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For many Harvard sophomores and juniors, Fall is a busy period — but not because of coursework.

It’s recruitment season, the time when private equity firms and hedge funds, among other lucrative industries, roll out the red carpet for our students.

Finance is the most popular career path at Harvard, according to The Crimson’s senior survey, with 21 percent of recently graduating seniors taking jobs in finance, more than a quarter of whom earn upwards of $130,000 a year. That number — 21 percent — should be concerning.

The social harms of this pipeline are well-documented. But some students still aren’t fully aware of the misdeeds of the companies they go on to work for; others simply don’t care. That’s why the Economics Department should require an ethics course, which would demand sharper analysis of the theoretical foundations of the economy and a new emphasis on career ethics.

Among other problems, private equity firms and hedge funds have fuelled wealth inequality for decades. They’ve principally achieved this in two ways.

First, when investing in a company, they slash costs to maximize profit, typically at the expense of the most vulnerable employees. Earnings are redistributed from workers to managers, executives, and investors. This redistribution within the company has society-wide effects; wealth concentrates at the corporate level at the expense of everyone else.

Second, they’ve bought up public goods — most importantly, housing and healthcare — and converted them into projects of ruthless profit maximization.

For example, Blackstone is notorious for its contribution to the housing crisis. It’s the largest corporate landlord globally, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, with an ownership role in at least 274,859 housing units for rent. In some cases, Blackstone has aggressively hiked rents — for example, at double the market rate in San Diego, according to one report, while wealthy investors broadly have left homes vacant, as IPS documents, seemingly betting on increasing real estate prices to provide a better return on investment.

The spirit of profit maximization at the corporate level trickles down to the individual, to the Harvard economics graduate. Public service is sacrificed for private interest.

To be fair, the Economics Department does offer coursework that covers some of the inequities in the current system.

Economics 10A: “Principles of Economics,” typically the first required course for an economics concentrator, assigns readings on income inequality over time, discrimination and disparities in the economic system, and negative externalities especially relating to climate change. Economic inequality is likewise discussed in required courses in intermediate macroeconomics.

Some electives offer room for more critical perspectives. For example, an economics student could take Economics 970: “The Economics of Housing and Homelessness,” where they might research the role of Blackstone and its ilk in the housing crisis. Or they could apply similar scrutiny to private equity and hedge funds in Economics 970: “Inequality & Taxation: Causes, Consequences, Solutions.”

It’s all well and good to have courses that examine economic injustices. But if a large portion of your students go to work for the companies that fuel these injustices, much of the good work done is lost.

Current economics coursework lacks sufficient theoretical scrutiny of our current economic system and a focus on career choice. A mandatory ethics course would address these gaps in three parts.

The first would involve a greater focus on the theoretical foundations of economics.

In EC 10A, challenges to the economy are largely outcome-based; relatively few readings address problems in the theoretical foundations of the economic status quo. Economics students could do with some more critical reading — maybe from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes.

The second part would draw content from existing courses — like EC 10A and Sophomore Tutorials — focusing on case studies and real-world examples of the current economic system’s shortcomings.

The final part would discuss the reality of potential career choices. This component will likely be the most controversial to many, especially those who champion institutional neutrality.

Some might argue that it isn’t the University’s place to question students’ career choices through their coursework — that students should simply decide what’s best for themselves.

But Harvard must consider its societal role. The University is more than happy to consider itself a public good when claiming tax exemptions, but this isn’t always reflected in practice. The finance pipeline is essentially a wealth pipeline; students know that if they concentrate in economics, the door to the big bucks is open.

The finance pipeline is a symptom of students’ apathy towards their career choices. That apathy is what this course would treat. It wouldn’t demonize students who work in finance. Nor would it be as biased as I am towards private equity and hedge funds. Instead, it would acknowledge some of their benefits — namely, how investors spark growth and innovation — but simply encourage students to consider the ethics of their career choice, to resist blindly accepting the more lucrative and convenient option.

The Economics department must ask more of its students; it must foster a culture of public service, not private interest. That starts with a mandatory ethics class.

Luke D. O’Brien ’27, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Eliot House.