THE CONSULTANT ON CAREERS

The preparatory school senior is a youth singularly uninformed upon the question of his educational future. If he comes to Harvard, he comes, as a rule, because his father graduated from here, or because he has obtained a scholarship, or because he has always vaguely, unintelligently liked it. If he is seeking his intellectual fortune elsewhere he very possibly dislikes Harvard because it has no campus, or because of its indifference, or because it is near a large city. He has made his decision on purely artificial knowledge which he is forced to utilize in the absence of any real acquaintance with the University or with any other institution which he may have selected.

The Harvard senior is in a similar position when he faces the task of choosing his life work. The knowledge of the collegiate senior on his future is as vicarious and inadequate as the information of the preparatory senior in pursuit of his further education. It is to obviate, this difficulty that Harvard has established a Consultant on Careers.

The gold braid of Foreign Service leaves much the same romantic impression in a young man's mind as do the graceful chain of lakes that surround the University of Wisconsin. Publishing appears as an affable, gentlemanly vocation to the young graduate seeking a job. Industry has lost caste in the last few months and presents an impenetrable maze of intricacies to the novitiate.

It should he the task of the Consultant on Careers to explain that the halycon professions are shot with drabness and to decipher some of the more homely truths of the business world. It is not positions which undergraduates need so much as information about the fields towards which they gravitate. It is safe to say that almost every man who has been able to graduate from Harvard can be of some effective use in the world, if he finds himself in the correct environment. The Consultant on Careers should spare him the bewilderment and bitterness of disillusion which so often makes him deviate from his purpose and lose his personal faith.

Mr. Putnam's report shows how much has already been done to secure the future, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the undergraduate. He, together with his associates, has interviewed many students and has done much to educate their opinions, both of themselves and of the vocations they desire. The year and a half of the office's existence is too limited to give a definite estimate of its real value, for results can only be obtained and sufficiently analyzed over a prolonged period of time. But any student can now obtain information on all manner of careers from Mr. Putnam. He can read literature on every phase of the world's work. He can enjoy interviews with competent men connected with the field in which he wishes to specialize. Literature may be roseate in its description, men may be uncritical of their professions, but there are the best instructive sources that can be offered at the moment. The "dame school of experience" is surely the best way to educate a man in the ways of his profession, but much can be done, and much should be done, to enlighten those who have had, as yet, no chance to avail themselves of that experience.