Working the Degree

In a music studio on the top floor of Paine Hall on a Sunday night, Abel Acuña ’11 sits alone in front of three computer screens, carefully dragging little bars of sights and sounds back and forth, trying to form the perfect sequence.

He’s making a video that turns the whooshing sounds of ping-pong paddles and the crisp thumps of ping-pong balls into a visual masterpiece. It’s for class, he explains. He makes one of these videos every two weeks.

Two summers ago, an internship at HBO convinced Acuña that he’d rather make videos than go to law school or study international relations—what he had initially thought were his dream paths when he arrived at Harvard.

Acuña is one of many Harvard students who have chosen to digress from the more traditional paths of law school, medical school, consulting, or investment banking. He rushed to finish his Government requirements by the end of his junior year so that he could have his last year to do what he enjoyed most—telling stories through film.

You’re approaching the end of your career at Harvard College. But before you lay your hands on that illustrious sheet of paper that cost four years and $200,000 in tuition, you have to decide what you’re going to do with it.

According to surveys of Harvard seniors conducted by The Crimson over the past three years, the number of students entering the finance and consulting sector of the work force has fallen since the economic recession.

Between the graduating classes of 2008 and 2009, the number of seniors opting for finance and consulting jobs decreased by half. In 2010, the percentage of seniors entering the workforce who were pursuing those paths rose to 30.52 percent, though that number still represents a decrease from the 47 percent in 2007.

Considering recent economic changes, does having a Harvard degree today still come with the assurances it entailed in the past? How much does that depend on what field you choose to pursue after graduation?

The simple answer is that diversity has replaced prestige. For the most part, the market for new employees has begun to change, privileging graduates from a variety of backgrounds rather than merely leading employers to select who was traditionally thought of as “the best.” Meanwhile, as the statistics suggest, to a certain extent, Harvard students are opening themselves up to a wider variety of opportunities.

A PUSH FOR DIVERSITY

With the recent decrease in seniors entering jobs in consulting and finance comes an increased interest in education, entertainment, and public service, though the number of students entering those fields still remains quite low.

In fact, 16.86 percent of the class of 2010 indicated public service as their “dream” field, and 13.95 percent selected the arts—yet only 11 percent of the class planning to work entered public service, and a paltry 4 percent opted for the arts.

The same survey results confirm that less than a third of students entering finance indicated that it would be their “dream” field if money were not a consideration.

Nonetheless, Deborah Carroll, Director of Career Services for On-Campus Interview and Employer Relations, suggests that there has been a trend toward students seeking a wider range of opportunities.

“The recession freed people up a bit to think outside the box,” says Carroll. “To think about a lot of factors in addition to security—what they enjoy.”

As a result, the Office of Career Services has paid careful attention to students’ varied interests, trying to make a “community” around career exploration. Food. Fashion. Criminology. Sustainable agriculture. These are the tables that draw increasing crowds at career fairs. They’re clusters of change requested by students who seemed to have realized that finding careers that follow their passions should play a greater role in the job search than before.

Three years ago, OCS began a campaign to repackage the job search to fit a more diverse selection of careers.

At the top of their Fall 2010 Undergraduate Programming guide, OCS lists “Entertainment and Creative Management” and “Environment, Energy, Sustainability, and Global Food Production.” “Consulting, Finance, Hedge Funds” sits below the handout’s fold.

While there seems to be a shift toward diversity in students’ interests, a similar phenomenon can also be seen on the hiring side.

“There’s been a push to diversify,” says Robin Mount, Director of the Office of Career, Research, and International Opportunities. “There’s less of an interest in having everyone from the same school.”

Recruiters like Disney, Mount notes, are interested in hiring a few employees from many different schools. This year, Disney is looking to fill only two positions through Harvard’s On-Campus Interview program.

But if diversity is placed at the forefront of concern, what does this mean for Harvard students currently entering the job market?

FORGING YOUR OWN PATH

“You’re at Harvard. Harvard College. The greatest institution for learning ever created, right? Up there with Oxford. And yet, here you are, with a passion for celebrity news. Hah,” said her subject, in biting disbelief.

Sanyee Yuan ’12 smiled blankly at her interviewee before blurting out a response to defend herself. He didn’t buy it.

