A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.
In “Economy and Pleasure,” Wendell Berry writes, “No individual can lead a good or a satisfying life under the rule of competition … no community can succeed except by limiting somehow the competitiveness of its members.” This impulse to compete, Berry argues, drives our economic system, which divides people into two categories: winners and losers. His particular focus in this essay is on agriculture in the United States, where he sees such competition as the dominant mentality: farmers race to acquire the education and resources necessary to defeat other farmers in a game governed by “the rules of competitive economics.”
Universities, he argues, play a major role in this dynamic, “by helping farmers compete against one another.” Higher education’s support of this competitive system reflects and resonates with a much larger shift in the way we think about the life of a student during their college years:
“The idea of the teacher and scholar as one called upon to preserve and pass on a common cultural and natural birthright has been almost entirely replaced by the idea of the teacher and scholar as a developer of ‘human capital’ and a bestower of economic advantage. The ambition is to make the university an ‘economic resource’ in a competition for wealth and power … of course, all of this … works directly against community.”
What does an agrarian essay dealing with agricultural dynamics in the 1980s have to do with the work of vocation in higher ed in 2026? In some ways, everything.
While I don’t teach any students who are preparing to be farmers, I do have students training to win. In many ways, the academic world they live in mimics the economic world they are preparing to enter. Almost every experience on campus offers an opportunity for students to set themselves apart from each other, and the pressure to play comparison games—which my students talk about all the time—suggests that university life is a microcosm of our larger society with classmates competing against one another just as they will after graduation.
Within higher education, competition can create an adversarial climate in which every student feels pressure to do what they must to gain an edge over their peers. Even though this dynamic might not be present at every institution, in my day-to-day work on my campus, I observe that the spirit of competition is alive and well. The fellowship, the internship, the job offer—they all depend on someone being a winner. And because, as Berry observes, the class of winners gets smaller and smaller over time, students will leave university life and enter a world where they must continue to win or risk being cast aside as a loser.
Competition, of course, can be a fruitful endeavor. But the longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that embracing competition as a worldview—and seeing one’s life as an epic quest for victory—cultivates something less than ideal: a tendency to become self-centered, embittered, and existentially dissatisfied with one’s place in the world. It also diminishes a person’s capacity to participate meaningfully in society because “a community cannot survive,” as Wendell Berry notes, “under the rule of competition.” This rule is fueled, in part, by a social hierarchy of labor that bestows esteem and remuneration to certain jobs over others. The prevalent disregard toward entire sectors of labor helps create the conditions for competition to thrive and chokes out meaningful cooperation between members of a community.
Distorted ambition can cause our students to think that the goal of life—and even their sense of calling—is measured by individual success. But vocation is far more communal than many might give it credit for. At the institute where I work, we try to help students understand how the common good might shape their sense of vocation and their vision for the good life. As a rule, the common good includes everyone, so it can’t cast anyone aside; this means the common good resists the notion of winners and losers.
Instead of individual success, common good vocations commend contribution to community. Can you imagine what might change in our students’ lives if they discerned and developed their sense of calling and vocation through the lens of contribution rather than competition?
To start, doing so would create a sturdier foundation on which students could build a sense of identity and embrace fundamental human dignity (their own, as well as that of others). They could develop a sense of vocation rooted in a call to contribute their gifts and skills to the flourishing of a community, rather than assets to be leveraged over and against the other members of a community—an approach that would make the good life more possible for them and others.
It’s an approach that also begins with different questions. Instead of centering achievement and success, the calling of contribution allows students to wonder about how their unique story might be for the benefit of a larger body. In Called Beyond Our Selves: Vocation and the Common Good, Erin VanLaningham suggests that vocation ought to be “oriented toward a collaboration with the calls of others,” an orientation that would greatly benefit our students. She argues, “educators ought to suggest with greater persuasion and persistence that the dominant narrative of personal success and achievement that grips so many students’ pursuits be contextualized and challenged by the myriad ways to live a good life.”
The many expressions of a good life play themselves out in all types of work. Affirming the dignity of work—seeing all labor as an assertion of dignity for the worker—allows us to see the possibility and beauty of every different kind of contribution to a community. Here we find ourselves, like St. Paul, rejecting the idea that the “eye” has no need for the “hand” (1 Cor. 12:21); instead, we can see and celebrate the way each member of the community helps keep the body whole.
Indeed, bodies are apt metaphors when we think about calling as contribution. Each part of the body exists, not for its own sake, but for the flourishing of the larger whole. Healthy bodies do not have parts that battle for supremacy; rather, each part is required to make a full and healthy contribution to ensure the proper functioning of every limb and ligament.
Recently, I was talking with one of our students preparing to be a doctor—a common aspiration on our campus. Less common, though, is his sense of calling. He grew up in a rural community and told me that when he was in elementary school, there was no pediatrician anywhere near his community. Families drove long distances to find appropriate healthcare for their children. He felt a sense of calling to return home and practice family medicine in his community, a place that needed it. He wasn’t trying to be a hero; his desire was far more ordinary than that. He wasn’t chasing titles, prestigious fellowships, or high-status career paths. He observed a need and is developing the capacity to meet that need—to serve and contribute something valuable to his community and help it flourish. An uncommon, but compelling, vocational journey.
The older I get, the more vocational visions like these speak profoundly to me. This young man is highly capable, full of conviction, and intensely motivated—all good and true virtues. Perhaps more striking is his budding wisdom that allows him to see these virtues as seeds of contribution rather than fuel for competition that leads to so much striving and, sometimes, flailing. Communities may not be able to thrive under the rule of competition, but they will surely flourish as our students see the deeper beauty of the calling to contribute.
Adam Gustine is an associate director at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, where he directs the program in virtue ethics, education, and formation. He has worked in a variety of faith-based and denominational leadership contexts within higher education. He is the author of Becoming a Just Church: Cultivating Communities of God’s Shalom and co-author of Ecosystems of Jubilee: Economic Ethics for the Neighborhood. His newest book, A Working Theology of Labor: Justice, Dignity, and the Common Good (Baker Academic) comes out in October 2026. For more posts by Adam, click here.