Every May, graduation season hits as millions of high-school seniors decide where to attend college, and many college students graduate and enter the workforce. Higher education holds a critical role in shaping America’s prosperity: an abundance of research suggests that strong higher-learning institutions greatly contribute to a country’s economic strength and social wellbeing. Harvard and its peer institutions have become indispensable to our society.
However, the U.S. Labor Department reports that higher education institutions have lost more than 570,000 workers since the start of the pandemic. College enrollment, graduation rates, and tenureship has been in decline for decades. Is academia dying?
“There are a lot of silos in academe that have been weakening in the last century,” said Economics Professor David Laibson. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1988, Laibson received his master’s degree from the London School of Economics and his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1994 and has been teaching at Harvard ever since.
“Academia, like anywhere else, is a tricky place, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the challenges of being in it,” said Aishani Aatresh ’24, who is currently pursuing a self-designed concentration in Complex Biosocial Systems. “Though I wouldn’t quite say academia is dying. I do think it is going through a reckoning,” she added.
“From what I understand, the market for jobs in academia is intensely competitive, and the number of applicants vastly outnumbers job openings,” said Dominique Luongo ’17, who is now a second-year Harvard Law student. She argues that limited job prospects may underlie the decline in graduate school enrollment. Without the security of post-graduation employment, most students wanting to pursue higher education are incredibly passionate about what they plan to study. Thus, undergraduates interested in academia, graduate students, and professors all share a great love and enthusiasm for their respective fields of study.
“I explored many different areas, and while I had a great time in that exploration, I discovered that I loved economics most of all,” said Laibson. “If you don’t love what you’re doing, others in your field are going to be more productive and generative than you… having a passion for the activity is critical,” he advised.
Aside from loving what you plan to study, Laibson also emphasized the importance of having a certain aptitude for the field you plan to pursue. “I also discovered that I was much better at economics than I was at other fields,” he said. “I liked analyzing world literature, and that was a great passion of mine, but I wasn’t good at it in a way that would make you succeed as a scholar of the field.”
Aatresh and Luongo had similar attitudes. “My reasoning behind wanting to go to graduate school is because I really do love learning… and I believe it provides the necessary space and time to truly grow as a thinker, designer, and human being. Grad school is the right way at this stage in my life,” Aatresh said.
“There are few fields quite as exhilarating as the pursuit of justice,” said Luongo when asked why she decided to pursue law.
To improve academia, Aatresh suggested examining and revitalizing it from a teaching standpoint. “We need to understand where students are getting disillusioned and why or how reflexivity and critical thinking are getting lost in education. Reshaping academia to institutionally revive, cement, and share the grown-up but childlike wonder, optimism, and potential would be a wonderful thing,” she said.
While Aatresh suggests an institutional approach, Laibson advocated for more flexibility between academic fields. “One of the things that I have emphasized in my career is crossing boundaries that separate disciplines,” he said. “We would be better as an intellectual community if we were more open to hybridized experiences where we interact with people who come with different perspectives, priorities, life experiences, methodologies, and questions. That kind of cross pollination will improve our scholarship and teaching and ultimately make us happier in our careers.”
For those unsure if they want to pursue academia — or their career path in general — Laibson encouraged students to adopt an open mindset. “Explore widely during your time at Harvard or wherever you are. You have the opportunity to go on a journey of self discovery and figure out where your passions and abilities lie and where there are opportunities for you in the world,” he advised. “Through that rich exploration, you will emerge with an understanding of what you want to do next.”
“And don’t get trapped: There are a lot of things in life, including at Harvard, where you join some organization or commit to some intellectual pursuit and discover later that it’s not really something you love,” Laibson added. “Don’t be afraid to cut your losses and move onto the next activity. Don’t let momentum carry you forward in some activity that doesn’t really excite you or energize you.”
Moving forward, it appears that there is much we can do to inspire and reinspire learners everywhere — from encouraging them to explore and pursue fields of their choice to pushing them to incorporate other disciplines into their studies. Academia, in its most perfect form, is a place for those curious enough to question the world around them and those bold enough to try and find the answers. These are certainly beautiful things to aspire to.