Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?
By James Kwak
That's the title of a post a couple weeks ago by Ezra Klein, in which he interviewed a friend of his who went to Wall Street after Harvard. Having seen this phenomenon from a couple of different angles, I'd say the interview is right on. This is how Klein summarizes the central theme:
"The impression of the Ivy-to-Wall Street pipeline is that it's all about the money. You're saying that it's actually more that Wall Street has constructed a very intelligent recruiting program that speaks to the anxieties of the students and makes them an offer that there's almost no reason to refuse."
When I graduated from college, I had no interest in investment banking or its close cousin, management consulting. I went to McKinsey for reasons that were only slightly different than those of the typical Ivy League undergrad; after getting a Ph.D. in history, I discovered that I was unlikely to get a good academic job and was pretty much unqualified for anything else, and McKinsey was one of the few places that would hire me into a "good" job with no discernible qualifications (other than academic pedigree). Now that I'm at Yale Law School, where maybe 15% of students (my wild guess) come in wanting to be corporate lawyers but 75% end up at corporate law firms (first job after law school, not counting clerkships), I'm seeing it again.
The typical Harvard undergraduate, like the typical YLS student, is someone who: (a) is very good at school; (b) has been very successful by conventional standards for his entire life; (c) has little or no experience of the "real world" outside of school or school-like settings; (d) feels either the ambition or the duty to have a positive impact on the world (not well defined); and (e) is driven more by fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular. (Yes, I know this is a stereotype; that's why I said "typical.") Their (our) decisions are motivated by two main decision rules: (1) close down as few options as possible; and (2) only do things that increase the possibility of future overachievement. Money is far down the list; at this point in their lives, if you asked them, many of these people would probably say that they only need to be middle or upper-middle class, and assume that they will be.
The recruiting processes of Wall Street firms (and consulting firms, and corporate law firms) exploit these (faulty) decision rules perfectly. The primary selling point of Goldman Sachs or McKinsey is that it leaves open the possibility of future greatness. The main pitch is, "Do this for two years, and afterward you can do anything (like be treasury secretary)." The idea is that you will get some kind of generic business training that equips you to do anything (this in a society that assumes the private sector can do no wrong and the public sector can do no right), and that you will get the resume credentials and connections you need to go on and do whatever you want. And to some extent it's true, because these names look good on your resume, and very few potential future employers will wonder why you decided to go there. (Whether the training is good for much other than being a banker or a consultant is another question.)
The second selling point is that they make it easy. Yes, there is competition for jobs at these firms. But the process is easy. They come to campus and hold receptions with open bars. They tell you when and how to apply. They provide interview coaching. They have nice people who went to your school bond with you over the recruiting period. If you get an offer, they find out what your other options are and have partners call you to explain that those are great options, but Goldman/McKinsey is better, and you can do that other thing later, anyway. For people who don't know how to get a job in the open economy, and who have ended each phase of their lives by taking the test to do the most prestigious thing possible in the next phase, all of this comes naturally. (Graduate schools, which also have well-defined recruiting processes, are the other big path to take.) The fact that most companies don't want new college graduates makes it easier to go to one of the few that do.
The third selling point — not the top one, but it's there — is the money. Or, more accurately, the lifestyle. The glossy brochures never say how much money you can make. But they make it clear that you will be part of the well-dressed, well-fed, jet-setting elite. When people walk into those offices, with fresh flowers and all-glass walls and free food and modern technology everywhere, they get seduced. Last summer one person wrote to my school's email list about how wonderful his office was, with its view of Central Park. I mentioned this to an old friend who used to work at McKinsey, and he said, "he fell for the office.*
The same factors are also largely true for top law school graduates, although for them the money is more important. Law school costs close to $200,000 for three years, and I believe the average graduate has about $100,000 in debt. So another major inducement is the idea that you will work at a corporate law firm for three or four years, pay off your debt, and then go work for legal aid or the U.S. attorney's office.
But the other factors are also very important. If you go to Yale Law School, it is simply easier to get a corporate firm job than any other job. They all come to campus at the beginning of your second year, most people can get a job simply by following the interview process, you work there for one summer, and then you get an offer to come back. Even if you don't want to work at a firm, it makes rational sense to do it for that summer to get the offer as Plan B.
