce a compliant “yes” to a path you have already selected. If your hope is that I will talk your child into law school, investment banking, medicine, or any other track you have predetermined, I am not the right person for your family.
What we aim for instead is a shared decision that everyone can respect, even if it is not the one any of you imagined at the outset: a path the young adult can own as theirs, and that you can sign off on with open eyes rather than grudging pressure.
When the answers surprise everyone
Sometimes this process confirms what you were hoping.
Your daughter really does want the demanding program you quietly favoured, and now she has a clearer sense of why. Your son genuinely lights up when he talks about engineering or law, and the work is about choosing the most suitable route rather than arguing about the entire field.
Sometimes the conversations surface something less tidy.
The young person voices a path that is less predictable, less clearly monetised, less smoothly accepted at family dinners. Or they voice the need for time: to work, to try things, to grow up a little before signing long-term debt for a degree they do not yet understand.
In those moments, my job is not to wave a flag for “follow your passion” and walk away. It is to help everyone see costs, risks and opportunities as clearly as possible:
Where does this path lead if things go well?
What is the plan if things go badly?
How can this person keep growing in skills, character and capability even if the route is crooked?
Where do your values as a family genuinely align, and where do they diverge?
The aim is not a perfect decision but a “good enough” choice. The aim is a choice everyone can live with honestly, without silent resentment on either side.
How this fits into my wider work
Education pathways do not sit in a separate universe from careers. They are the opening moves.
I spend most of my time with mid-career and senior professionals asking questions like:
“Is this what I meant to build?”
“How did I end up here almost by accident?”
“Why does this respectable path feel quietly wrong?”
Many of those stories begin with a well-intentioned education choice that matched status more than suitability. This service exists, in part, to help the next generation avoid sleepwalking into the same trap.
It also exists because high-earning, highly credentialed households often feel they cannot speak freely about these questions. The school sees them as “fine.” Friends assume the kids will be “sorted.” Meanwhile the family is carrying very human uncertainty under a very polished surface.
You do not need a crisis to justify this work. Curiosity and care are enough.
Practical notes
This work usually happens as a short series of conversations rather than a single consultation. Sometimes those conversations are in Toronto. Sometimes they are online, across time zones, when families are dispersed.
Your son or daughter remains the main decision-maker about their path. You remain the adults who support, consent, and help with realities like money, geography and timing. I act as an independent partner who brings long-range perspective, respect for your professional world, and a stubborn belief that suitability and sanity are worth protecting early.
If you would like to explore whether this fits your family, you can reach me directly through the details on the Connect page. There are no forms, no mailing list, and no public success stories. Just one more adult who takes your child’s life as seriously as you do, and who sees beyond rankings to the person who has to live the years that come after.