When asked what career they would choose if finances were not a concern, a plurality of Harvard seniors chose the arts, with 16 percent indicating it as their “dream” field. Similarly large numbers of students chose public service (12.5) and education (12), while finance and consulting trailed with five percent each.
This is from last year; this year’s edition, assuming they are repeating it, should be out soon. [UPDATE: it is, and the number has fallen to 14%. Public service is up more than 4 points to 16.9%, giving it the top spot.)
Why is this important for arts advocacy? Think about this way. Harvard seniors are literally some of the best and brightest* that this country, not to mention several other countries, has to offer. Because of their high education and ability, they carry with them tremendous lifetime income-generation potential, both for themselves and for their communities. From the perspective of local and state governments, Harvard grads are like giant, magnetic sacks of cash walking around, because not only are they likely to earn a substantial living over their lifetimes — meaning that they are likely to pay substantial taxes over their lifetimes — but so are their friends, and the people they will probably date and marry. And guess what? They like to be around their friends and partners and spouses. Which means that if one of them moves, don’t be surprised to see others follow.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that one-sixth of all Harvard ’09 grads could choose any career, any career at all, they would choose the arts. We know that that is more than said the same for any other career. And thus it strongly implies that a pretty substantial proportion of our nation’s perennial overachievers, people who you can bet are going to play decidedly outsized roles in the local economies of wherever they live, care a lot about the arts.
Via (of course) Richard Florida.
* For the doubters on this point: yes, it is true that socioeconomic privilege unfairly tips the scales in all sorts of ways when it comes to applying to college generally. On the other hand, it is worth noting that due to aggressive liberalization of financial aid policies and various diversity initiatives in recent years, admission to Harvard and other elite schools approaches meritocracy to a greater degree now than at any other time in history.
4 Comments
Sure hope they do repeat it this year, to see what direction it’s moving. As one of a 4-generation-Harvard-family (I did NOT go, one of my brothers did) it doesn’t surprise me. The data I crave is this: of those who choose the arts as their profession, what is the breakdown between theoretical and practical careers?
While it is certainly good to hear that the Harvard seniors enjoy the arts, I wonder how much it will translate to actually supporting the arts. Of course, any financial backing and involvement are a tremendous help to art advocacy progams, but it’s sad that the majority of these Harvard seniors will not use their gifts and pursue a career in the arts, even when it’s what they desire. If art held a greater standing in society, I’m sure we would be hearing a different story.
I think the question of what Harvard grads “want to do” and then subsequently actually do, is key to understanding the shape of society as a whole — on that I agree with Florida. They are a bellwether because they seem to have autonomy — they seem to have all the shining choices before them.
But I’m not as optimistic as he is about the choices they make. I think given the chance to start again in finance, finance will get them back. Anxiety makes people want money, and paradoxically the highest achievers may sometimes be the most anxious of all. A real career in the arts, or in science for that matter, is risky — and who wants to risk the golden ticket of a Harvard education on that? (Especially if you have loans.)
Most people in the arts and sciences, even top talent, work in obscurity, and may go for years or a lifetime without recognition or even decent wages. So, blink two or three times at that kind of daunting premonition, and suddenly you wake up and you’re on Wall Street. (A crucial, essential process better described at the link below.)
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/04/why-do-harvard-kids-head-to-wall-street/
It’s science and engineering that’s really being killed by this social phenomenon. And we’re all going to find out how badly after the Deepwater Horizon story replays three or four more times in different forms around the world, as we scrabble for the last veins of oil in the next decade like a junkie scrounging for the last fix, and with our best thinkers each planted behind four computer screens looking at the spreads on Asian currency derivatives.
As for the hopes that this giant Ivy-league arts-sympathetic pile of money will eventually help the arts community — yeah, maybe. But the worrisome part there is that, in that role, ‘art’ just becomes an enabling gloss on a junk society.
I noticed a passing reference to this kind of evaluation of ‘art’ in a profile of Elena Kagan in the Times. A story told to explain why she didn’t go for the bucks in corporate law, after finishing her Supreme Court clerkship:
“…a fellow clerk who is now a Harvard law professor, recalls Ms. Kagan’s interview with a young associate at a mergers and acquisition firm in New York.
“He was single and he had no family and he was earning — the sum seemed unimaginable — $750,000 a year as a young partner,” Professor Steiker said. “So she asked the guy, ‘What do you do with all that money?’ And he said, ‘I buy art.’ I remember her telling that story, and just shaking her head.”
___
Thinking about Wall Street’s Harvard acolytes, it’s hard not to consider Napoleon in “Animal Farm,” who grasped power after collecting all the dog pups to raise into a cadre himself. Michael Lewis imagines a bank CEO with similar Orwellian thoughts (note first paragraph):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30lewis.html
Tony Judt has written a whole book essentially wondering where that Harvard anxiety for wealth comes from, because he still thinks like this: “In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/08/ill-fares-the-land/?page=2
Derek Bok has apparently taken to wondering the same thing, a bit late in the day. But I think Keith Gessen tells it best, from the inside:
“So, we owe no one anything. Many of the people I went to school with became doctors, public advocates, television writers who bring laughter to the American people. But most of them became, like my friend who believed that getting into Harvard was the hardest thing in life, investment bankers. We meritocrats have not, generally speaking, used our fantastic test-taking abilities to build a more equitable world. In fact, buoyed by a sense of the fairness of the process, we may have done the reverse.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/books/review/Gessen-t.html
Post has been updated with the most recent statistics, which came out a week after I wrote the original. The arts fell to 2nd place this year, at 14% – but that’s still pretty impressive. Four percent of grads said they actually were going into the arts.
Also, Richard – dude, you seriously need a blog. I’d read it…