By contrast, it's hard to get a public interest job. Most public interest organizations don't have the money to hire a lot of people, and many don't want people right out of law school. So the usual route is you have to apply for a competitive fellowship to work at a public interest organization, and then you have to hope they'll hire you for good after that year. It's hard. And that's how Plan B becomes Plan A. And besides, many prominent corporate lawyers have gone on to important positions in Washington, so there is still the possibility of future greatness.
And once you're in the door, the seduction begins. As Klein's interviewee says,
"When people leave law school with a lot of debt, they figure they'll get some good skills and good money at a top-tier firm before going to save the world. But then you have a great apartment, more responsibilities, kids. You start enjoying it. It's not even all material.
"And I think it's important to point out, that things happen very quickly. Private equity firms were trying to recruit us in the first year of my two-year training program. There's this notion of the accidental banker, people who get caught up in that world and get more and more pay and find it harder to justify leaving. But the cultural effect of all of this — and even with regulatory reform, we need to think about that — is that a lot of people decide to sacrifice much more time than they normally would because the money is so good, and then they believe they deserve extremely high pay because they're giving up so much time. It's not malicious. But there are a lot of unhappy people who end up in that situation."
It's just human nature. Your expenses grow to match your income. As the decades pass and you realize that no, you're not going to save the world, the money becomes a more and more important part of the justification. And when you have kids, you're stuck; it's much easier to deprive yourself of money (and what it buys) than to deprive your children of money.
More importantly, you internalize the rationalizations for the work you are doing. It's easier to think that underwriting new debt offerings really is saving the world than to think that you are underwriting new debt offerings, because of the money, instead of saving the world. And this goes for many walks of life. It's easier for college professors to think that, by training the next generation of young minds (or, even more improbably, writing papers on esoteric subjects), they are changing the world than to think that they are teaching and researching instead of changing the world.
Sure, there are self-parodying, economically delusional, psychotherapy-needing, despicable people on Wall Street, like this one. But there are also a lot of people who went there because it was easy and stayed because they decided they couldn't afford not to and talked themselves into it.
A college student asked me at a book talk what I thought about undergraduates who go work on Wall Street. And individually, I have nothing against them, although I do think they should do their best to keep their expenses down so they will be able to switch careers later. But as a system, it's a bad thing that a small handful of highly profitable firms are able to invest those profits into skimming off some of the top students at American universities — universities that, even if nominally private, are partially funded by taxpayer money in the form of research grants and federal subsidies for student loans –and absorbing them into the banking-consulting-lawyering Borg.
* By the way, I think that even within the elite there is an inverse correlation between pay and quality of office; the banks make the most money and have the shabbiest offices, although that has been changing recently.
Written by James Kwak
May 4, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Posted in Commentary
Tagged with culture, education
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1. Dear Mr. Kwak,
Thank you for this wonderful post. You've hit the nail on the head. So how can we get young people excited about doing things of more social value instead of inventing financial weapons of mass destruction? How do we staunch the Wall St. brain drain? And how can young people like me find the balance between doing well and doing good?
May 4, 2010 at 2:58 pm
2. Heh, the Borg. Vicious. I'm not knowledgeable enough to really say generally, but John Thain kind of refutes your argument a little on offices. And it's hard for me to imagine investment bankers haven't had very good offices since the days Milken (1988??) started setting the world on fire at Drexel with his Hebrew bros, but every once in awhile I read stories about some fastgun who has spartan surroundings.
I think in the end human beings are almost an impossible lot to figure out. I remember reading about Boesky doing spy work or traveling in Iran and thinking in my head how freaking weird that was. When I was like in 8th grade some counselor was already haranguing us about how we needed to take a foreign language or we would be screwed getting into a nice college. But if you look at some very successful people, the way the dots connect is often times odd.
I think if I was a parent I would introduce my kids to as many different ice cream flavors as possible, and then tell them to follow their natural interests. Maybe that's naive though.
