Wake up. Check Outlook. Parse the Slack chat. And “coffee chat” — whatever that means — a dorky freshman. He’s eager, bright-eyed and convinced that a five-minute exchange with a disinterested upperclassman is the key to breaking into [insert acronym here]. But alas, he too will succumb to the institutional perils that Cornell flagrantly permits.
This scholastic phenomenon, to some extent, is appealing, but to less myopic thinkers, appalling. And it is especially peculiar that, while our institutions bicker at the government over inconspicuous funding (relative to endowment money aplenty), it is then when they pay no mind to the erosion of their principles, all whilst extending Student and Campus Life funding. But so be it: Viva Cornell’s most popular, albeit dreadful, extracurricular activity: Careerism.
This parasitic entity, one that has infected every facet of student life, has effectively warped the purpose of higher education into something resembling a Tiger Mother’s hellscape. Attend the first session of ClubFest, and you’ll find that at least half of the organizations exist purely as gilded drinking groups or, in the instance of a national organization, diverge from central doctrine. Consulting clubs, pre-law fraternities, investment banking societies — whatever makes your wallet tingle — still attract woeful subjects, despite their decreasing relevance in the national labor market. Getting into some of these groups requires a multi-round interview process, complete with technical or outright absurdist questions, case studies, and a general willingness to forsake intellectual fervor in favor of being “marketable.”
The university loves this. Self-sustained coalitions churn out the typical six-figure starting salary candidates, most of whom will suffer from anterior pelvic tilt and pupil strain over mere months, a trade-off neither I nor Gwenyth Paltrow would dare subject to. But those who do affirm the university’s supposed funding methodology: that near-guaranteed, promisingly affluent alumni will inevitably drop their share in the offertory, largely without excessive mobilization or campaigning.
Only nostalgia can accurately depict the days when American universities were sanctuaries for intellectual exploration, for debates about Kant (or “c*nt”) over cheap Napa wines and the occasional ill-advised foray into universalism. Higher education is a $90,000-a-year investment, and students are under hot pressure to secure a return on that investment. Yet, as if we had not established ourselves over our peers in secondary, a convoluted, elite-instituted monopoly on academia, ideology and labor divides us further.
English majors spend half their time justifying their existence. “What are you going to do with that?” is the immediate response to any major that isn’t tied to finance, bioengineering or tech.
Despite our Ivy pedigree and university-touted idealism, the school has seemingly secured more hefty returns on equities and trades than it has on moral and spiritual cultivation. That centuries-old “promise” of virtue endowed not by a Carnegian employer, but attained through equal doses of self-cultivation and effacing — a guarantee that HR need not contemplate their candidate’s moral aptitude nor critical thinking, but merely their Microsoft certifications and GPA. And alas, the numbers agree, with the popular CIS accounting for a whopping 17% of all undergraduates — because god forbid you waste four years learning something that is not monetizable.
And it isn’t just Cornell. A recent article in The Atlantic described how students at elite universities are struggling to engage with literature beyond their assigned course readings. Making matters worse, many arrive at college like daughters in boxes, viewing themselves in the same sense they had prior to college: vying for interests that are not their own.
Now, we ought not be fully averse to these themes: ambition is not the enemy. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting a solid job at Palantir working on LLMs that target refugees, or reaping cash from credit reliant Americans. We have to keep this lifestyle going somehow, no? But when the pursuit of employment eclipses the pursuit of knowledge, something vital, something human, is lost.
A university is meant to be a place of continual discovery, where students engage with ideas not because they’re profitable but because they’re frankly cool. Liberal education is not intended to produce instantaneous financial utility; it’s about learning how to think, how to question, how to exist in the world with a mind that fetters to the whim of market fluctuations, or how many hours the suit must work overtime in the hope of Chipotle, or better yet, late drinks at Delmonico’s.
So what’s the solution? Let’s start with reclaiming education as an end in and of itself. It entails embracing the humanities, not as a gen-ed, but as a pursuit that seeks to frame our current contexts with those of old; to evolve with, not against, technology. It means taking classes that don’t translate seamlessly into Workday expectations. It is joining clubs for fun rather than for a vacuous LinkedIn accolade.
It means, simply put, being a student. If you weren’t told to be whoever you want by mother dearest, allow me to be the one to do so. Be a social justice warrior; a haughty international student with three metropolises in their bio; a first-generation student unsure about her major, but destined to carry herself to the top regardless of shifts in interest.
The corporate world isn’t going anywhere. But scholarship, introspection and even Hideaway? Those remotely disappear the moment you trade curiosity for the cloister.
So relax; open a novel, put that Clairo on — and get yourself a beer while you’re at it.
Francis Xavier Jaso is a freshman studying Government and Economics in the College of Arts & Sciences. His fortnightly column “A Contrarian’s Calamity” defies normative, dysfunctional campus discourse in the name of reason, hedonism and most notably, satire. He can be reached at fjaso@cornellsun.com.
