The Fundamental Shift in the Goal of One’s Work When Graduating

The Purpose of Learning: Instrinsic vs. Instrumental

Graduating comes with a psychological and philosophical shift in the purpose of one's work. During university, the central goal is to add value to oneself, that is: to build human capital. After graduation, the goal shifts toward adding values to others.

This doesn’t mean these two aims conflict; in fact, I would argue that they often reinforce each other. The key difference is that learning, for many, moves from being intrinsic — pursued for its own sake — to becoming instrumental, pursued as a means to an end.

One might argue that education is always instrumental, that students study merely to obtain a degree and improve their career prospects. That’s true for some, yet many in higher education genuinely learn out of curiosity, for the sheer love of the subject.

This helps explain why graduates sometimes express a reluctance to “become a cog in a machine”. Their concern is not about employment per se, but about losing the sense of inward growth that characterized their years of study, the shift from learning for personal development to working for external utility.

Action Preceding Motivation

By the time they graduate, most individuals have cultivated a deep interest in certain topics and fear losing that passion once they enter the workforce. That fear is understandable, but it overlooks an important truth: that action precedes motivation, not the other way around.

The interests one holds are shaped by one’s environment. Academic curiosity emerges from prolonged immersion in an academic setting. When individuals transition into work life, they encounter new contexts, and given time, develop new interests just as genuine as the old ones.

In short, my argument is that interests is the result of consistent action, not the other way around. The same way motivation to exercise arises after going to the gym, new professional passions will arise after engaging with new kinds of work.

From Inward Growth to Outward Utility

The transition from university to work-life does not necessarily have to be a transition from learning for oneself to learning for someone else — it can be combined. It is now time to reap the fruits of the knowledge you once learned for its own sake and transform this into outward utility. The task after graduation is not to preserve the conditions of academia, but rather to bring the same curiosity into the new environment you find yourself in. The growth will continue, but in a different direction. Very likely, it was thanks to the years in academia that you learned how to solve the problems you today can solve in the first place.