May 4, 2010 at 3:13 pm
3. It sounds different from The Firm only in degree. Now that book/movie looks more like satire, not a crime drama.
As for these rackets skimming off much of the best human potential, I've long compared this black hole to something like the Khmer Rouge. What's the difference, really? The "talent" is just as lost to humanity.
May 4, 2010 at 3:34 pm
4. A college student myself, the issue of finding jobs after schooling is…daunting. Everyone wants someone with experience, so I've put off going to grad school for statistics to get work , and I'm focusing on internships instead of extracurriculars. I'm just terrified all my hard work will be for naught if I cant find a job before the grace period on my loans ends.
Plus, I skrewed up afew times. I know a B.S is standard now, but I wonder if Im wasting my time and parents $$.
Why WOULD anyone go to law school? I thought it was an open secret there are too many lawyers. Med school is as bad- you'll pay off those loans when your so old you cant work anymore! My parents got a better deal, heck my siblings too, because they were born decades before me.
Math/stats is reasonable to me because I can get an MS and a job with little debt incurred. But thats it.
Asada
May 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm
o Ya – BUT – Math & Stats grunt work can be offshored, jobs are going offshore in everytthing these days. Engineering and computers especially.
You need to sit down and ask yourself, exactly how much money will I make if I get this degree? And what will it cost me to live. And how fast will my salary likely increase. Not easy questions to answer, but try.
Also, there is room for one more lawyer should you choose to be one. Don't let people tell you there are too many. There aren't too many until the grads of your prospective law school aren't getting hired. Look into what lawyers get paid. Look hard. A friend of mine does corporate litigation and does quite well. He also does some free legal work for homeless and less fortunate which is a great way to help people.
Being a Doctor is a truly daunting task, and then you have to specialize to make enough money, more time in school. And who knows where Medicare will be in 10 years – but it pays well now.
Spend a LOT of time researching the pay of your future profession, it will matter to you.
M-F
May 4, 2010 at 4:12 pm
5. "One time I had a job interview….
I took a book out and I started reading.
The guy said 'What the hell are you doing!?!?'
I said 'Let me ask you a question—
If you were in a vehicle and you were traveling at the speed of light, if you turned your lights on, would they do anything??',
He said 'I don't know.'
I said 'Forget it then, I don't wanna work for yuh.'"
o Stephen Wright wrote:
"My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted."
"There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot."
Frank Lloyd Wright wrote:
"The truth is more important than the facts."
(1869 – 1959)
Rickk
May 4, 2010 at 4:51 pm
6. Good post, thanks James! Having finished undergrad a few years ago, I was planning on starting law school in the fall. But that chance of ending up in some corporate firm in which I have no interest in sounds miserable.
So instead, I've joined the Peace Corps and plan on leaving this fall/ winter. What better way to get life experience doing good work, and preparing oneself for public interest work! If I want to go to school after, I will be that much more competitive for those cool jobs when I apply for those difficult fellowships. Not to mention, I would say 95% of previous volunteers I've met (quite a few in the DC area), are very inspiring, wise, happy people who I respect. I wonder how many of the Ivy's stuck in their corporate firms hold those same inner qualities?
Nick B from DC
May 4, 2010 at 4:01 pm
7. So sorry guys, but I gotta tell you, I wouldn't piss on your average harvard grad if she was on fire in the street. The kinds of privileged and sanctimonious worms who weave their way through that swamp of debauchery, treason and delusion have no place as leaders in a free republic. I don't care how fast their "processors" spin; Garbage in, garbage out. It's all about the software (AKA Character).
o Soooo True… software and character. Yes Canadians have our own set of deficit character laden people but by experience and media observations the USA appears to be the home of characterless "innovators" praying at the feet of the Almighty Dollar.
ECON
May 4, 2010 at 4:47 pm
8. Asada,
There are too many lawyers, and the debt burden is pretty ridiculous. But if you're at the top of the class, you can make a lot of money. Plus, liberal arts majors with no skills (hey, I was one) figure law school is better than the dole.
With med school – I believe a lot of mid-sized and large practices pay off your loans over three or four years.
Ultimately, math is a great way to go.
