Swarthmore College student Isabel Knight recently challenged her school’s predominant anti-capitalist mentality. In an op-ed for the college’s student newspaper, the Daily Gazette, Knight wrote: “One of the dirty secrets at Swarthmore is that we both stigmatize and undervalue the professional world. There is a certain disdain we hold towards those who come to college for not-so-idealistic reasons; coming to Swarthmore to increase your prospects of financial security, maybe even a six-figure income in the future, is not something you tell people here.”

“There is a notion among much of the faculty that to ‘instrumentalize’ their study, or to teach it in such a way so as to orient it towards being useful for a future job, is selling out,” she wrote. “Multiple alumni have told me that their professors tend to judge them, sometimes quite openly, when they come back and tell them they have gone into the business world, or have become a lawyer.”

In 2013, Knight reminds us, former World Bank president and Bush administration official Robert Zoellick was invited to deliver Swarthmore’s commencement address and receive an honorary degree. But after students protested that move, Zoellick, a Swarthmore alumnus, backed out and refused to accept the degree. Knight says that Zoellick was “alienated” partly because he had worked for Goldman Sachs and represented, to many protesting students, the worst of the corporate world.

Knight says that that kind of campus culture–one in which most professors and students are anti-profit and anti-corporation–may do a disservice to individuals who can’t afford the luxury of studying something merely because they’re “passionate” or “idealistic,” and who would benefit more from a career-oriented education. Read the full op-ed here.