Colleges and Universities across the east coast are working to encourage students to opt out of finance careers with big paychecks in favor of public service. Based on a survey conducted last year by Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson, administrators and faculty at Harvard became aware that nearly half of the university’s graduates were accepting jobs in the high-paying worlds of investment banking and financial consulting.  Since then, Harvard and others have taken steps to encourage students to focus their futures on public service. Howard Gardner, a prominent education professor at Harvard, is leading seminars at several schools focused on pushing students to think more deeply about the connection between a liberal arts education and their professional aspirations. Gardner hopes that the seminars will encourage students to use their education to look beyond Wall Street. Several other schools – including Amherst, Tufts, and the University of Pennsylvania – are also pushing to propel students into the public sector and have expanded public service fellowship and internship opportunities. Tufts announced this past fall that it would pay off college loans for graduates who choose public service careers, a move that Harvard Law School echoed. Many students who were interviewed said they would prefer public service jobs but felt doing so would leave them unable to pay off their student loans.

Read the Crimson’s Survey of the graduating class of 2008
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President Faust's Address to Harvard's Graduating Class
Read more about Tufts from The Boston Globe