It’s no secret that engrained in Penn’s culture is a sense suffocating preprofessionalism — often discouraging the exploration of students’ true interests. As translated to English, the Latin proverb “audentes Fortuna iuvat” means “Fortune favors the bold.” This serves as a reminder that your pursuits will be rewarded for leading noble lives, and I believe that especially on Penn’s hypercompetitive campus, it’s incredibly important that we adhere to this profound mantra by choosing to pursue paths for passion rather than wealth or status.
According to Career Services, 16.2% of the graduating Class of 2023 was recorded to be pursuing further education upon graduation. Alternatively, 75.9% of graduates were recorded to be working full time after graduation. The median starting salary among 2023 Penn graduates working full time after graduation was $100,000. The truth of the matter is that a degree from Penn holds weight to employers. You’re almost certain to land a job after graduation and likely a high-paying one at that. So why is it that, as Quakers, we’ve constructed a society built upon toxicity and competition? The answer: the subscription to business culture.
For starters, it’s important to recognize the stratification of Penn’s graduating Class of 2023. Penn’s three largest undergraduate schools are the Wharton School, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the College of Arts and Sciences. Additionally, these three schools also have the highest starting salaries upon graduation, ranging from $90,000 to $115,000. Surprisingly, a staggering 38.4% of Engineering School graduates accepted jobs in consulting and finance, making this the majority of jobs. As for Wharton, a whopping 58.4% of graduates pursued full-time careers in finance, and 25.4% pursued consulting. Similarly, the majority of graduates from the College, 22%, pursued jobs in finance, while 21% pursued consulting. The most popular employers for Penn graduates were McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Goldman Sachs.
It’s expected for Wharton graduates to work in finance, consulting, and banking. However, when graduates with a liberal arts education or an engineering degree work in the same fields, it questions the rationale of these graduates. Because these industries are unexpected employment outcomes for students with diverse skill sets, the conclusion can be drawn that many choose to sell out to desires for money. Students shouldn’t be conforming to this hunger for wealth, but they most often do. The unfortunate pipeline for so many graduates is to negate their true passions and interests and instead take on careers that confuse lifelong fulfillment for money.
For years, Penn has been a place where some of the most brilliant minds are cultivated, including some incredibly bright alumni that once proudly donned the red and blue. Two of the most prominent Penn alumni include 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump and 1997 College and Wharton graduate Elon Musk. In recent years, both Musk and Trump have epitomized immense greed and a vast desire to obtain wealth, power, and influence. One of the most prevalent commonalities between them is their degree from Wharton. Although Wharton is not solely responsible for their greed and corruption, we must ensure that the school is not enforcing the same ideals onto its current students and that these aren’t the models students are aspiring to become.
One foundational subject present in the lives of every single Penn student is ethics. Penn should demand ethics to remain at the forefront of every student’s pursuits, yet it’s already failed to do so. One appalling fact is that at Wharton, ethics courses are optional. Wharton students are given the choice to enroll in one of two courses that would fulfill a requirement in the “Business Fundamentals” section of their degree — LGST 1000: “Ethics and Social Responsibility” or LGST 1010: “Law and Social Values.”
Using theory-based approaches to convey themes of ethics and its intersection with capitalism, LGST 1000 helps Wharton students understand moral questions and encourages students to recognize ethical challenges they may face within business. Comparatively, LGST 1010 is an “applied” ethics class where the course “presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business.” In this course, students aren’t taught the concrete ethics of business but rather the basic concepts of law, the rigorous legal analysis of law, and legal processes. The issue is that Wharton recognizes these courses as equal when the two have entirely different implications: LGST 1000 teaches about morality and immorality, while LGST 1010 teaches about legality and illegality. In this failure to teach ethics to Wharton students, ethics becomes an optional subject that many choose to forgo entirely, severely damaging the Penn community by allowing students to become corrupt by desires for status and wealth.
The solution to fixing the culture on campus is still unclear. For starters, we can begin by recognizing ethics as an imperative requirement. Schools like New York University’s Stern School of Business and University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business both have the “Business Ethics Core,” which is a required foundation that all undergraduate business students must take to obtain their degrees. Teaching the foundational subject is important to improving Penn’s echo chamber of toxic, hypercompetitive business culture. Additionally, teaching ethics will help yield honorable members of society.
The Penn community faces a challenging, uphill battle against the corruption of greed. The very least we can do is try to prioritize ethics and return to pursuing careers that we’re passionate about, because as the proverb “audentes Fortuna iuvat” states, fortune favors the bold.
ELIJAH RAMIREZ is a College first year studying political science from El Paso, Texas. His email is elijah11@sas.upenn.edu.
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