“But now you’re editing yourself,” he retorted. “Just a moment ago, you said your passion was covering what’s available in supermarkets as you check out at the counter...Well, I’ll give you this. I’ll give you points for honesty.”

“Oh, thank you,” she replied quickly, still keeping her wide smile and trying to regain control of the conversation.

“And I’ll give myself points for diplomacy,” she said.

It was only a few minutes into her first on-camera interview as host of her new online talk show, “Talk Harvard,” and already, Yuan knew it was going downhill. Her interviewee—MSNBC political commentator Chris Matthews—was good.

Yuan always wanted to go into broadcast journalism. She wrote for her school newspaper before college. She watches Oprah religiously, and looks to Ryan Seacrest as her career idol.

But opportunity has played games with her, working in and out of her favor. Her dreams of acting in front of the camera were put on hold her freshman year after auditions for “Ivory Tower” and “On Harvard Time” did not land her any roles. Instead, she chose to work on publicity and write for the shows.

But two summers ago, Yuan landed an internship at CBS-5, her hometown CBS station. There, she realized that she was actually interested not just in broadcast journalism, but specifically in entertainment news.

Yet it would be difficult for her to apply to jobs in that field, since she had not cast been in a campus show that would give her an impressionable reel.

She met a producer that summer. who asked why she wasn’t hosting her own show. Yuan decided to create her own opportunities.

HARVARD-EDUCATED EDUCATORS

Education is quickly becoming one of the top paths for Harvard students after graduation.

Applications for Teach For America soared in the spring—with 293 applicants making up 17 percent of the graduating 2010 class. Last year, the largest proportion of Harvard’s senior class decided to apply to the program in its 19-year history.

This trend prevails outside of Harvard as well. Overall, the program received 46,359 applications for 2010, marking the third consecutive year of over 30 percent growth, The Crimson reported.

“We think there’s a renewed excitement around engaging in civic work with a new administration and a new political landscape,” says Amanda L. Hillman ’02, managing director of alumni affairs at TFA in the Greater Boston Area.

“I still think people have a choice for what they want to do with this education they’ve invested in,” Hillman says. “By applying that degree to social problems, and in particular, education, in terms of TFA’s recruitment, I think we’ve been able to raise awareness more widely and deeply about the problem of education inequity, and our teachers and alumni are impacting the academic performance and life trajectories for students in low-income communities.”

OCS has unofficially dubbed the phenomenon the “TFA Effect,” noting that a growing national conversation about education reform could have prompted the recent surge in interest in pursuing public service jobs.

It’s as if students are saying, “Wow, I’ve had this huge opportunity to study at Harvard, and I want to give it back,” Hillman says.

The same mindset has garnered increased interest in other education organizations, such as Teach for All, Teach for India, and the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, Mount suggests.

“I think that awareness has allowed people to understand that eliminating education inequity is a choice that people have to make,” Hillman says. “We can do something about it.”

Though TFA’s numbers suggest that Harvard students are demonstrating increased enthusiasm for non-profit work, according to Laura E. Clancy ’03, the Harvard degree can be of uncertain value in the not-for-profit sector.

“We have learned not necessarily to get totally caught up in the Harvard name and the Harvard brand,” says Clancy, a recruiter at New Sector Alliance, a social impact consulting and leadership development firm.

Clancy says that the number of offers extended to Harvard students by New Sector Alliance over the years has actually decreased, while the number of applicants has remained about the same.

Last summer, New Sector worked closely with the United Negro College Fund, and had a lot of applicants from small schools in the South who “knocked everyone’s socks off”—including those from Harvard.

Clancy explains that there are two real advantages to the Harvard degree: one, that everyone will assume that you’re smart, and two, that nobody can ever one-up you.

“The only school that never has to worry about not being Harvard is Harvard,” Clancy recalls once hearing.

But workplace diversity requires people to come from all sorts of backgrounds to bring their own experiences, she explains.

“Part of what we look for in applicants is enthusiasm,” Clancy says. “We are looking for people who are really gung-ho about being part of our program and our community.”

It’s really important in the interviews, she says, to show your enthusiasm, not only for the work that you’ve done in the past, but also for the company that you will be working for.

