The summer I was eight years old, my YMCA camp counselors set aside an entire afternoon for a single craft: a poster describing who you are. Like any eight-year-old, I cherry-picked the most important facts about myself, such as that I liked chili (Hornell really should have subsidized my college fund), and that I wanted to be an actress when I grew up.

While you could make a solid case that this dream might simply have been because I consumed way too much early-2000s Nickelodeon sitcoms, I believe, in retrospect, that becoming an actress — a career with the ability to shape-shift into whomever you please — was the right answer for second-grade me.

I say this because my clamoring desire to be anything and everything has followed me throughout my life. In undergraduate, I picked majors on opposite poles, not only so I could weigh in with authority on the STEM vs. non-STEM clashes, but also because I found myself only ever fulfilled by heterogeneous knowledge and the belief this could take me anywhere. 

It’s no surprise then that I wound up in genetic counseling, a field fundamentally at the crux of many disciplines and one that offers a chocolate box of career choices. Historically, the cocoa beans were processed into one flavor: clinical genetic counselor, but as everyone knows, the “nontraditional” has become the “traditional” and genetic counselors now work in various domains.

My program, like all others (I presume), has kept up with this evolution. We are taught to view genetic counselors as less of a career and more of a skill set and to embrace the nontraditional. I don’t disagree with this rhetoric (after all, that’s what drew me in!). But, as the economic viability of the career becomes more and more jeopardized, this sentiment — embrace the nontraditional — can feel sobering and, in a sense, disquieting. 

Let me explain. First, genetic counseling is under multiple economic strangleholds, including the years-long battle to fortify our space in healthcare as billable providers, part of which hinges upon convincing the hospital systems and governments that we are “profitable.” This, along with other multifactorial reasons, has led to a shrinking clinical job market. When soil becomes acrid, farmers water elsewhere, so the arms-wide espousement of the nontraditional from our programs and field may subconsciously be due, in part, to the evaporating clinical space.

For students like me, we are aware of this larger economic precarity but seem more focused on the omnipresent: our most heinous economic foe is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which slashed GRAD Plus. I was lucky (or fateful?) to match the year before this was enacted, or otherwise, I would be forced to turn to private loans, notoriously skivvy, to pay for my education.

The exact ripples of the OBBBA are yet to be discerned. Perhaps it means that only privileged students applied this past cycle (certainly a sour outcome for a field that has fought endlessly to improve diversity), or perhaps a significant nonprivileged portion applied, matched and are now cluelessly navigating private lenders.

What is discernible to me, however, is that precisely because of the OBBBA, the fanfare towards the nontraditional (because of the lack of clinical jobs) now feels stale. Why would students be willing, let alone eager, to take on sizable, slippery debt only to end up in positions they could get without the debt? 

If we are being sorely truthful and reflective, the only career locked behind a master’s degree in genetic counseling is a clinical genetic counselor. Other positions — variant scientist, medical science liaison and nonprofit advocate, etc. — can be opened through far less economically risky keys.

One key is obvious: cheaper schooling, whether that be a fully funded master’s or PhD program. The other key is less glinting, but the ancient art of on-the-job training shouldn’t be overlooked or dismissed. It’s not a far stretch to believe someone with a demonstrated interest and skillset in science communication could be molded in-house to become a science communicator. 

It seems to me then that this problem is cyclical – and perhaps only solved through both angles. One, the field (read: people with far more expertise than me), must continue to tackle the faltering job market, primarily by gaining billable status, therefore opening more clinical jobs. Additionally, programs, no matter what novel shebang they are toting, should stop opening in regions already saturated by clinical genetic counselors. 

Second, the field (also read: people with far more gumption than me) must humbly discuss how they plan to make the degree affordable “again.” The Trump administration spun the Bill on the argument programs would have to lower their costs to survive. As a liberal, I knew what really would happen was that only the rich would survive. As a student, my not-so-secret hope is to see programs truly lower their costs.

After all, I want a world where any eight-year-old, when given a handful of markers and white poster paper, can write the word genetic counselor next to the age-old question: what do you want to be when you grow up? 

References

Riordan, S., Richardson, J., Zierhut, H., Goodnight, B. L., Sieling, F. H., Black, C. M., & Moore, R. A. (2024). Medicare beneficiary barriers to genetic counselor services: Implications for patient policy, decision-making, and care. Journal of genetic counseling, 33(2), 262–268. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgc4.1729

Strohmeyer, J., Arjunan, A., Ryan, L., Pan, V., Wicklund, C., & Witherington, S. (2023). No longer “non-traditional”: Genetic counselors' perceptions towards laboratory and industry roles. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 32, 646–655. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgc4.1670

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, May 6). Fact sheet: The Trump administration is making college more affordable. U.S. Department of Education. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/fact-sheet-trump-administration-making-college-more-affordable

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Federal Student Aid. (2025). One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Important Definitions. Office of Federal Student Aid. https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/big-updates/definitions

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