At Harvard, a graduating senior, who handed on a full scholarship to a different faculty, instructed me that he felt immense strain to point out his dad and mom that their $400,000 funding in his Harvard training would permit him to get the type of job the place he might make 1,000,000 {dollars} a yr. Upon commencement, he’ll be a part of the personal fairness agency Blackstone, the place, he believes, he’ll be taught 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, instructed me that everybody arrived on campus hoping to vary the world. However what they be taught at Harvard, he stated, is that truly doing something significant is simply too onerous. Individuals quit on their desires, he instructed me, and resolve they could as properly earn cash. Another person instructed me it was widespread at events to listen to their friends say they simply need 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 will possibly really feel such as you’re doing one thing flawed.”
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 instructed 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 yr.
In response to a Harvard Crimson survey of Harvard Seniors, the share of 2024 graduates going into finance and consulting is 34 p.c. (In 2022 and 2023 it exceeded 40 p.c. The official Harvard Institutional Analysis survey yields decrease percentages for these fields than the Crimson survey, as a result of it contains college students who aren’t getting into the work drive.)