Joe
May 4, 2010 at 4:03 pm
9. I think we had a bubble not just in housing prices, but in the demand for legal and financial professionals. That temporarily created a world where liberal arts grads with no real-world experience or genuine skills could command massive starting salaries by the simple expedient of spending a couple of years in law or business school. The bubble created the easy job track and irresistible offers that James describes.
The bubble has burst. Large law firms have not just engaged in lay-offs; many of them are eliminating the "non-equity" partnership track altogether, so that very experienced and technically proficient lawyers–often from the best law schools–who have not managed to build their own book of business are finding themselves out on the street and out of luck. I imagine law students and beginning lawyers must be aware of this; the "safe" route of clawing your way up the ladder at a large-law firm is not safe or assured any more. I suspect the end result of the crisis and financial reform will also be far fewer such opportunities on Wall Street.
This is a long way of saying that I think our misallocation of talent may gradually correct itself. There'll certainly be a lot of pain in the process.
EconWatcher
May 4, 2010 at 4:12 pm
10. It's the money stupid>
o ;-)
Rickk
May 4, 2010 at 4:57 pm
11. I'm a mechanical engineer and have no experience or knowledge of wall street or law careers, but I found my own experience of being recruited and seduced by the petroleum industry very similar to what you've described here, and my own justifying rationalizations very similar for while I was there. I was terrified of leaving the management-track job that was making my life miserable, and kept me a part of a very destructive industry.
And I am so glad that I ultimately did.
§ Character. What you did…took character.
Thanks for listening to the Greater Part of Yourself. And honoring.
It makes a difference in the world.
Barbyrah
12. Really interesting post!
Even if it's irrelavant for the point you wanted to make, but how would an experienced (non-typical) YLS student, like you at/after Yale, behave? What's the ideal job for someone, who e.g. was already told how he could do anything after a few years, fell for the shiny lure of McK, and was certainly well paid?
I'm just interested, not polemicizing.
13. Great post, but you really are talking about the creme de la creme of American students. YLS only takes 200 students and is already at the top of the heap of American law schools. Harvard (law and undergrad) is only slightly less selective.
14. Thank you Henry David Thoreau Qwak. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." Let me add that since you/we and the Ivy Leaguers are doomed to experience "quiet desperation," it is a hell of a lot easier to be desperate and rich, than to be desperate and poor.
o Jessica, you are not "doomed" to anything.
Many paths to choose from. And the one you've currently chosen…can be "unchosen" at any time.
Any time.
Where is your Soul in all of this? You might try and listen, if you are so open…
Best to you.
Barbyrah
May 4, 2010 at 5:03 pm
15. The post doesn't really mention government service. During the Kennedy years and even through Carter, the federal government really did attract a lot of idealistic recent grads. Not only the Peace Corp, but Justice Civil Rights Division, EPA, the FTC, the Consumer Product safety Commission, etc. A big part of the Reagan Revolution was simply to vilify these idealistic people by painting them as irksome meddlers instead of people who actually wanted to serve in the higher interests of the public. As a result, the career civil service became dispirited and increasingly like some sort of clerkship, a place you worked until you could get out in the private sector and do something "useful." When you look at the recent crisis, especially the way it was handled by agencies like the SEC and to some extent DOJ, you can see just how harmful the Reagan (and later) campaigns against career government service as an honorable profession have been. It's really a loss to the nation.
16. Here's your agency. Worthless without support of agency heads and Chairman of FED
SEC. 1023. REVIEW OF BUREAU REGULATIONS.
SEC. 1024. .
(a) Review of Bureau Regulations- On the petition of a member agency of the Council, the Council may set aside a final regulation prescribed by the Bureau, or any provision thereof, if the Council decides, in accordance with subsection (c), that the regulation or provision would put the safety and soundness of the United States banking system or the stability of the financial system of the United States at risk.
anon
May 4, 2010 at 4:50 pm
17. interesting piece.
My story is a variation on this theme. I never went to an ivy league school. But after graduating with a political science degree (from a decent foreign university) I stumbled into a career in finance, having found it virtually impossible to begin a career in my then preferred fields of journalism, public policy or "saving the world".
