Re-Thinking the Corporate Choice

Colleges Move Toward Encouraging Alternative Career Paths

Walking in mid-town on a steamy Friday afternoon, the sidewalk transformed into an intricate, multiple-lane highway of speed-racing pedestrians skirting around wide-eyed, loitering tourists with irritated grunts, I took a moment to observe the business-clad walkers in the fast-lane. There were penguin-suit strutters with cufflinks gleaming, swaying khaki-legs topped with white button-downs and chunky loafers, black A-line skirts, elegant silk-mix wrap-dresses, and the endless click-click-click of a thousand appropriate-height kitten-heels. Here were the aspiring powerhouses of New York City. The early-to-work and late-home summer toilers of the white-collar persuasion, consuming and marketing goods for others to consume, washing down their eleven-hour days with venti-iced-non-fat-lattes. What do they all have in common? They are twenty-something and relatively new to the corporate cradle.

Where were they before the suits replaced the shorts in their tiny downtown apartments? Most likely, they were drinking Bud Light in dorm rooms, running the Earth Club after Sociology class and lounging on the manicured greens of their Ivy League or NESCAC lawns in-between. At their elite colleges, these youngsters often dreamed of making a difference in the world. Of solving climate change, curing AIDS, reforming the public education system. I know this much is true because I recently walked across the stage to retrieve the laminated diploma from just such an esteemed institution for higher learning. But, when leaping out of the college bubble and into the so-called “real world,” these dreams are more often than not replaced by new visions of large paychecks, extravagant company dinners and, well, prestige. An interesting New York Times article from June 23rd discusses the move from Ivy to Wall— Street, that is.

Pouring into Wall Street and Shying Away from Public Service

In “Big Paycheck or Service? Students are Put to the Test,” Sara Rimer writes about how top-level students from competitive universities are being recruited for jobs in corporate America. Financial services and management consulting top the lists, with 20% of the 2008 Harvard graduating class entering these occupations alone. And I see why. The online application process through the universities’ career services websites are relatively painless, and, as I can attest from my own experience, these are the fields that are highlighted and pushed to the greatest extent in those turbulent job-searching months as the curtain begins to fall over your undergraduate years. But, according to Rimer, though colleges seem to encourage students to apply for these kinds of jobs (my friends and I certainly felt that way), they may actually be beginning to resist the trend. Of course, the colleges have a lot to gain from their graduates going into lucrative careers (time to give back to your alma mater, anyone?), but producing some world-changing freedom-fighters, politicians, artists and humanitarians would arguably also be a nice detail for the alumni catalogue.

Colleges are beginning to do their bit to encourage alternative career paths, as they realize that many top students who would otherwise contribute to, say, public service are joining hedge funds instead. At Harvard, for instance, Professor Howard Gardener is teaching “reflection” seminars to encourage students to really think through ”the connection between their educations and aspirations.” The effort has gained wide support at Harvard, with new president, Drew Gilpin Faust, joining in. She made “the topic the cornerstone of her address to seniors during commencement week. Dr. Faust noted that in the past year, whenever she has met with students, their first question has always been the same: ‘Why are so many of us going to Wall Street?’” Why indeed.

Yes, those Loans Have to be Paid, but What if Colleges Would do it for You...?

The article cites security as a major motivator for young people going for the corporate career options. In answer to this, Rimer writes that, “Tufts announced that it would pay off college loans for graduates who chose public service jobs. And officials at Harvard, Penn, Amherst and a number of other colleges say one reason they have begun emphasizing grants instead of loans in financial aid is so students do not feel pressured by their debts to pursue lucrative careers.”

Even Barack Obama is getting on the bandwagon. In his Weslyan University commencement speech this year, he “sounded an impassioned call to public service, and warned that the pursuit of narrow self-interest — ‘the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition.’”

I understand the lure of security and the promise of corporate cushioning for the future. The world can be a frightening place. And a mountain of loans is scary as hell. But the young people graduating from American elite universities belong to 0.000000000001% of the world’s population that can really choose jobs and life paths as they wish. If these kids don’t dare take a risks, who will? That is not to say that taking a corporate job is a bad thing. Not at all. But if the so-called great halls of great minds are, in Harvard professor Howard Gardener’s words, “simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall Street,” then the world is bound to miss out on a lot of top-tier talent that could otherwise have chosen alternative careers.

I wish more of us recent grads would take the brains and spunk that we have and create innovative new companies and policies, rather than immediately taking the safe route to lucrative living. But if the corporate way truly is for you, make another brave move: take your insider’s perspective and dare to revolutionize corporate America to be more in-tune towards balance and equality. That way, you’ll still be doing a great public service.