{"id":2520,"date":"2011-11-30T01:38:25","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T07:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/?p=2520"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:35:45","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T20:35:45","slug":"anti-wall-street-fervor-on-college-campuses-reflects-a-lack-of-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2011\/11\/30\/anti-wall-street-fervor-on-college-campuses-reflects-a-lack-of-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Wall Street Fervor on College Campuses Reflects a Lack of Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a recent edition of the New York Times<\/em> I read an article that I found both fascinating and disturbing. In \u201cAt Top Colleges, Anti-Wall St. Fervor Complicates Recruiting,\u201d<\/a> Kevin Roose describes the efforts of students in the Occupy Wall Street movement to keep their fellow students from interviewing for jobs in banking and finance. Here\u2019s how the article begins:<\/p>\n

College students seeking jobs on Wall Street have always had hurdles to overcome \u2014 grueling applications, endless rounds of interviews and fierce competition for the relatively few available spots at top firms.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Wall Street hopefuls have had a new force to contend with: the wrath of their peers.<\/p>\n

Banks and hedge funds have long wooed undergraduates from elite colleges with lavish dinners, personalized e-mails and free trips to New York for interviews. It\u2019s all part of an annual courtship ritual known as on-campus recruiting.<\/p>\n

But this fall, the antibank animus of the Occupy Wall Street<\/a> movement has seeped onto college campuses. At some schools, anger at big banks has turned the on-campus recruiting process into a crucible of controversy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI teach financial markets, and it\u2019s a little like teaching R.O.T.C. during the Vietnam War,\u201d said Robert J. Shiller<\/a>, a professor of economics at Yale University<\/a>. \u201cYou have this sense that something\u2019s amiss.\u201d<\/p>\n

At leading universities, student newspapers are making a passionate case against working in finance. Some students are protesting in an effort to keep their classmates from interviewing with finance firms:<\/p>\n

The new recruiting climate was on display at Yale in mid-November, when a group of Yale students turned a Morgan Stanley<\/a> information session into a protest site. While their fellow students, clad in suits and clutching folders with r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, filed into The Study at Yale, a local hotel, to learn more about the investment bank, a group of approximately 25 Yale undergraduates protested outside. They held signs and chanted slogans like \u201cTake a stance, don\u2019t go into finance\u201d and \u201c25 percent is too much talent spent\u201d \u2014 a nod, protest organizers said, to the quarter of Yale graduates who typically take finance and management consulting jobs after graduation.<\/p>\n

The effort by the OWS students seems to me sadly lacking in vision. Let\u2019s assume for a moment that their critique of Wall Street is accurate, that greed has taken over, and that major change in needed in the whole system of banking and finance. So, how will this change take place? Should the \u201cOccupy\u201d crowd seek to actually occupy the positions in the financial firms, so that they might begin to make the changes that are require? How will these companies be transformed if not by people within them who have a different vision?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Harvard Business School from the air. Photo from WikiCommons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Contrast the OWS effort with the MBA Oath movement that began at Harvard Business School (of all places!) a couple of years ago. According to the MBA Oath website, the movement\u2019s mission is \u201cto facilitate a widespread movement of MBAs who aim to lead in the interests of the greater good and who have committed to living out the principles articulated in the oath. The oath<\/a> is a voluntary pledge for graduating MBAs and current MBAs to \u2018create value responsibly and ethically.'\u201d What began at Harvard in 2009 has now spread to business and finance graduates from over 250 schools throughout the world.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not quite sure how the OWS folk would respond to the MBA Oath movement. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they are skeptical. For example, a member of the OWS group at Yale noted \u201cthat Yale students often go into finance expecting to leave after several years, but end up staying for their entire careers. \u201cPeople are na\u00efve about how addictive the money is going to be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

I think this student has a point. And I\u2019m sure that some of those who signed the MBA Oath ended up putting aside their high ethical standards when they became possessed by Mammon. But, there are others who are seeking to bring change within the corporate and finance worlds by working on the inside.<\/p>\n

Now, I am not suggesting that all the students who interview for corporate finance positions are doing so out of some commitment to the public good. Surely many have already been smitten by the mighty buck. But I find the vision of the students in the OWS movement to be sadly lacking. Why not use their extraordinary cultural power as students of the most elite universities in the world \u2013 the academic 1% \u2013 to work to bring transformation to the world of finance?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent edition of the New York Times I read an article that I found both fascinating and disturbing. In \u201cAt Top Colleges, Anti-Wall St. Fervor Complicates Recruiting,\u201d Kevin Roose describes the efforts of students in the Occupy Wall Street movement to keep their fellow students from interviewing for jobs in banking and finance. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9565],"tags":[16665,16667,16553,16666],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-commentary","tag-colleges","tag-mba-oath","tag-occupy-wall-street","tag-universities"],"yoast_head":"\nAnti-Wall Street Fervor on College Campuses Reflects a Lack of Vision<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a recent edition of the New York Times I read an article that I found both fascinating and disturbing. 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