The Character Of Our Campuses by Fareed Zakaria

May 28, 2001, U.S. Edition

The Character Of Our Campuses
A much-discussed article says today's students care more about grades than virtue. Is that fair?
By Fareed Zakaria

It's commencement season in America, and for the next week the country's youth are in for a lot of advice on life after college. I wonder if they need it. College kids today are so industrious, goal-oriented and responsible that it is amazing and, well, a little bit frightening. I remember talking to a junior at my old college last year and asking him what he thought he might do when he graduated. His reply: "I'm trying to decide between investment banking with a technology focus or management consulting that also involves venture capital." He had just turned 20.

It's about not simply money but rather constant achievement. The executive ethos has spread to teenagers. In a brilliant and much-discussed essay in last month's Atlantic Monthly magazine, David Brooks (a NEWSWEEK contributing editor) describes today's college-age generation as comprising bright, earnest workaholics whose crammed schedule of studies and extracurriculars "would count as slave-driving if it were imposed on anyone," he writes. "They're not trying to buck the system; they're trying to climb it, and they are streamlined for ascent."

That doesn't leave much time for late-night bull sessions or political activism. Brooks points out that when visiting Princeton at the height of the election season, there was not one Bush or Gore poster in sight. (I also noticed this on trips to campuses last fall.) One senior explained why she, like most students, doesn't read a newspaper: "When I think of all that I have to keep up with, I'm relieved there are no bigger compelling causes."

It's hard to blame America's youth for being apolitical. They only reflect the mood of the country at a time of peace, prosperity and blurred ideological divisions. But Brooks does worry that these superachievers have little interest in developing moral character. Comparing them with another elite generation, from the early 20th century, that also lived in times of peace and prosperity, he sees a great contrast, writing, "[Those students] were relatively unconcerned with academic achievement but went to great lengths to instill character. We, on the other hand, place enormous emphasis on achievement but are tongue-tied when it comes to what makes a virtuous life."

Brooks points out that adults and adult institutions today guide and regulate young people's lives in every way imaginable--no smoking, study smart, play safely--except in the realm of moral instruction. Here's a commencement address you won't hear this week, from Princeton president John Hibben at the 1913 graduation exercises: "[The world] commands you to take your place and fight the fight in the name of honor and of chivalry, against the powers of organized evil and commercialized vice, against the poverty, disease and death which follow fast in the wake of sin and ignorance, against all the innumerable forces which are working to destroy the image of God in man, and unleash the passions of the beast." Hmm, I guess that means investment banking is out.

Something has been lost with the decline of moral discourse in America. It's clear that a few generations ago, people spoke more articulately and thoughtfully about the virtuous life. But I'm not sure we can regain that language today. There has been a fundamental shift in American society, away from moral authority and toward what the sociologist Alan Wolfe calls "moral freedom."

In a new book (called "Moral Freedom") based on a combination of opinion polls and in-depth interviews, Wolfe finds that most Americans are actually quite concerned about morality but they want to determine for themselves how to construct a virtuous life. Less and less do they defer to the moral authority of institutions like churches. He points out that even among the religious, the dominant trend is toward individualized forms of faith in which personal autonomy plays a big role. The language of born-again Christians, for example, while deeply religious, is about personal self-discovery, not obedience to doctrine. "There is a moral majority in America," writes Wolfe. "It just... wants to make up its own mind."

Wolfe is right that this is a revolution. It is also a very American revolution, being antiauthoritarian, emphasizing individual autonomy and having a rather sunny world view. And I'm not so sure that it is so bad. Today's young are less ostentatiously moral than their predecessors. They are less sure that they have grand solutions for society's problems. But student radicals in the 1960s were obsessed with values and moral character, and that self-righteousness did not always do good. Instead, today's youth seem more focused on the bourgeois virtues that Benjamin Franklin celebrated--hard work, honesty and responsibility. And in many ways they are more decent than the muscular Christians of F. Scott Fitzgerald's world. They are less racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and callous toward the poor. Brooks disapprovingly quotes a Princeton official as saying, "I don't know if we build character or remind [students] that they should be developing it." I'm confident that they will, if we can just keep it on their "to-do" list.