But while working in business may seem to provide a more wholesale solution, students pursuing careers in the non-profit sector face greater uncertainty.

“You can kind of be tossed into the wild,” Clancy says. “It’s really daunting from the perspective of OCS.”

NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

For him, the challenge is entering an industry where the work is on a project-by-project basis, and security is fleeting, Acuña says.

While his classmates slowly secure their consulting and investment banking positions long before graduation, Acuña says he has to wait until late spring to apply for positions in Los Angeles, for instance.

The Harvard degree does help in getting your foot in the door and maybe having your script read, Acuña says. “But in the entertainment industry, people really don’t care where you went to college at all,” he says.

More important than the Harvard name are networks of alumni, or as Amit Samuel, director of Harvardwood 101 and the Harvardwood Summer Internship Program, calls them, “tribes.”

Founded in 1999, Harvardwood is a non-profit organization that seeks to connect Harvard alumni with students interested in careers in the arts, media, and entertainment.

“The reality is that the tension is not between Harvard people and other people—rather between people that succeed and people that want to succeed,” Samuel says.

There are numerous Harvard alumni out there trying to make their mark in entertainment, Samuel says. The only difference is that Hollywood is an apprenticeship, and one has to accept what an apprenticeship system entails.

“Nobody comes to Hollywood and [goes] to the top of the heap right away,” Samuel explains. “You come into it and kind of understand the rhythms of things. I can give you the sheet of music for Beethoven, but you’re not going to understand the feeling of Beethoven until a big orchestra plays it.”

And Harvard degree or no Harvard degree, students seeking careers in entertainment will be expected to conform to the apprenticeship system.

“You’re going to have to bring a Diet Coke to J. Lo.,” says Mount. “You can’t say ‘I’m too educated to go get coffee.’”

LEVERAGING THE ‘HARVARD BRAND’

As a campus representative for Harvardwood, Yuan attends career fairs to give students more information on finding careers in entertainment. She frequently encounters students who are wary about using their Harvard degree to embark on such a path.

“I really like film, but I think my parents would be happier if I didn’t major in VES,” she recalls a student telling her.

However, the Harvard education provides Yuan and others with a helpful network to advance their careers—from the connections available through Crimson Compass to the alumni willing to provide advice through programs such as Harvardwood 101.

But the Harvard connection that Harvardwood provides can work both ways, Acuña says. On the one hand, you have access to a group of alumni that have experience and resources who could potentially help you carry out your project. But on the other, first and foremost, your work has to demonstrate your own talent.

When people ask Acuña what he is studying at Harvard, he responds, “Government and film.”

Often, people will ask why he went to Harvard rather than opting for a school that is better known for its film program, such as the University of Southern California or New York University.

Acuña says that if he hadn’t gone to Harvard, where he was able to see all his options laid out on the table, he probably wouldn’t have chosen this option, and may have ended up pursuing the path that his parents had originally envisioned for him.

“Harvard students are afraid of rejection,” Yuan says. “What matters most is what you learn from the failures of life. After you graduate from Harvard, not finding a six-figure salary job is not failure. You just have to be the best at what you end up doing.”

IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Several factors contribute to students’ decisions to eschew stereotypical “Harvard jobs,” such as consulting, finance, hedge funds, and business.

Particularly, it seems that the mindset of “I’m just going to do consulting for a couple of years” has changed.

“People have realized that material wealth is fleeting,” Clancy says, “that happiness is more important, that life is short. For the folks who love consulting and banking, there are folks who love it and are great at it. But life is short.”

Samuel describes the entertainment business as “soul-satisfying.”

“If the creative outlet is something that you want to do, you’ll find it to be the most satisfying thing ever,” he says. “If what satisfies you the most is just making an amazing balance sheet or putting together corporate structure, and that’s what makes you very excited, regardless of how much it pays you, you should still do it.”

Acuña echoes a similar sentiment, explaining that he enjoys the sense of satisfaction that comes from doing something he really cares about.

“In Hollywood,” Samuel says, “long-term commitment and hard work will out distance talent every day of the week. If you have a minimum amount of talent for what you’re doing, that long-term commitment and hard work will make you successful.

“It won’t make you a billionaire,” he says, “but it will make you happy. And what’s more important than happiness?”