‘It’s Not as Sexy’: The Challenges of Pursuing Public Service at Harvard
Many students anticipate stepping onto a campus where public service and civic action were integral to the undergraduate experience. But they often discover that students feel intense pressure to sideline their public service aspirations in favor of pre-professional pursuits, and where public service initiatives and organizations struggle with funding shortfalls.Since Ben A. Abbott ’28 was in middle school, his life has revolved around public service.
The North Andover, Mass. native spent a year volunteering as part of Project 351, a Massachusetts grassroots non-profit that identifies eighth grade students for their potential, leadership, and passion. Then, he spent the entirety of his high school career doing the same.
“It was really my thing,” Abbott said of public service. “I mean, it really formed how I thought about the world, and how I saw myself, and how I saw my voice in the world.”
“I had this real feeling in my gut that it was something that I wanted to do for a long time,” he added.
As much as he found the work itself fulfilling, Abbott also cherished public service’s ability to connect him with others who care deeply about the same “notions of justice, or of equity, or of a desire to do good.”
When Abbott committed to Harvard, an institution that — at least online — champions a “spirit of service” and claims “Public service is fundamental to the Harvard experience,” he anticipated stepping onto a campus where public service and civic action were integral to the undergraduate experience.
Instead, he found himself in an environment where students feel intense pressure to sideline their public service aspirations in favor of pre-professional pursuits, and where public service initiatives and organizations struggle with funding shortfalls.
Harvard faces regular ridicule for the career choices of its graduates. Last year, 50 percent of graduates said they planned on entering a career in finance, consulting, or tech. In 2022, less than 4 percent of graduates went into the nonprofit or public service sector.
“I came here expecting that everyone would also be pretty intent on public service,” Abbott said. “That everyone would have this idea that, ‘We’re here not just as scholars or as entrepreneurs but also just citizens of the world.’”
He added, “and that’s just not really true at all.”
Making Money vs. Making Change
Harvard boasts more than 400 student organizations, but students say they feel pressure to join pre-professional clubs, such as consulting groups like HUCG, over public service organizations.
“I don’t think [public service] is as integral to the Harvard campus as other things are, just because of the nature in which money drives people’s careers,” said Ife A. Adedokun ’25, the former chair of Harvard CIVICS, a joint public service initiative between the Institute of Politics and the Phillips Brooks House Association.
Adedokun said that her passion for public service is weighed down by “a very real sense” of “the need to make money.”
Harvard’s public programming now aims to integrate public service in a more career-centered way, said Travis Lovett, assistant dean of civic engagement and service at the College and the assistant director of the Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship.
“You know students are choosing banking or consulting or other trajectories,” Lovett said. “But what we’re trying to do as a center is create more deliberate paths for students who want to engage in civic work to be able to do that at a really high level.”
The Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship and the newly introduced Certificate of Civic Engagement, for instance, integrate public service components into undergraduate curricula. Harvard’s Global Day of Service has galvanized thousands of students in day-long service activities since 2019. And the Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship’s SPARK program subsidizes incoming freshmen with a $2,000 stipend to organize a service project in their hometown while writing reflections and having discussions with fellow SPARK participants.
Still, students feel pressure to join pre-professional programs that will advance their career, rather than a public service organization that seems to have less of an impact on their academic or employment pursuits.
It’s an age-old problem Harvard undergraduates grapple with. In 2015, students told The Crimson that finance and consulting was the “path of least resistance.”
Public service “is kind of like the thing that binds all of us,” said Flavia C. Perea, the director of the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship. It centers “how we create the conditions to support faculty and develop students and nurture an institution that centers humility, caring for others, and doing good for the world.”
“It’s not as sexy,” Perea said. But “it’s not supposed to be sexy.”
Scholarship and Service
Though few and far between, efforts to integrate public service into academic programs are underway.
Since 2016, the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship has provided “the infrastructure to link public service activities directly to the curriculum through support for undergraduate courses that bring together academic work and community engagement,”according to the program’s website.
Today, the Mindich program encompasses more than 40 courses that straddle all of the college’s academic divisions.
Sophie-An Kingsbury Lee ’26, a member of the Mindich Program Student Advisory Committee, first took a Mindich course as a freshman: an expository writing course called “Expos 20: Are Prisons Obsolete?”
“Having a community-focused class was transformative,” Kingsbury Lee said. “Part of it was talking to formerly incarcerated people and really trying to figure out what work we could do that would have a tangible impact and not just be a paper we’re submitting for a final grade.”
This March, the College launched a Certificate for Civic Engagement as an incentive for students to explore the connection between public service and academic study.