I managed to get out (at least partially thanks to my move to the US coinciding with a financial sector blow up) but it's not only the money which makes that difficult. Changing careers is extremely hard in this age of HR professionals and impersonal online application forms (that exclude applications without the requisite keywords)
May 4, 2010 at 4:58 pm
o I've been boots-on-the-ground and in the boardroom. I've watched hundreds/thousands of lives traded and extinguished like pieces on a game board for simple monetary gain. The only thing that makes sense anymore is, loyalty to family and friends. Sometimes Darwin is your only friend. Adapt.
Anonymous
May 4, 2010 at 5:08 pm
§ "THEY sent A SLAMHOUND on (Whistleblower's) trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.
He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Zero
Fortunately I'm still dodging mine. I get by with a little help from my friends. :-)
Anonymous
May 4, 2010 at 5:16 pm
§ Anonymous, if adapting means I have to turn into someone with no compassion, no "milk of human kindness", I'll just slit my wrists now, thanks. I not only don't want to BE one of those soulless creatures, I don't want to live in a world they create or dominate.
Sandi
May 4, 2010 at 5:32 pm
18. The only remotely non-financial company doing recruiting when I graduated from Harvard College in 1991 was Trammel Crow real estate from Houston (or was it Dallas) and who wants to go live in Texas? Everything else was management consulting or I-banking. The people that had their heads on straight (who more often than not had taken a few years between high school and college to travel or work) started their own for- or non-profit companies or used daddy's money to become angel investors for internet startups. Law school was filled with people who were programmed their whole lives to seek the path of highest prestige, i.e. the white-shoe law firms in Manhattan or their satellite offices in other cities, or possibly clerkships with famous federal judges.
19. The question isn't why do so many Harvard grads head to Wall Street.
The question is: why does Harvard graduate so many who head to Wall Street to wage economic terrorism on the other 98% of America?
There's a difference between 'earning' money using other people's money, and doing 'whatever it takes' to screw as many people out of as many pennies you can for your own self-enrichment.
What Harvard 'teaches' is that there is nothing ethically wrong with a severe money-addiction, no matter the consequences. And that's why so many grads head to Wall Street – because it's the only place where their uber-greedy-is-good education is considered a marketable skill.
20. This clipped from the anonymous Wall St. screed circulating on the 'Net that James linked to-
—-So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours……..
For some time I have been wondering who corporate America planned to sell their products to when they had lowered the pay scale here to pennies through off-shoring, etc., and we were all reduced to $12000 a year.
Free rides on THEIR backs??? Interesting that the cowboys have quite a different take on THEIR jobs disappearing. So they are going to do their own landscaping now, huh? Gee, I guess that will send a few Hispanics back where they came from. In most places I'm aware of, people who do the manual jobs are not highly paid, they often get ripped off by their employers. So, Hot Shot, if you want that job, knock yourself out. We still have a few chicken processing plants in NC – want to sign up to cut up your own boneless/skinless chicken? We in the hinterlands have always done our own, but now more than ever, because we have no choice. Cut our own hair, washed our own cars, cooked our own meals. This is how economies spiral down, is it not? It's not like that trickling down the Wall St. jocks were doing was doing any serious wealth-building on Main St. I doubt they CAN cut their own hair, or even their own grass.
The pain of this economic storm will be worth bearing if it takes those smug windbags down with it.
Sandi
May 4, 2010 at 5:21 pm
21. I tried to change the world but nobody would listen.
22. Excellent Mr. Kwak. I have two quotes, articulating invaluable substance too your post._____(Joeseph Conrad /1857-1916) "All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind"._____(T.S. Eliot/1888-1965) "After such knowledge,what forgiveness? Think now – History has many cunning passages ,contrived corridors – And issues ,deceives with whispering ambitions,- Guides us by vanities". Thankyou :^)
23. I don't know, I graduated pretty close to the top of my class from the School of Labor Relations at Cornell not all that long ago and my experience was rather different from the one James describes here. Through the office of career services I managed to speak with recruiters from a wide range of industries, from Goldman Sachs to the SEIU, and hardly ever felt any pressure go work at some high paid corporate office (it probably helped that tuition at the ILR school, being part of the state system, was only $8,000 a semester). After spending some time working abroad I'm teaching in the NYC public school system now and am pretty happy. I think its a mistake to generalize too much from the experiences of a few students. Most career service offices at major universities give students a great many choices of career paths to follow. Availing themselves of the services of career counselors is hardly too difficult a task for most college graduates. In any case, most graduate and even undergraduate programs offer counseling services for free. I can't see why more students shouldn't be availing themselves of these options if they are confused about their professional future.
