Where should all the ibankers go?

• How should prospective ibankers at Yale adjust their plans to account for the current financial crisis?
• Why do 40% of Yalies choose to work in finance and consulting after graduation?
• What's the best way to put your Yale education to use?

This week’s discussion topic, always of interest to Yalies, seems particularly appropriate in light of the Wall Street collapse, as well as a recent flurry of Roundtable emails concerning a recent controversial article in the American Scholar by William Deresiewicz (“The Disadvantages of an Elite Education”). Every year a full 40% of all Yale graduates start work in consulting or finance. The central question of the night was to what extent these individuals are fulfilling their own potential and that of their Yale education.

So why do so many Yalies choose to spend 100 hours a week moving money back and forth? To be sure, there’s a financial incentive—ibankers can expect to bring in a handy salary—but can we really believe that 40% of our graduates are interested in nothing but a hefty paycheck? We raised a number of alternatives tonight. For one, Yalies tend to be goal-oriented, and to a certain mentality ibanking represents the culmination of a long structured path. It’s a way to guarantee success without high levels of risk—a possibility that’s increasingly appealing as socioeconomic diversity increases at Yale, and more students are concerned about supporting their families and paying their student loans. On the other hand, the popularity of consulting in particular may have more to do with the orientation of our skills towards more creative and analytical thinking methods (rather than specialized knowledge). Finally, we considered that the finance/consulting culture may be self-perpetuating, and therefore independent of any specific cultural phenomena at Yale.

But there may be more subtle cultural factors leading Yalies towards the investment banks. Has our nation lost its moral fortitude, leaving college students uncertain of what career would best reflect their personal ethos? Are we victims of a national culture idolizing the pursuit of money above all else? Perhaps Yalies intuitively recognize that consulting and ibanking may soon some of the supplant traditional avenues to financial and political power.

So why are so many of us uncomfortable with this trend? Do we have an instinctive aversion to following a preset track? Perhaps we feel that Yalies ought to be inspired visionaries willing to take risks for the sake of their ideas. We want Yale to be a community full of students with, as Joe put it, “intensity and forcefulness of character.” We don’t want Yale to feel constraining; we don’t want to feel guided down a secure track.

But Beth raised the point that the difference between working for the Peace Corps and McKinsey may be one of scale rather than efficacy. Similar skills are employed in both cases, and both in their own way contribute to global prosperity. And, as John Behan noted, it’s unfair to define ibanking as diametrically incompatible with the qualities we’d like to emphasize in our student body. After all, the financial system is essential for the survival of the global economy, and Yale seems to prepare its students well to manage that system. But how many Yalies are genuinely passionate, “intense and forceful” about their banking careers? Probably not 40%.