Wednesday, November 30, 2011
At Top Colleges, Anti-Wall St. Fervor Complicates Recruiting
Jobs in the Wall Street used to be a very popular job for recent graduates but with this current economic situation many student from ivy league universities refused to go into finance. With the recent occupy Wall Street movement there was a lot of protest on university campuses. The job in finance is not as prestige as before since they are laying off workers and the salary decreases. Some of the slogan in the protest against Wall Street said that " 25 percent is too much talent spent" "Take a stance, don't go into finance" "These are people who could be doing better things with their energy". The number of recent graduates who went into financial services decreases from 25% to 17%. Now recent graduates rather go into technology firms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. After reading this article I'm excited to see whether the protest will impact more recent graduates or not. Some recent graduate are still determined to work in the finance industry but hoping to leave in after a few years.
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I'm impressed that this movement has actually had an effect on undergrads. I would think that those protesting and those who want to work on Wall Street would be two distinct groups, neither one being able to influence the other. The fact that entrance into finance has decreased is interesting. However, this is most likely the effect of the recession, not of the movements and protests.
ReplyDeleteLike Kate said, I'm interested in whether the decrease in salary or the unethical practices of recent years has more of an impact on undergrads. Financial firms are in need of young, talented, and ethical students to help transform their image as greedy and money hungry.
ReplyDeleteYou can't blame students for doing what's in their immediate best interest. I'd be willing to bet that not many people would be able to turn down such a lucrative salary and opportunity at such a young age.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is incentives matter. If other industries were willing to pony up the money to hire these high achieving students, the students would go there.
The government can do its share to make sure the finance positions aren't so profitable in comparison. But when capital gains and the top marginal rate are so low (and the cost of education is so high), can we really be surprised when the talent flocks to such places?