Stephen, the points you raise are really excellent. Makes me wish that we were still at Middlebury and could hash this out over breakfast every day as we used to.

I want to rephrase your question slightly: is there any reason that an economic life cannot be a good life? There is a prevalent thought that engaging in the economy robs one of the freedom that the good life requires (not sure if you remember Bob Huntington from the class of 78, but he made this point when I got my first job at a consulting firm in Washington). Personally, I believe that a free market in a free society (well, as free, in both cases, as we can get) provides an opportunity to do both.

I believe there are three kinds of people in the economy. There are those who can only survive if they do as they are told. These are the menial and rote jobs performed by those who cannot imagine what they might do to make a living. The second group are those who can make a living doing what they want to do, but choose to do what will make them the most money. Many of the people in this group would have to accept poverty to do what they really want to do. The third group has the same choice, but chooses happiness over money. In most cases, these individuals do not live in real poverty, because they have talent that can make a good living doing just about anything.

The most talented individuals not only can do what they really want to do, but they can do it in a way that increases the happiness of others - a true increase in "net national welfare". In so far as the Greek liberal education was for the "free" - the non-working rich rather than the working slaves - I believe that the modern liberal education should take those who have the talent to make a living doing, literally, anything, and help them choose where to best apply their talents for their own satisfaction and for the greatest benefit of others. It still amazes me how few students seem to realize they have this choice, and I believe the college has a responsibility to make this choice clear.

I can illustrate this problem with a story. I met a woman last year who was about to graduate from Middlebury. I learned that she had a deep interest in the environment. I offered to put her in touch with a good friend of mine who is the executive director of a non-profit environmental group. I then learned that, despite her stated "goal", she had already taken a job as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. It could be my bias, but I sensed that she was disappointed that she had not realized she might have had her "dream job" right out of college.

This is a sad situation. A talented and passionate voice for the environment is now helping move billions of dollars in cash from one organization to another, extracting a small percentage for her nice salary and her company without producing anything of substance. She says she will "make a lot of money and then do non profit work", but we all know how that goes. Once on the path of the "affluent good life" it is hard to get off. And while I believe it is a strong statement, I do not totally disagree with Thoreau, who wrote - "...it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

Today, it seems that Middlebury offers graduates two choices: bleed cash working for a non-profit company, or go for greed and make money on Wall Street. The idea of creating a company that produces valuable goods and services for a reasonable profit seems to be missing. Google exemplifies a company that has achieved both, though I think it is a poor example because it is so hugely publicly successful. There are many smaller companies that achieve what I am talking about, but most of us have not heard of them.

I think there is a strong case to be made that Middlebury should be teaching students that more is possible for them - that they can live a good life and an economic life - that for them, the talented and intelligent, the choice is not between "doing well" and "doing good" , but how to craft a life that accomplishes both, and more.

Aaron, I think you're right on, wanting to help Midd students consider good, satisfying careers without being sucked by default into the highest-paying field.

As you say, it's probably not a trade-off after all: If a person does what they love, chances are the money will follow.

However, something now biases a grad's career choice more than ever: The soaring cost of college, and the load of debt most students carry the day they graduate.

In 2006 about 74% of graduating private-college students carried loans, over $21,000 on average.

The average student debt grew twice as fast as starting salaries.

If I had loans like that to pay, I might be trying to remember how to tie a necktie!

A report from the Project on Student Debt gave credit to a couple dozen expensive schools that nevertheless had average student debt of less than $15,000 -- Harvard, Williams, etc., but sadly Midd was not on the list.

Tom,

Your timing couldn't be more appropriate. Ensuring Access and Opportunity to a Middlebury education is one of the top three recommendations of the Middlebury Strategic Plan. And, building financial aid in the form of outright grants to students (i.e., not loans) is our very highest in our development efforts.

Thanks for bringing this issue to this group. Good to see you at Alumni Leadership Conference. Aaron Abend, we missed you but the Abend family was well represented!

Dina Wolkoff '88
College Advancement

Thanks, Dina, for pointing that out. When Ron outlined financial aid as priority number one last Spring, I thought it was great (and speaking as somebody with three kids under age ten, important :)

Seeing the materials on the Middlebury Initiative, and financial aid in particular, that were available in the Inn this weekend were an excellent introduction. I hate to admit I have not read the strategic plan, so the summary was definitely helpful!

At the ALC, I also met a few recent Midd grads who were doing interesting and altruistic works, in pubic high school education reform, for instance -- so the spirit of identifying "right livelihood" is definitely alive and well at Middlebury.

As we have moved along on this topic we seemed to have reached a point where a tentative summary is needed. We seemed to have arrived at a point where "goal setting" is taken to mean pursuing the good life. As this relates to business there seem to be three "populations" that might be addressed in CORE.

The first group is students curious about business who wonder if a career in business and "the good life" are not oxymorons. The challenge for these students would seem to be to demonstrate that the two concepts are compatible.

The second is students who accept that the "good life" may be realized while pursuing a career in business. If there is a challenge here it would seem to be to show the breadth of opportunity in business so that students do not feel that choices are limited to RA positions with New York i-bankers. A further aspect of this group is to demonstrate how though indebted one might pursue the career of one's choice.

The third group, and this is likely the group of Michael's original concern, are those students rushing eagerly into business but who have yet to think about how to make a career in business a "good life".

It seems that the educational challenges in CORE for each of these groups is quite different.

