Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test

Click here for the article of The New York Times, 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.

...I don’t think I would have applied if it wasn’t almost an automatic option,” said Neil Sawhney, 21, a recent graduate who turned down a management consulting job for a paralegal job, and plans to go to law school. “It’s hard to overstate how much everyone is doing it.” ...

Comments

[Viktor O. Ledenyov, Kharkov, Ukraine]

The business education programs in the US leading business schools at universities have to be reshaped completely. The suggestions by Professor Howard Gardner to encourage more Harvard students to consider public service and other careers beyond the consulting and financial jobs may be interpreted as inability to educate the leaders, who have enough skills and entrepreneurial experiences to establish the new businesses in the US. This is a weak move. My vision is that the educational programs at North American universities are mainly concentrated on the business evaluation methodologies. Professors develop the students skills to evaluate rather than to innovate and create. Therefore, the efforts have to be taken to encourage students to found the new high tech businesses to create the new nano-electronic devices, software, services and so on. The students from Harvard shouldn't be advised to try to get the governmental jobs and stay for the rest of their life on the governmental spending list, because it is absolute nonsense, which will lead the nation to the state of collapse rather than to the state of prosperity.