Students need our help looking beyond paycheck

The current economic turmoil is taking a toll on jobs and psyches on Wall Street and in other corridors of power. People who once felt invincible now feel vulnerable. They’re questioning whether the time and effort they’ve put into their careers will produce the returns they expected.

Many of these people in their 20s and 30s graduated from America’s elite universities. Success has been a condition of life, but what about when success ends, even if temporarily? Have universities prepared graduates for the soul-searching that follows failure?

I think we’re about to find that the answer is no. Too often, colleges and graduate programs have accepted outstanding students and, rather than help them develop as more complete individuals ready to step into a diverse, complicated, and challenging world, have emphasized measures of achievement such as salary or the prestige of employers.

Until now, we haven’t seen the negative effects of this process. But now we’re left with the question: What happens when the rewards aren’t there? When the applause stops and the checks shrivel?

The youngest people in our work force —- those at the bottom of the ladder —- are being forced to reassess what’s at their core. What are their values? Do they have a passion for trading? For law? Have they found the deeper meaning in what they’re doing?

Many people love these lines of work. They find meaning while making money. But I suspect that many career choices are rooted in a paycheck and a craving for accolades and esteem, rather than a passion for a particular type of work.

The good news is that students are beginning to question this mind-set. They’re telling us they want to connect to something larger. College-age engagement in this year’s presidential election was unprecedented. And being on campus, I can feel the excitement that students express about larger issues such as a sustainable environment, the development of alternative energy, and the potential of micro-finance in the developing world.

Universities must do more to capture students’ youthful excitement and help them turn it into a lifelong quest for discovering what motivates and challenges them —- what gives them meaning and deeper purpose. To be clear, our efforts shouldn’t dictate values to students, but rather emphasize the importance of building a core of personal values and helping students discover how values can give meaning to their lives and careers —- even in difficult times.

We need curricular and extra-curricular courses that enable students to examine their own definitions of success, determine what is most important to them, and understand the forces at work in the contemporary world of business and the professions. At Harvard, psychologist Howard Gardner and others are teaching noncredit seminars for first-year students: Meaningful Work for a Meaningful Life.

Universities should enhance career development programs to go beyond mere job placement, as important as that is. What students today need —- and many yearn for —- is more fundamental advice about choosing a profession. What are my gifts and talents and my passions and commitments? How do they square with a full spectrum of professional opportunities?

And campus chaplains should be more active in helping students chart their professional path. For the past decade, the Lilly Endowment has given grants to more than 80 colleges and universities through the Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation. This initiative has led to dynamic programs and serious thinking and writing about the subject. Drawing on such resources, campus chaplains from a wide variety of religious traditions can challenge students to relate life and work.

In 1841, the young Abraham Lincoln, doubting whether his life would amount to anything, confessed to a friend, “I would be more than willing to die, except that I have done nothing to make any human remember that I have lived.” All of us aspire to use our talents to do something for which others will remember that we have lived. In a time of economic tumult and professional uncertainty, we can give students no greater gift than to discover what their memorable contribution might be.

Nathan Hatch is president of Wake Forest University.