A BUYER'S MARKET

The Dirty-Work Premium





For baby boomers who spent their college years vowing not to sell out, it was galling to discover that Corporate America wasn’t necessarily eager to buy them out. New research suggests today’s graduates won’t invite that sort of disappointment. Indeed, the premium they’d ask for selling out, versus doing something high-minded but low-paying, is pretty small. Drawing on an academic-journal article by economist Robert Frank, Harper’s tells of a poll in which students graduating from Cornell were asked how much more they’d have to be paid to take jobs at much-despised corporations versus the equivalent posts at do-gooding organizations.