Thank you Stephen. The needs/challenges we face in educating each group differ. I would counter with suggestion that second and third groups are very much more alike than is the first relative to either of the other two. I suspect that MIDD CORE has little to offer the first group, as we will not be evangelists for dispelling the notion that a business career and "the good life" are like oil and water.

What about that second group? Where are our social entrepreneurs and those destined to build or work for social organizations? I see them as residing in the second group, which is why we will devote a quarter of the program exploring how the CORE processes apply to social organizatons.

I also see the student who is passionate about philosophy, sociology, physics or languages, but harbors anxieties about the career prospects for graduates of those disciplines residing squarely in the second group.

Finally, I suggest a slight expansion of Stephen's third group to include on paths towards careers in large organizatons - both business and social - who are simply bent on "getting a good job no matter what."

Our discussion of the goal-setting quandry is spirited to say the least. If anything, the group conscience has spoken clearly on one point: Simply trotting out a framework like SMART and running the students through goal-setting for MIDD CORE is not the answer.Happily, I can report to the community that two of us have volunteered to take this challenge on by designing a pilot within a pilot around goal-setting.

Karen’s O’Donnell ’72 began her GE career in GE Plastics and has subsequently risen through the ranks. She now is the program manager of the Business Management Course and Executive Development Course, the two highest-level programs as GE's leadership center, Crotonville, Ossining, NY.

Andie Sehl is a member of The Varian Group, a network of organizational and management consultants, and works with clients around the world. She combines her strong performance orientation from classic strategy consulting with her experience in change management to help senior executives align their organizations with performance objectives.

Andie conducted the foundatonal research that has led to launching Middlebury College's Project on Innovation and Creativity in the Liberal Arts. MIDD CORE is the Project's first program.

MIDD CORE will adopt both first-person (students learn about themselves) and third-person (students learn about organizations) perspectives. To that end, we want the students to begin the program by discovering themselves, so they will do the Myers Briggs Personality test, and complete Jim Collins’ Good to Great inspired personal assessment exercise during the first two days of the program. We will then work with the students in groups and individually to interpret and understand what these two exercises imply about who they are and where their passions and strenghts lie.

Andie and Karen will be collaborating on creating and exectuing a set of exercies around goal-setting, risk taking and critical thinking that leverage off of theses results and refelct the program's two perspectives. As currently roughed out, they have two "deliverables": Helping the students understand how individuals identify their intrinsic motivations and then set and pursue the goals implied by them; and how organizations develop and execute visions, strategies and implementation plans using goals and milestones to provide the link and translate the plans into meaningful actions.

What they create will be one of the threads running through the entire program. Andie and Karen will conclude by leading a collaborative self-evaluation of the MIDD CORE pilot based on the goals the group will set at the beginning of winter term.

To be sure, we have a rough framework at this point, and the devil is certainly in the details, but I draw comfort from knowing these two professionals and what they bring to this challenge.

We will keep you posted. Stand by...

Michael, your mention of Jim Collins’ Good to Great makes me think of a few other books. They may be insufficiently academic, but they are good reads about inspired, innovative, socially-conscious businesses:

Cause for Success: 10 Companies That Put Profit Second and Came in First (Christine Arena)
Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun (Ben Cohen)
Growing a Business (Paul Hawken)
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (Yvon Chouinard)

Maybe you can get Ben cohen to come down and guest lecture :)

I apologize if you receive this twice. I am not confident that the first message actually went out.

Midd students can profit by reading pop-biz books designed for busy managers looking for quick answers. But I also suggest that Michael and others designing this course include material designed to help students stretch their minds, see multiple points of view, and make connections to other parts of the liberal arts.

To that end, I recommend including an excerpt from Deirdre McCloskey's recent book, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. The introduction ("A Brief for the Bourgeois Virtues") would, I think, stimulate fruitful discussion both within and outside class meetings. It might also lead some students to dig in to other parts of the curriculum with greater vigor.

On the pop-biz book shelf, Andrew Savitch's book, The Triple Bottom Line, is worth a look see.

Note to Stephen: Feliks Gross's book, Ideologies, Goals, and Values, is available through www.Questia.com. A one-year subscription is about $100. Monthly subscriptions are also available. I believe there is also a free trial subscription. This would be a place to check out the book (in both senses).

All the best,

Mike Palmer
Ethics By Design

Yes, college students know goals - work like hell, then you might get into a gread college or university... keep working like hell to get good grades; do the resume thing with CSO, get the right interviews, and THE job might be there. My probelm with these "goals" is that all of them are set externally, and are largely negative in terms of the consequences of follow other than the prescribed path.

By goal setting, I am reaching for something quite different. At the personal level, "Where do you see yourself in two years, five years....?" "What do I want to accomplish in my life?" At the team-level, "Where do we see this project in six weeks, in a year?" "How will we know if we have succeeded?"

And even for MIDD CORE, "What are the objectives for the course for this January? In future years?
What are the desired outcomes for students? (besides what's already been written)"

Steve's suggestion that we use creating and introducing the Commons and Social Houses as the substitute for fraternities at the College would be at least interesting. I do find myself wondering how many of our current students even realize that to a significant extent, the Commons system was seen by its founders as the College's answer to fraternaties.

My question then remains, "How best might we weave building a habit of and helping students learn the how of what I might term internally-generated goal setting?"

One may argue the equality of goals but one thing common among achieving all goals is critical thinking. As a hiring manager and executive for over 20 years I have seen a precipitous decline in critical thinking skills. I have seen an ever increasing sophistication in personal, professional and company goal setting; but a logical path to achieving those goals or even finding out how to come up with a plan - nope, not there.