As you may have heard, over the last several months, various college newspapers have run opinion pieces by students lamenting the fact that many of their peers take jobs on Wall Street following graduation, where their talents are wasted. Dartmouth kicked things off in August, with others following in suit, particularly at Ivy League universities, from which the financial industry heavily recruits. Not to be left out of the fun, Duke University’s Chronicle Editorial Board today bemoaned the Duke “factory” which “inputs smart and well-intentioned kids, and churns out instruments for the Wall Street machine.”
Financial services and consulting have filled the first and second position for top employers of Duke grads for three of the past four years. In 2009, businesses in these sectors comprised almost half of all hirers. The unabated flow of Duke students into finance represents a lamentable waste of talent. A well-functioning economy requires a financial system to procure and allocate investment capital. But financial institutions’ swollen balance sheets often fail to accurately reflect the value they add to society, while more socially productive activities—like education or policy reform—are systematically undervalued. Indeed, trading in complex and risky financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps raises profits and inflates paychecks, but it also spurs little growth and can place the entire economy at risk. Indeed, any argument for the value—economic or social—of the financial sector must rest on the ability of financial institutions to coordinate capital and foster innovative business ventures that produce wealth and create jobs. These arguments assume that the financial sector is only valuable insofar as it contributes to other more valuable areas.
[...]
Given the relative unproductiveness of the financial sector, graduates who pursue careers in finance or consulting sacrifice an opportunity to apply their unique intelligence and ingenuity to tackle the innumerable challenges we face as a country…Entrepreneurial pursuits and careers in public service offer the most opportunity for graduates to do good. If more smart people pursue jobs oriented toward creating socially-valuable products and services or commit themselves to developing solutions to educational or environmental problems, society will improve in ways that trading in mortgage-backed securities will never achieve. We encourage students headed for Wall Street to stray from that tired road, but recognize the institutional, parental and social pressures that compel many to pursue careers in finance and consulting. Although these careers promise security, wealth and status, we believe that Duke students can do better. Those who choose another path have the power to improve society in lasting and meaningful ways. We hope that they will.
For the presumably large contingent of Duke students who entered the school thinking working on Wall Street was exactly what they wanted to (rather than having been co-opted by The Man or brainwashed by the Duke Factory), and don’t actually want to do “better,” take heart- your blood may be boiling now, but before going and taking it out on stripper tonight, please note that “The editorial board did not reach quorum for this editorial.” You’re still in a safe space.
Pass The Buck [The Chronicle]
By careers in finance they mean Wells Fargo and BAC in Charlotte right?
"security, wealth and status"… that sounds awful, let me go sleep outside until I get maced and/or arrested instead.
Would you like to buy this CDO that a hedge fund client may or may not have helped create?
wasted talents, bro
Mace? We call it Pepper spray downtown.
"we believe that Duke students can do better. "
No, they can't.
C'mon, Duke kids, even upon entering the school, never were one be "well-intentioned".
I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what reverse convertible structured products were made of. DSK's a real hero of mine. Andrew Mason. Andrew Mason would be another person who's a hero. The money he's made over the past year, I don't really understand it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.
I know Bess is jk, but those laxers didn't bang that stripper bro. It was proven in a court of law.
Totes.
Technically, one of them did bang her. They didn't rape her, I think is what you're getting at. Bro.
Duke kids,
Please keep applying your "unique intelligence and ingenuity" on Wall St.
- Everyone who lives outside Manhattan
No, it's called being maced.
-William Wallace
the ivy kids used bigger words in theirs
Duke sucks
clearrrrrrrrly larry moneta posing as psi up posting as goldman sachs posing as a kid who found his dad's thesaurus
Has anyone else noticed the hilarious Fuck List writer tag?
Wouldn't the smart thing to do after college be get a job that pays well? Duke isn't cheap and doesn't give out scholarships last I checked…
Wall Street careers are basically educated guess work, akin to gambling; you don't need to be that smart to do it. The toughest part is getting and keeping the job- largely driven by exogenous macro factors.
But what else can one do? Finance in F500 is accounting and generally pretty boring stuff like SOX compliance and balance sheet reconciliations. In the real world, you have to be part of a functional area at a company. Duke grads who didn't study science or engineering won't be going to grad school in these fields so they can't work in the R&D divisions of companies. Is non-financial marketing or law such noble professions? So what exactly are these great alternative careers?
sorry, "Are non-financial marketing or law such noble professions? "
Glad you could clear that up Broski
-Broseph
If you want a country with no business men and lots of doctors go to Zaire. The concept that finance doesn’t contribute to prosperity and thus do “good” is silly on its face.
duke? i wouldn't let my maid's kids go there.
careers in public service…really? REALLY?
"these careers promise security, wealth and status."
I think we're up to 200k people so far this year who might have a differing opinion (not even counting UBS MDs.)
"Wall Street careers are basically educated guess work"
Taking cash from people that have this point of view is exactly why I have a job.
I think I speak for the universe when I say no one wants Duke grads going into public service.
Fuck Duke.
