June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Amherst College President Anthony Marx spent six years at the school extolling public service and teaching. His efforts were rewarded this year when eight new graduates took jobs with Teach for America, now the largest employer of Amherst students besides the college itself.

As U.S. President Barack Obama urges young people to make a difference in the world and the recession crimps opportunities, new graduates are pursuing public-interest careers. At Amherst, at least 53 percent of May graduates with jobs are working in education, nonprofit groups or governments, an increase from 43 percent in 2003 when Marx started at the school, said Allyson Moore, director of the campus career center.

Nationally, 27 percent of about 1.6 million graduating seniors plan to work for nonprofit groups or governments, an increase from 23 percent in 2008, according to a survey of 14,225 U.S. college students conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Thirty-nine percent of graduates want private sector jobs, down from 45 percent last year, the survey found.

“There’s a generational shift toward increasing interest and concern into how to help make the world a better place,” Marx said in his office, in Amherst, Massachusetts. “I hear students saying, ‘We want to make a difference and we’re not going to feel quite right about ourselves if we don’t do that.’”

Harvard Relief

At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, undergraduates are relieved that they no longer have to fight the temptation of high-paying Wall Street jobs, President Drew Faust said, in an interview in New York.

“This year, many undergraduates told me that they were looking more broadly at career options due to the changes in the financial industry,” Faust said.

Students have stepped up their activism in the last decade, energized by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Obama’s candidacy, said Andrew Furco, an associate professor of educational policy and administration at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis.

“Young people have more of a social conscience now, or they’re being encouraged to develop one,” said Furco, who runs the school’s Office for Public Engagement.

Zeal for Education

Marx, 50, was hired from Columbia University in New York, where he taught political science, to help inspire Amherst and its students to contribute to society, said John Abele, a former Amherst trustee who graduated in 1959.

“The board was interested in having a school that was making a difference, by putting out students that are making a difference in the world,” said Abele, the co-founder of medical-device maker Boston Scientific Corp. of Natick, Massachusetts.

In part because of Marx’s encouragement, Abele donated $13 million in 2006 to found Amherst’s Center for Community Engagement, which directs students into volunteer opportunities tied to their course work. The center also provides grants of as much as $4,000 each for students to take unpaid internships at nonprofits or governments.

Marx’s zeal for education as a means for improving social equality dates to the 1980s, when he helped found Khanya College, a prep school in South Africa. In 2001, Marx started the Columbia Urban Educators Program, which recruits and trains teachers.

A board member of Teach for America, Marx sent e-mails congratulating Amherst students accepted into the program, and devoted his 2008 commencement address to the problems facing U.S. public education and the obligation of elite colleges to improve it.

$1.26 Billion Endowment

Graduates of wealthy colleges such as Amherst, which had a $1.26 billion endowment as of March 31 and costs more than $50,000 a year to attend, have a particular responsibility, Marx said.

“With the privilege of being in this amazing place, in these amazing circumstances, we’re going to expect more from you,” Marx said in his office.

Amherst is tied with Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for U.S. News & World Report’s top ranking for national liberal arts colleges. Alumni include Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the U.S., Scott Turow, the bestselling author, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist. Under Marx, Amherst initiated a no-loan financial aid policy in 2008 that allows graduates to pursue careers without worrying about debt.

“There is a real problem of the cost of colleges constraining career choices,” Marx said. “Students were saying to us, ‘I need to find a job that pays not only what it costs to live, but what it costs to pay the debt.’”

Mississippi Corps

Marx’s message has resonated with students, 218 of whom have applied to Teach for America since 2005. Forty-eight ended up joining the New York-based nonprofit, which places new instructors in impoverished urban and rural school districts. Amherst, which graduated 419 students in May, also contributed six of the 29 new members of the Mississippi Teacher Corps, based in Oxford, which finds instructors for the state.

Last year, for the first time since at least 2003, more Amherst seniors who took jobs did so in government or nonprofits than in the private sector, said Moore, of the college career center.

“Amherst does a really good job of being upfront about the privilege that’s present here, and emphasizing that you need to do something with that privilege,” said Alison Munzer, 21, a May graduate from Los Angeles who is joining Teach for America.

Munzer, who played volleyball at Amherst, said she has no illusions about what lies ahead.

‘Hardest Two Years’

“As soon as I accepted the offer, I realized I’m in for the hardest two years of my life,” Munzer said. “Someone is trusting me to teach their kids and that blows my mind. I’m so young myself.”

Teach for America drew more than 35,000 applications, a 42 percent increase over last year, for 4,100 spots, according to Kerci Marcello Stroud, a spokeswoman.

The recession is helping drive graduates into service, Marx said. That’s “partially because they want to, and partially because they’re not going to have a choice but to find alternatives,” he said. “Investment banking jobs aren’t going to come courting.”

Drew Blacker, 22, an Amherst graduate from Summit, New Jersey, wants to work for the federal government. He rejected a career on Wall Street, where he was an intern, after spending a summer working for the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Education in Washington.

Unsatisfying Finance

“It opened up a whole new world,” Blacker said at party for graduating seniors held on Amherst’s basketball court. “My experience in finance just wasn’t as satisfying.”

Founded in 1821, Amherst sits on 1,000 grassy acres under oak trees, with views of the Holyoke Range.

“One of the challenges for a place like Amherst is that it could too easily be an ivory tower, a gorgeous campus in rural western Massachusetts, far removed the push and pull of the world,” said Colin Diver, an Amherst alumnus and trustee who is president of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

After the college announced its endowment fell 26 percent in the second half of 2008, students in March voted to donate a portion of activity fees -- ordinarily used for music acts and clubs -- to support financial aid, preserve jobs for the lowest- paid staff members and help restore departmental budgets.

“We had a responsibility to our community and to our college to put our money in line with our priorities and values,” said Nicholas Pastan, 22, who was student president before graduating in May.

Pastan, from Washington, D.C., also joined Teach for America. He’ll work with sixth and seventh graders in New York City, where the average Teach for America salary is about $45,500 a year.

“I have friends going into investment banking,” Pastan said. “They can make up to $150,000, more than three times what I’m going to be making. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 23, 2009 00:01 EDT