Those jobs they are trapped into taking? The only clear point I get from the article is that even college graduates from elite universities should be expected to be responsible for their choices....because the school failed them!
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Harvard’s Liberal-Arts Failure Is Wall Street’s Gain
by Ezra Klein
In recent years, many top universities have tried to guide their students into careers other than finance.
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| Illustration by Keith Shore |
The efforts seem to be failing. In December, the New York Times’ Catherine Rampell asked Harvard, Yale and Princeton for data on the professions their graduates were entering. As of 2011, finance remained the most popular career for Harvard graduates, sucking up 17 percent of those who went from college to a full-time job. At Yale, 14 percent of the 2010 graduating class, and at Princeton, 35.9 percent, were headed into finance.
Since I am too lazy to read the whole article, is the point that Ivy grads are douches?
ReplyDeleteEzra Klein -- doesn't that explain it?
ReplyDeleteActually, I recognize myself in these data, even though I think I would hate working on Wall Street. I am a quick study on lots of things. I have, over the course of my life, proved very flexible in many ways and taken a few leaps. But there is a narrow-minded, risk-averse corner of my brain when it comes to particular kinds of processes. I loath looking through job ads and having to figure it all out myself. I haven't the slightest fucking clue what many of the terms mean and, unlike looking up what a "moon calfe" might be when reading Shakespeare, it doesn't interest me.
ReplyDeleteIf there were a line of people at the door showing me a clear path through the woods, that would be VERY attractive, regardless of what the content of the jobs was. If I had $100,000 in student loans to pay back and the path they were showing included a way to pay that back - Shakespeare, Cicero, Bronte and Chernishevskii might suddenly seem trivial.
The irony: I don't understand job ads at least in part because my mind has been focused on the humanities, but the result is that if taken by the hand and shown a great job, it would likely be away from the humanities and into "key account manager" or some other thing I would have never imagined before. At 21, they might have had me. That danger has passed, however, as I am certain Wall Street would not want me now.
I think we underestimate the power of fear to "make" us accept and keep jobs we hate simply because we have bills to pay.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the original point of a liberal arts education to prepare a man for entry into the upper crust of society, with business and social requirements thereof? I do not understand the failing. Harvard seems to be doing a pretty good job of fulfilling this original role.
ReplyDeleteIf they somehow think they should be churning out grade school teachers and public servants, perhaps they should reconsider that which makes people think applying to Harvard is a good idea.
Yeah, I'm not sure why this is unexpected or a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteYou graduate from school, you have student loans, and you need to start making payments.
Do you A) flounder about trying to find the job you wanted when you were a freshman or B) figure out that you better get a job NOW and take that really well-paying one?
Is this really something that is difficult to understand at all?