When You've Invested So Much in a Career Path - Harvard International Students, Like Too Many Knowledge Workers, Are Undone

 About a fourth of Harvard student body is made of international students. Now, the Trump administration announced that Harvard's right to enroll international students had been revoked and current students would have to transfer elsewhere. Up in the air is the question if those who assumed they would be receiving a degree this graduation will be able to do so. 

Of course, everyone in that orbit at Harvard is in upheaval. A core emotion among the students, reports The New York Times, is:

"... students [are] overwhelmed ... by the idea of leaving a place where they had invested so much."

It requires a lot of heavy lifting to get into Harvard and then achieve there, amid the pressure of its powerful mystique. 

This replicates the interior shift taking place among knowledge workers in so many sectors. It's the exception: Those who have invested so heavily in a career path who haven't been forced out or in high angst that the end is near. The majority of the rest have been caught up in soul-wrenching force field of being replaceable or already replaced. 

The sectors in which that is happening include HR, marketing, content-creation, management consulting, public relations, graphic design, film production and more. Chair of law firm Paul Weiss Brad Karp went public with the prediction that generative AI could reduce the demand for junior lawyers. In addition to AI what's driving the vanishing of professions are the current campaign for cost-efficiency (that circles back to the end of the 1980s), consolidation which creates redundancies in manpower, global economic uncertainty and geopolitical instability. 

In my career coaching initially the mission is to lead knowledge workers to accept emerging realities. Some then reskill. Many more start their own businesses. It is not cringey to have the mindset: It takes closing one door for new ones to open.

Full Disclosure: Three years ago I exited full-time content-creation to retrofit sidelines in intuitive coaching and tarot-reading into full-time sources of income. The shift was difficult. In the late 1980s, I had matriculated at Havard Law School but decided that wasn't my path. You don't have to be psychic to get it that Harvard will never be Harvard again. 

UPDATE: 

Within 24 hours of the administration's action, Harvard sues the government. Here are the details from The New York Times. Obviously, the showdown between the two has escalated. 

UPDATE: 

Judge blocks White House ban on Harvard's enrolling international students. Here are details.

Undone by the uncertainty? Faith-based Career Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, reskilling and aging. Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova (Text 203-468-8579, janegenova374@gmail.com).