What Are You Doing Next Year?

The moral implications of picking a career
Senior spring is a wonderful time at Harvard. Theses are done, coursework is light, and the weather has (finally) improved. I have enjoyed senior spring tremendously since turning in my thesis, and I am confident that it will be my best semester yet. But one thing still troubles me. As commencement nears, seniors are constantly subjected to the question, “What are you doing next year?” Many Harvard students have an answer by senior spring, even in this economic downturn, so perhaps the question does not bother them. For students like me, however, who can only answer with a shrug of the shoulders, the question can be a bit distressing.
Harvard students are neurotic, and so I attribute part of my unease to a crisis of confidence. If other students have successfully courted an employer or a graduate school, why haven’t I? And what does that say about me? This is indeed troubling, but I think something else is at work too. Lately I have started to think that I dislike the question not only because of the uncertainty in my future, but also because of what the question typically implies. When someone asks, “What are you doing next year?” at Harvard, there is a good chance the answer will be finance or consulting. In the last few years, anywhere from 20 percent to nearly half of all seniors entered one of those two professions.
Harvard students’ affinity for investment banks and consulting firms is unsettling because it suggests that the leaders of tomorrow are choosing their careers in a moral vacuum. The more we learn about the financial sector, in particular, the clearer it becomes that it is comprised largely of vulgar con artists. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has written a number of damning exposés demonstrating that financial firms routinely resort to fraud, bribery, and anything else that increases their profits. Most recently, evidence is emerging that “synthetic rate swaps” by Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are behind much of the crippling debt owed by cities, states, and countries, from Chicago to Mississippi to Greece.
I suspect that, by and large, the bankers and consultants of tomorrow are not asking themselves, “What can I do for my community?” They are instead asking, “How can I most profitably sell my labor?” Harvard students know that they have the skills that financial and consulting firms desire, and these companies spare no expense when courting in Cambridge.
As a result, for many of my peers their career choice is a decision between competing offers to do different versions of the same thing: make a very small group of extremely wealthy people even wealthier, often at the cost of everybody else.
Too many students are willing to ignore questions like “Is this ethical?” and “Who will benefit from my work?” They ignore these questions on the false premise that the private sphere is devoid of moral considerations. When I ask friends what they think about their future in banking or consulting, they typically acknowledge the improprieties while conceding that it does not bother them; it is as if the moral character of their work were irrelevant.
Yet your career choice is a moral decision, perhaps the most significant moral decision we will make. Students should reject the false notion that their career choices have no bearing on society and embrace the social responsibility that comes with the influence and prestige that a Harvard degree affords.
I have no doubt that my peers will be the leaders of tomorrow, but I worry about where they will lead us. Rather than lining up to serve those who need no assistance, my fellow seniors and I should search for where we can make the greatest difference. This will be difficult and will surely produce uncertainty, but I can live with uncertainty if it means I do not have to compromise my values. This comforts me every time I admit that I do not know what I am doing next year, and I hope that more of next year’s seniors will take comfort in it as well. Harvard students are diligent and talented, and the world can be a better place if we decide to make it so.
William Leiter ‘10 is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
Photo Credit: Flickr (laverrue)