Much of “The Week in Review” section of The New York Times this morning is about greed. Frank Rich’s column laments the fact at his college (and mine) “In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling among student s at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors.” Rich points out the incongruity that Larry Summers, when president of Harvard, was actively consulting for a hedge fund: “Summers saw no conflict with moonlighting in the money racket while running the entire university.” But Summers’s successor, Drew Faust, has set a different tone, urging last year’s graduating class to “find work you love.”
Steve Lohr’s article sees the brighter side, reporting that “with finance disgraced,” American undergraduates may begin to opt for postgraduation careers that do not promise immediate enrichment. It is too soon to tell, but Lohr reports that “a new pattern of occupational choice seems to be emerging. Public service, government, the sciences and even teaching look to be winners, while fewer shiny, young minds are embarking on careers in finance and business consulting.”
Each of us who teaches undergraduates is aware of how dramatically this year’s seniors have revised their short-term job objectives. The I-bankers are not interviewing on our campuses this year, and even the consulting firms are somewhat less in evidence. Applications to Teach for America are at an all-time high, as are a wide-range of nonprofit postgraduate fellowship programs. I think this is an occasion for dancing in the streets, but I fear that we ought to be cautious about drawing large inferences. We know that the range of employment options for seniors has changed, but we do not yet know that their values have changed. When (and if) the economy recovers, will the preferences of the Bubble era re-emerge? I would guess that they will, and that if we (undergraduate teachers) want to change preferences, we will have to take some decidedly affirmative action.
One of the most articulate voices for such change has been the Harvard psychologist, Howard Gardner, who shares my fear that greed will return with economic recovery. Rich quotes him as saying that the current enthusiasm for public sector employment “may be transitory unless there’s the political vision and leadership to make altruistic values stick after our crisis has passed.” If Gardner is right, and I am sure that he is, then the most important leadership required to transform student preferences must come from within higher education. For several decades we have accommodated higher education to the market, and based our own policies on greed (high salaries, low workloads, fundraising from the rich, market orientation for everything from compensation to program development). Shouldn’t reform begin at home?
