The Day After Tomorrow

As University President Lawrence H. Summers welcomes the Class of 2004 into “the company of educated men and women” this morning, the top question on the minds of most graduates—and their parents—will be: what does an educated man or woman do next?

An increasing percentage of graduates don’t yet have an answer.

According to preliminary data from the College’s survey of seniors, at least 10 percent of respondents lacked firm plans for next year. The number of “undecideds” has crept up since the height of the dot-com boom in 1999, when only 4 percent of seniors said they weren’t sure what came next.

This observation squares with the broader picture painted by the survey numbers—a return to normalcy following the boom and bust career scene of turn-of-the-century Harvard.

The euphoria of 1999, and the rush to snatch-up the plentiful and always exciting jobs, is gone. But the deep retrenchment that followed the bubble burst, as top recruiters dramatically cut hiring, has eased and graduates are returning to business.

Of the 1,237 students who had completed the survey as of the middle of last week, nearly a quarter reported that they are going into business jobs next year. That’s up from the 19 percent of the Class of 2003 who planned employment in business.

And employment in science and technology is showing signs of a recovery as well—with 8 percent planning to take jobs in this area next year, still down from 10 percent in 1999, but up from 6 percent in 2003.

New trends are emerging—both anecdotal evidence and survey data there seems to be a growing interest in teaching.

On the whole though, the Class of 2004 has followed the paths laid out by its predecessors.

And when it comes to the question of what next, career counselors insist “undecided” is an acceptable, perhaps even desirable answer.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

Bill Wright-Swadel, director of the Office of Career Services, says he sees the increasing proportion of undecided students as a largely positive trend.

“I wish more students who took jobs acknowledged that they were actually undecided,” he said.

Wright-Swadel suspects that even those students who do have jobs for next year are still unsure of what they want to do and why.

He said the recent rise in students who lack concrete plans is due in large part to the decline in recruiting that accompanied the economic downturn. Less aggressive recruiting means fewer opportunities for undecided students to take jobs simply for the sake of being employed.

“The more we diversify and spin people out of the recruiting program into self-directing searches, because it is student-managed searches rather than corporate-managed searches, the more there’s a delay,” he said.

Wright-Swadel also attributes the rise in undecided seniors to an increasing tendency among graduate schools to encourage students to take several years off between their undergraduate and professional educations.

This year, the preliminary data shows that roughly 79 percent of graduating seniors “definitely” or “probably” plan to go to graduate school at some point in the future. At the same time, only 26 percent are going on to graduate school next year. In the mid-1990s, that number was closer to 30 percent.

“Students tend to respond to systems,” Wright-Swadel said. “If the graduate schools and the professional schools are saying, ‘Go away for two or three years, confirm what you want to do,’…that two-year window is different from really being undecided.”

Some other potential explanations for the increasing number of undecided students include a rise in the number of students writing theses—which means a rise in the number of students whose winters cannot be wholly devoted to looking for post-graduate opportunities—and the current emphasis at Harvard and beyond about the importance of having a significant international experience.

TEACH FOR HARVARD

Teaching is the fourth most popular employment option for 2004 graduates who plan to work next year. As of last week, about 8 percent of the senior class said they would be employed in primary and secondary education.

Though this figure has hovered at around 6 percent since at least 1999, teaching seems to be an option that more students are considering.

The proportion of students who say they are interested in someday pursuing graduate study in the field of education is also up—by more than 2 percentage points—to 4.4 percent of the graduating class.

Wright-Swadel says he sees the increasing organization and stepped-up recruiting efforts of certain post-graduate teaching programs as a major reason for this surge of interest in the profession.

Teach for America made 39 offers to Harvard students this year, according to Director of National Recruitment Laura Cover. The organization will not release a final count of how many Harvard graduates accepted its positions until after new recruits show up for this summer’s training session.

This number has climbed steadily since 2001, when Teach for America accepted 16 graduates of the College.

Cover attributes part of the rise to a more aggressive recruiting campaign at schools like Harvard.

“Certainly our strategy has been getting more and more focused,” she says. “At Harvard this year we met with tons of seniors on campus in one-on-one meetings. We’ve also been doing research in [The Crimson] and on the website looking for students who have already shown strong achievement. We’ve also been networking with faculty members.”

According to Wright-Swadel, extending 39 offers puts Teach for America’s recruiting efforts up there with those of the big financial houses like Goldman Sachs.

Wright-Swadel explains that students respond favorably to aggressive on-campus recruiting.

And Cover points to an increasing sense that Teach for America can be a launching pad for other public service-oriented careers as something that bolsters the program’s cache.

“As people see more and more kids who do Teach for America and then go on to advise a governor on education policy, or to be a Supreme Court justice, or to medical school, where they work in a clinic in a disadvantaged neighborhood—the more people see that there are many paths to work towards the same mission, I think it’s increased our credibility,” Cover says.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

If Wright-Swadel had one lesson to impart to the graduating senior class, it would be that “career change is very normal for Harvard students.”

He says that conversations with alumni reveal that most took very circuitous paths to get where they are today.

But he says he has a hard time convincing Harvard undergraduates that building a set of transferable skills is more important than having a linear plan for how to get from Commencement day to the ultimate dream job.

“Many students who come here had a plan,” he says. “It may have come from a professional, it may have come from a parent, it may have come from themselves or some combination—but there was a series of things one did in order to get to Harvard. The downside of that is as much as we see variations in how one got to Harvard, you all look and say whatever linear plan you had worked.”

“And so the question when you get to us is, ‘If I want to ____, what 27 steps do I need to take?”

Wright-Swadel argues that 15-20 years down the line, our class will be working in jobs that don’t even exist now. Thus, he says that Harvard students should focus their career planning on building a particular skill set—and not climbing a particular ladder. For him, the question is not “What are you doing after graduation?” but “What are you learning?”

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy at rakoczy@post.harvard.edu.