At Harvard, a graduating senior, who handed on a full scholarship to a different college, informed me that he felt immense strain to point out his mother and father that their $400,000 funding in his Harvard training would permit him to get the type of job the place he may make one million {dollars} a 12 months. Upon commencement, he’ll be part of the personal fairness agency Blackstone, the place, he believes, he’ll study and obtain extra in six years than 30 years in a public-service-oriented group.
One other scholar, from Uruguay, who spent his second summer season in a row training case research in preparation for administration consulting internship interviews, informed me that everybody arrived on campus hoping to vary the world. However what they study at Harvard, he stated, is that really doing something significant is simply too laborious. Folks quit on their goals, he informed me, and resolve they could as effectively earn money. Another person informed me it was frequent at events to listen to their friends say they only wish to promote out.
“There’s positively a herd mentality,” Joshua Parker, a 21-year-old Harvard junior from Oahu, stated. “When you’re not doing finance or tech, it may well really feel such as you’re doing one thing fallacious.”
As a freshman, he deliberate to main in environmental engineering. As a sophomore, he switched to economics, becoming a member of 5 of his six roommates. A type of roommates informed me that he hoped to run a hedge fund by the point he was in his 30s. Earlier than that, he wished to earn an excellent wage, which he outlined as $500,000 a 12 months.
In line with a Harvard Crimson survey of Harvard seniors, the share of 2023 graduates going into finance and consulting exceeded 40 p.c for the second 12 months in a row. (The official Harvard Institutional Analysis survey yields decrease percentages for these fields than the Crimson survey, as a result of it consists of college students who aren’t coming into the work pressure.)
