Big Paycheck or Service? "Are Ivy League schools simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall St.?"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test
By SARA RIMER
Published: June 23, 2008

A prominent education professor at Harvard has begun leading “reflection” seminars at three highly selective colleges, which he hopes will push undergraduates to think more deeply about the connection between their educations and aspirations. The professor, Howard Gardner, hopes the seminars will encourage more students to consider public service and other careers beyond the consulting and financial jobs that he says are almost the automatic next step for so many graduates of top colleges.

“Is this what a Harvard education is for?” asked Professor Gardner, who is teaching the seminars at Harvard, Amherst and Colby with colleagues. “Are Ivy League schools simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall Street?”

Although others have expressed similar concerns in recent years, his views have gained support on the Harvard campus with students, faculty and even the new president, Drew Gilpin Faust, who 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?”

On other campuses as well, officials are questioning with new vigor whether too many top students who might otherwise turn their talents to a broader array of fields are being lured by high-paying corporate jobs, and whether colleges should do more to encourage students to consider other careers, especially public service....

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In his commencement speech last month at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, voiced a similar theme when 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.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/education/23careers.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[Alcibiades]

1. "simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall Street?”

Um, isn't that what they have always been? And I don't know what the scholarship programs are like at the ivies, but most US students graduate with levels of debt that mean they have to take the highest-paying job.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. One idea cited in the article is to give students more grants in place of loans...

so that making money to pay off loans isn't the prime consideration when deciding on a profession.