To receive the certificate, students must complete 12 credits, including one Mindich course, that “focus on a compelling real-world issue or set of issues,” the criteria of which is determined by the Educational Policy Committee. Students also must complete a “300 hour practicum involving direct service, policy, and/or advocacy work,” according to the Office of Undergraduate Education’s website.
“It’s a little bit late for me to start it, but I think for the first years it’s an incredible opportunity,” said Ari F. Kohn ’26, another member of the Mindich SAC.
Some believe the introduction of Mindich courses and the Certificate for Civic Engagement are not enough.
“We have this extensive extracurricular landscape,” Perea said. “But the connections to academic work — Mindich is the only one.”
Those who do engage in these initiatives often find difficulty fitting Mindich courses into tight schedules.
“They are popular among first years who haven’t yet declared,” Kohn said. “But once you're in the upper years it’s hard because you have requirements, and the Mindich classes don't always fulfill requirements.”
Students like Kingsbury Lee say they feel pressured into selecting courses that narrowly align with their professional goals.
“I’ve sort of succumbed to this ‘Go, go, go, do a bunch of STEM stuff’ mentality, which I think is sort of common here,” Kingsbury Lee said.
A document obtained recently by The Crimson suggests that the College is considering expanding its public service-facing academic opportunities further.
The document, a 2022 proposal created by Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship Faculty Director Julie A. Reuben, details a remodeling of the center. It proposes the eventual creation of a new FAS-wide academic center encompassing expanded research and academic offerings, called the “Center for Public Engagement.”
The proposal has yet to be adopted, and discussions for the new center were put on hold last year after campus unrest over Oct. 7 disrupted administrative operations. Talks have only recently resumed, and it is unclear what particulars, and to what degree, the points in the 2022 proposal will be implemented.
‘What Really Concerns Us is the Funding’
Harvard’s endowment eclipses that of any peer institution, but its public service initiatives are riddled with deficits and tightening budgets.
“The past couple years as an organization, we’ve had a deficit and had to pull from our reserves,” said PBHA president Cody A. Vasquez ’25.
“We’ll definitely have a deficit again this year, and we’re budgeting for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts on February 1, and we’ll likely have a deficit the upcoming year,” Vasquez added.
PBHA treasurer Audrey Yang ’27 told The Crimson that last year’s deficit sat at around $400,000, and “we have about a $200,000 deficit” this year.
“If we continue to take from reserves,” Yang said, “then we would have to make program cuts.”
Vasquez said that the deficits have been “a focus of my time as president.” With the Center for Public Service, he aims to get the “College to think about, ‘How can we leverage alumni, leverage major donors who really care about the work that we’re doing as an organization?’”
The College has been making moves to leverage alumni to contribute to PBHA’s funding.
Since 2017, as a condition of a $12.1 million donation to the College by META CEO and Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan ’07, alumni donations to the PBHA have been eligible for class credit. Class credit is an incentive that pits alumni classes against one another in competition to contribute most generously to the College.
“That might not mean as much as a current student, but in the future,” Vasquez said, it is “a big, big opportunity for alumni to be able to give to PBHA” — Vasquez added, “and that's the bottom line.”
Within the Institute of Politics — the “largest student group” on campus, which holds the “largest endowment out of the student organizations,” according to IOP Citizenship Tutoring co-chair Robyn M. Boyland ’26 — some students believe there needs to be more funding for public service projects.
Boyland said she believes that “prioritizing funding for more of the programs that are centered in community engagement” within the IOP would be “a step in the right direction.”
The University’s own Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship faces financial struggles. Their SPARK program was launched in 2019 with $1 million in funds, but those funds have all been used up. The program is currently without a donor.
“What really concerns us is the funding, and so right now we’re trying to secure a donor for the SPARK program,” Samantha “Sam” Levin, the program’s director, told The Crimson.
The budget for the program, as it had been planned originally, was “roughly between $350-400,000 a year,” according to Lovett, who added that “the current bridge funding that we have for Spark is $200,000 a year.”
“Bridge funding” refers to the College filling SPARK’s gap in funding until the summer of 2026.
“We just didn’t have the funding to support more than 99 fellows,” Levin said of this year. “This bridge funding will last the program for the summer of 2026, until it runs out too.”
Breaking down these barriers can better unlock students’ enthusiasm for service and create the type of environment Abbott looked forward to when committing to Harvard, he said.
“I think you just have to have that passion start somewhere, and Harvard could be the place for it to start — with enough direction from administration and enough effort from PBHA,” Abbott said.
Correction: December 14, 2024
A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled the name of Ben A. Abbott.