First Jobs Matter More Than We Think

When Jack Waxman, a government major at Cornell, was a senior, he faced a choice. He could pursue a job in Senator Chuck Schumer’s office, where he had interned the previous summer. Or he could commit two years to teaching at a school in East Harlem.

Having started Teach for America, back in 1989, and then Teach for All—a network of similar organizations across more than 60 countries—I’ve spent almost four decades trying to inspire young people like Jack to work directly with low-income communities. It’s always been difficult, and it’s only gotten harder.

Jack was drawn to Teach for America. But he was torn. He felt the pull of a prestigious role on Capitol Hill, and the fear of falling behind peers who were headed to places such as Harvard Law School. Yet his most meaningful experiences in high school and college involved working on issues he cared about alongside the people affected by them—teaching math to inmates at a correctional facility, and advocating against the tobacco corporations that were getting his generation addicted to flavored e-cigarettes. A conversation with a Teach for America alumnus working in government sharpened his sense that proximity to problems matters. She lamented that many of the people around her were making policy decisions from “bubbles of power and prestige,” far removed from the communities touched by them. Jack chose the classroom.    

Policy makers and philanthropists aren’t particularly focused on first jobs. But these choices matter—and not only for the individuals beginning their careers. If we want to address society’s most deeply rooted challenges—poverty, polarization, environmental degradation, geopolitical conflict—we need to encourage young people to work on these issues early in their careers, so they can grow into leaders capable of solving them.

[Rose Horowitch: The entry-level hiring process is breaking down]

While teaching in Harlem, Jack saw that a lack of resources made failure seem inevitable for the kids at his school. He also saw the incredible resilience and character of the students, families, and teachers. He realized just how entrenched inequity in education is, but he gained confidence in his ability to help address it. Jack is now in his first year at Columbia Law School. Once he graduates, he hopes to litigate for increased funding for education and better compliance with anti-discrimination and disability-rights laws.

Research confirms that working close to the roots of social issues early in one’s career fundamentally reshapes a person’s beliefs and life trajectory. Studies comparing Teach for America applicants who just made the cutoff for participation in the program with those who narrowly missed out found that the groups’ mindsets and priorities looked very different after two years. Those who had taught in under-resourced classrooms were more likely than those who hadn’t to view inequity as a systemic issue rather than the result of personal actions. They had more belief in the potential of students in low-income communities and in their own ability to make a difference. And about 75 percent of alumni across the Teach for All network, which includes Teach for America, go on to devote their careers to tackling systemic challenges faced by children, whether as educators, policy makers, or entrepreneurs.

The Peace Corps has been shown to have similarly formative effects; alumni have reported more awareness of other cultures, greater acceptance of diversity, and a sense of shared humanity that altered their understanding of justice. Peace Corps alumni have gone on to lead many initiatives in the public sector. It’s easy to see how other jobs aimed at meeting pressing social needs—serving as a case manager for unhoused people, for example, or working as an EMT—could shape one’s outlook in similar ways.  

When I was a senior at Princeton back in 1989, my generation was known as the “Me Generation,” for our supposed self-absorption and individualism. I knew that the top students were going to work for banks and consulting firms not because of our generation’s values but largely because banks and consulting firms were the most active recruiters on campus. I was determined to create another avenue, and in my senior thesis proposed the development of Teach for America, which I founded the following year.

When students were offered a prestigious alternative to the corporate track, they revealed themselves to be more idealistic and civically committed than people had assumed. Over the years, more than 70,000 young people have joined Teach for America, and 50,000 more have gone through similar programs across the Teach for All network.

Still, two decades after Teach for America’s founding, despite its expansion and the creation of other public-service programs through AmeriCorps, the first job choices of graduates hadn’t changed all that much. In 2011, a Yale student published an op-ed decrying the narrow choices of so many of her peers. “If this year is anything like the last 10, around 25 percent of employed Yale graduates will enter the consulting or finance industry,” she wrote. “This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. This is so many people! This is one-fourth of our people!”

These percentages have only grown. In 2024, 35 percent of Yale’s senior class entering the workforce chose jobs in finance and consulting; add tech into the mix, and the share rises to 46 percent. At other schools—including Harvard, Princeton, Claremont McKenna, and Vanderbilt—at least half of the graduating class moved into those three fields. Meanwhile, the data I’ve seen on the share of students taking jobs close to inequity and injustice suggest a decline across the same period.

Some students, of course, feel they can’t afford to pursue less immediately lucrative careers. But if this was all that was holding graduates back, you’d expect to see more kids from wealthy backgrounds taking these jobs. Yet students from the highest-income backgrounds are the least likely to enter into public service and the most likely to pursue the corporate path.  

Now that I have college-age kids myself, I’m once again seeing these dynamics firsthand. Corporations recruit students as early as freshman year, offering high-paying summer internships that are hard to resist. Preprofessional programs—such as Harvard’s Undergraduate Consulting Group, Princeton’s Tiger Capital Management, and the Blue Chips at the University of Chicago—seek out students, some even before college, and socialize them into these tracks as soon as they set foot on campus. Other organizations don’t have the resources to compete, making them less visible to students and less prestigious.  

[Annie Lowrey: The job market is hell]

Despite their lofty mission statements about developing civic leaders, few schools push back against this corporate career funnel. Most colleges profess to be neutral when it comes to first jobs—but they benefit from the funding streams provided by prospective employers, who pay colleges thousands of dollars a year, and in some cases upwards of $20,000, to promote themselves to students through career-services offices.   

Many students today are, understandably, anxious about the rise of AI and its effects on entry-level roles. But this development could also give us an opportunity to change the norms around first-job choices. Many corporations will soon need fewer staffers straight out of college to do routine work, but they will still need people among their senior ranks with strong leadership qualities. Companies will therefore have every incentive to push back their recruiting timelines and encourage young people to acquire crucial human skills first—the kinds of skills that can best be developed by working in communities to tackle social problems. And young people themselves, even those who might want to run a major company someday, would benefit immensely from devoting the early years of their careers to such challenges.

High schools should inspire students to step outside of their comfort zone and wrestle with pressing social issues. Colleges should live up to their civic missions by guiding students to take a first job in the public interest. The public and social sectors should create more options for students to do this sort of work, and ensure these options are visible and accessible. Corporations should start recruiting young people after they’ve gained these formative experiences, rather than the minute they arrive on campus. And we should all help young people see that their generation’s first jobs predict the future—not only of their careers but of their world.