A couple of years ago, right after a Capitol Steps show I did at Sanders Theatre, a Harvard junior came up and told me I had a really fun job. She said she hoped she could someday have a job that was half as much fun. Her voice revealed a trace of melancholy, as if she didn’t think there was much chance the real world would ever allow her to engage her whimsical side. I understood, because I’ve met a number of others like her.

When I was at Harvard nearly four decades ago, as part of the “strike” Class of 1969, many of my classmates had a very grand sense of the possible. Sure, we had problems—the men had the Vietnam-era draft, and the women faced far worse gender bias than now—but we were confident we could fix those problems. Our biggest dreams had little to do with money, and a lot to do with grand causes and personal journeys into the arts, teaching or elsewhere.

Lofty ideals were more affordable then. When I entered Harvard in 1965, the tuition was less than $1,800 per year—roughly 60 percent less than it is today, adjusted for inflation. Student loans were small, seldom more than a couple of thousand dollars total, and most of us paid them off pretty quickly. Starter jobs in many fields, especially public service, paid better than today (adjusted for inflation). Housing costs—even in major cities—were low enough to enable a typical Harvard grad to find a nice place to live within a few years after graduation. Nearly no one counted on their parents for financial help out of school.

How unlike now, when so many young people—especially those whose families aren’t “well off”—have no choice but to rivet their ambitions to the moneyed practicalities of life.

In time, nearly all Harvard students will do fine. You’ll get good jobs, pay off those loans, buy houses and start families. What concerns me more are your non-Ivy friends from high school, many of whom will be saddled with at least as much debt, with far less prospect of ever matching your earning power.

What also concerns me is that not enough of you Harvard graduates will spend your twenties and thirties doing the vibrant and important work every rising generation needs to do to advance human civilization—writing books, musicals and plays, creating works of art, challenging injustice, safeguarding the planet, enhancing the child’s world, pursuing whatever intrigues you.

Many of you won’t do those things simply because you’ll be spending too much time chasing money rather than fascinations. How odd that this has come to pass, given that America is now a far more affluent place than when I was your age. One of the many reasons it has is that college and graduate education has become so expensive. There’s been a steady run-up in tuition over the past four decades, not just at Harvard. Unless you’re rich or near-rich, paying for college is a bigger burden now. And there’s been a huge run-up of student debt, a problem that’s worse elsewhere than it is at Harvard.

On the whole, your generation has far more trouble than we did with money. Money ambition veers you away from your ideals and can steer you toward professions in service of the elite. Money inequality drives a wedge between students who have cash pouring in from their families and others who don’t. The money culture—that inclination to reward anything based on a “market” (whether real, illusory or corrupt)—is corroding the values of too many fine institutions. Including Harvard.

People of my age and generation are now running things at this University, by and large. I know many of them, and without exception they are smart and good people. Sometimes smart and good people make choices that are wrong, and when they do, their friends should tell them so.

As it has grown wealthier over the last two decades, this proud place has immersed more than it should into elements of money ambition, money inequality and the money culture.

The Harvard endowment, most recently measured at $19.3 billion, has shown outstanding growth over the last decade, trailing only Yale in its investment performance. This should be cause purely for celebration—but it’s not.

With the University now vastly richer than ever before, one would think the place would bristle with new benefits for students. This would require an increase in the annual payout from the endowment, approximating its recent long-term gain in value, but that’s something Harvard has not done in recent years.

What we see, instead, is the bizarre combination of frequent high pronouncements of vast wealth combined with even more frequent pleadings about the need to squeeze the annual operating budget. The recent cutbacks and layoffs of library staff and services are just one example of this.

While Harvard is laying off librarians, it’s paying six other employees—fund managers—a total of $107.5 million this year. Wrap your mind around those numbers. Six people. Over a hundred million dollars. That’s a sum so large it’s hard to fathom.

In 2003, according to the National Association for College and University Business Officers report, only 717 colleges and universities reported having endowments, and of those, only 419 had assets (acquired over their entire history) adding up to more than Harvard is paying these six people in a single year.