I created a visualforce page to override the new button of custom object called "Employment History" which is a child object to the standard contact object. I did this in order for the record name (in this case its called employment history name) to be pre-populated with the value "Default Value - IGNORE" so that I could update it with some concatenated field values on the same record using a workflow field update.
I was able to override the new button with a custom visualforce page in order for the record name to be pre-populated but this prevented the master-detail field to the contact object called "Student" from being populated with the parent record when I went to click the new button on the related list located on the contact detail page.
Here is the code I used to override the new button
<apex:page standardController="Employment_History__c"
action="{!URLFOR($Action.Employment_History__c.New, null, ['Name'='Default
Value - IGNORE'], true)}"
/>
I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me how I can set the master detail field on the employment history object equal to the contact ID of the parent contact record.