Avoiding a Path to Nowhere

I-banking and consulting. Consulting and I-banking. I-banking vs. consulting. What more could be on a Harvard senior's mind on the day of the career forum? Not much, it seems. While this year's career week included panels on Opportunities in the Public Sector and Entrepreneurship in the Technology Sector, the investment banking vs. consulting panel was the clear popular favorite, outdrawing the public sector discussion by 4 to 1.

I've always known that Harvard has its share--if not more than its share--of people who as children preferred a trip to the bank to the toy store. As first-years they handed out business cards and smarmy handshakes and as seniors they believe the CEO of Goldman has a direct in with God himself. (As I-bankers always say, it's all about connections.)

I-banking is perfect for those for whom money is the only objective, and I would ask only that they leave the rest of us alone--that they not corrupt their children or use their dollars to corrupt our elections.

There are also people at Harvard who are not well-off (though few compared to the outside world), and they have a legitimate reason to seek well-paying jobs. Graduates whose families have never attained economic security understandably want or need what they did not have growing up and may need to repay years of family sacrifice by sending money home.

What concerns me is the third group: People who neither particularly want nor need the money, but have selected I-banking or, more often, consulting as a default--as what one does if one is not sure what to do.

It is to them that my plea is directed.

This group defends its choices on a variety of non-monetary grounds. They cite a challenging work environment, bright peers, the opportunity for advancement based on merit and a steep learning curve. They complain that the public sector is often the opposite: slow, inefficient and full of people who are unambitious and overly bureaucratic. They see career options like teaching and non-profit work as insufficiently influential and somehow less "professional."

While these objections have their merits, we need an entirely different standard of evaluation: Actions should be judged by their ends rather than the means. Rather than prioritizing the short-term personal benefits of consulting, think about whether the field allows you to put your talents and academic standing to some real use. Ask yourself not, "Where would I like to work?" but rather, "What am I trying to accomplish?"

Consulting in particular falls prey to this test, because firms (not to mention peons) often have little control over who their clients are. If you work for Bain you might be hired by Pfizer to analyze how Viagra might sustain its current level of popularity. If you work for Mitchell Madison you might be assigned to figure out when the best time is to begin marketing a competing product. Short-term effect: Your company either wins or loses, makes money or it doesn't; you get a raise or promotion or you don't. Long-term effect: Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

If you want to spend your life moving money from the rich to the richer go right ahead. But think for a moment about the energy you have put into getting this far. Hundreds of quizzes, tests, response papers and final exams, and for what? To make Mr. McKinsey richer?

This country has serious problems--the gap between rich and poor has been increasing rapidly for the past 20 years and shows no signs of slowing--and we are the ones with the skills to fix them. This summer I worked at the civil rights division of the United States Department of Education. Based on my experience there, all your perceptions of the public sector are probably right. Bureaucratic regulations are limitless, and many of those in government posts are neither hard-working nor ambitious. These are not the people we want working on some of our most important problems.

The saviors are also not the bleeding-heart liberals at the Kennedy School or the School of Education. The people in your K-School statistics class who make the curve so kind, the people in my ed school class who don't know the difference between a literature review and original research--these are not who we want creating our public policy, leading our advocacy groups or teaching our children.

We are caught in a vicious cycle, in which the brightest and most ambitious enter fields that most solidify the social status quo--blazing a path to nowhere in which the next generation of equally smart and energetic Harvard graduates is bound to follow.

I challenge the future I-bankers and consultants in the Class of 1999 to break the cycle. Join a non-profit and use those management skills honed at that summer consulting position to save valuable dollars. Take a government job, and show your co-workers how to write reports in four hours instead of four weeks. Become an educator and show your students there are still some teachers who can pass the standardized tests they are expected to pass.

And if you don't like any of these options, invent your own. If you want to be innovative, start your own non-profit or socially-responsible company. You will learn a lot more trying to implement your own ideas than you will researching other people's. Maybe then, when your children come to Harvard, consulting and I-banking will be the exception and not the rule.

Jal D. Mehta '99, an executive editor of The Crimson, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House.