+1 for Water Buffalo reference
Let us now pause to thank Liz Spiers (Duke alum) for starting this rag.
At least Wash U sends a single kid to Goldman
Being the proverbial fat friend hot girls keep around to feel better about themselves and not knowing it is the NKI!
Duke has the ugliest cheerleaders in the ACC.
No.
To be clear, not only did they not rape her, they actually didn't 'bang' her either.
And now she's back in the news for murdering her boyfriend: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/19/duke-…
Even while the case was going on she was in the news for getting caught hooking at a nearby hotel.
-Not your bro
I think the good brah was being sarcastic brah.
"So what exactly are these great alternative careers? "….
Entrepreneurship? It's fun hiring Wall Street lackeys to work for me.
back office in charlotte counts as a wall street job?
It's funny that "entrepreneurship" is always cited by these idiotic articles as some worthy immediate pursuit, as if a startup right out of undergrad will succeed wildly –everyone a Mark Zuckerberg.
The best entrepreneurs start off working for other firms, then have taken their skills, experience, contacts etc. to start their own reasonably financed firms. i.e. the best entrepreneurs are about 30-50 (unless you are a prodigy like John Arnold, and even he started at Enron). This requires working very hard for the "man" though..not sure if these pussies can handle it.
Cool it.
yes, a lot of duke grads stick around CLT, doing excel-related analyst work
excellent burn brah, let's go cool off with a zima
*sigh*, as a duke grad, it makes sense that someone would publish this in the student newspaper. most duke students are smart, but a few of the self-righteous students seem to do something ignorant and outrageous enough to warrant national television. a lot of duke students seem to live in a shell with little real-world knowledge, besides what other duke students tell them. for example, the author of this piece equates back-office operations/analyst work to a 'wall-street' career.
There's no reason to get so angry.
Its tough to like a school where 60+% of the school cant hold a conversation in the local native language…
When they had the lacrosse thing going on the news crews camped in the middle of the quad. As students walked by, they would ask females, minorities, etc. if they felt 'oppressed' by the culture at Duke. And 99/100 times folks would walk by, ignore them, etc.
Then every once in a while someone would stop. Later that night, you see them on national television talking about how stifling Duke is for their 'community.'
The best was a girl who spent a year as a columnist for the paper writing about how great it was for girls to sleep around to get back at guys, be empowered, whatever, then went on TV lamenting the macho culture that she is surrounded by.
And everyone else looks bad.
i dont see what the big deal is chief, she was just a stripper…
-R. Seligmann
Most of them can't socialize to save their own asses, yet alone hang on Wall Street with the tight market we are in today.
let's just go back to pre-2007 bashing lawyers, shall we?
"If more smart people pursue jobs oriented toward creating socially-valuable products and services or commit themselves to developing solutions to educational or environmental problems, society will improve."
Yes, an associate at Google developing AdWord deployment strategies is contributing ever so much to society.
Maybe i'll consider journalism where I'll be writing about what happens on Wall Street and Washington instead of doing it, loads of social value added there. Not like news media is a shrinking industry like Wall Street is now.
You're a rich girl, but you've gone too far….
Brokering buyers and sellers = consumer surplus + producer surplus + ad revenue + taxes = contributing to society, shithead
Duke, aka the University of New Jersey. There are more aggressive New York types at Duke than at most Ivies. By far. Not to mention the inferiority complex that comes with attending Duke, rather than H-Y-P.
what other options are there for me who didn't study science or engineering or didn't study at all?
Is this supposed to be some kind of dig at the editors of Dealbreaker (i.e. the site news outlet you're reading and commenting in a huff on)? Also, you wouldn't hack it.
Paging the Joke Briefer?
Huh?
Maybe instead their finance students can help them get back all of the $$ they lost when those Duke kids sued the fucking shit of them….kicking them out of school for raping a stripper without any hard evidence to back up their claims….the DA, that school, and the entire state of NC are full of fucking idiots
pretty sure directed at the chronicle
Duke lacrosse players should apply their unique intelligence and ingenuity to tackle innumerable challenges like non-rufie-ed sorority girls and non-harassed strippers.
-R. Seligmann, Wharton MBA Class of 2013.
There, fixed it for you (true story).
I like it, mixing zoolander with finance
Easy there, muttafucka, or I'll stomp a mud hole in yo' ass
Bravo
Uhh, Mr. Jevons, your boss is on the other line. He'd like to see you in his office. And please turn off your computer and don't make any more phone calls.
you mean "people who have this point of view"?
I take it you didn't get a 730 on the GMAT.
Well, how do you take cash from these people WSJevons? Researchers have concluded that US financial markets are informationally efficient post Reg FD.
I wouldnt let you be my maid you fucking moron!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/19/duke-…
good one. even your comebacks are second tier.
Duke sux…
Yeah, I chose to walk away from the "tired road" and Duke has been so proud of the path I've taken…though it has turned out pretty good for me.
–Tucker Max (Duke Law, Class of '01)
>trying to visualize someone attempting to socialize to save his/her ass<
Start with "A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street" and "Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor" and and get back to me.
Otherwise, good catch on the grammar.