24. The full story is a good deal more complicated, not least because we're dealing with people, and if there are 100 people, there are 110 reasons (at least).
Some facts not considered by James Kwak:
1. A disproportionately large percentage of Harvard students come out of what I will call (deliberately disparagingly) the cult of money. Harvard students are far more likely to come from wealthy families than are students at most schools. This is true of all students at Harvard, including those of color.
2. Harvard, more than almost any other university, reproduces the cult of money. The school's quality most emphatically does not match its endowment, which is far and away the largest. To what end has Harvard, for so many years, so to fatten its endowment? It could arguably eliminate tuition altogether. Why not?
3. When we talk about Wall Street and the Harvard connection, it would be more accurate or more meaningful to talk of the Harvard Business School connection. However diverse Harvard undergraduates are, the Business School students are overwhelmingly preoccupied with wealth.
4. There is a broader Harvard (and to a slightly lesser extent, Yale) cult. For example, why is Obama almost exclusively considering Harvard law figures for the Supreme Court nomination? Just as Harvard Business has played a key (and grossly under-reported) role in the financial collapse, so too has Harvard Law played a disproportionate role in the pseudo-justifications for American war crimes and crimes against humanity. (Yale can also take credit on the legal front with the likes of John Yoo, Jack Goldsmith (who has gotten a pass with his not-quite-deathbed conversion), Ruth Wedgwood, et al.)
A complete explanation should tie these observations together. Power, money and the preservation of power in the hands of the Modern American Oligarchs is at the core of such an explanation.
May 4, 2010 at 5:46 pm
25. Bailouts, Bubbles, & Bad Bets
Bailout bill debates aside, immediate congressional action is necessary to inhibit another financial real property bubble in the future. These actions must include rescinding both the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Commodity Futures Modernization Acts of 1999 and 2000. Congress should then readopt the 1933 Glass-Stegall Act. Those actions would ring fence financial institutions from engaging in this greed driven activity in out years, nipping their RICO ACT conduct in the bud.
Next, all existing sub prime mortgages and trust deeds created and securitized on both residential and commercial real properties since 2000 should be converted to the current thirty year fixed interest rate after the properties is appraised. The new note should reflect the current mark to market value of the property as of the date of the new appraisal.
These actions will require much legislative vetting and in the process of the hearings reveal the real whiners in the country. They will however, if carried out, relieve taxpayers from being saddled with more massive future debt, precipitated by faulty financial math models, fraud, and racketeering by members of the greedy banking industry. The current conduct responsible for this meltdown was conjured up by folks cast from the Ivan Bosky & Michael Milkin molds whose junk bond schemes were responsible for the domestic financial meltdown of the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.
While Commercial and Investment Banks, private and public pension funds, insurance companies such as AIG and wealthy individuals will suffer huge losses, they must accept and be held accountable for the reality that investing in these craftily created securities, Derivatives and Credit Default Swaps was and is gambling. Investing in those instruments is no different than tossing down a bet at gambling table in Central City, Colorado.
Customers slamming back a shot of whiskey at a Bear bar while checking out the local scenery should not be billed for the bad bet by the bumpkins at the blackjack table.
Robert Pike
May 4, 2010 at 5:49 pm
26. Harvard kids go to Wall Street because Wall Street comes to them. Government agencies generally don't recruit (when I did Harvard undergrad recruiting only the TSA and the CIA were there). If tiny consulting firms can gather the resources to recruit, it's obvious that the Department of State, SEC, etc. could as well. Indeed, they should have cleaned house in the most recent years, when financial hiring was depressed. But broadly speaking civic service institutions show no interest in these graduates. The natural thing for students to assume is that they are not particularly wanted in those public service roles.
