College Confidential - View Single Post - Newsweek: Tough market for biz school grads

DoveofPeace · 09-17-2008, 10:26 AM

Quote:

The industry's demise is being felt on campuses across the country. Particularly affected are the big-name schools that funneled graduates into Lehman, Bear Stearns and other storied institutions. Wall Street firms once beckoned a third of MIT graduates, despite its commitment to breeding scientists and engineers. Today, that percentage has been nearly halved, says MIT's career center, and megafirms Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and CitiGroup won't even attend the university's career fair this year. Over at Yale, the director of career services says everyone is in a "holding pattern," waiting to find out if Lehman and Merrill will honor the internship and job offers they recently made to Yale students. "There's no doubt there's going to be less hiring on Wall Street this year, and maybe even the next couple of years," says Robin Mount, interim director of Career Services at Harvard University, where fall classes started Monday. "I think there's going to be some downsizing across the whole market." Mount and her colleagues are increasingly telling students the same thing: Don't set your sights on Wall Street.

Just how bad can it get for next year's business majors? "Who knows after what happened this weekend?" says Susie Clarke, who advises undergraduate students at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. "We're stressing that it's important to network and to have a Plan B in case a job in financial services doesn't work out for them right now, since we don't expect those opportunities to be what they have been in the past." The problem is also acute for graduate students. Karen Dowd, director of MBA career development at Notre Dame, estimates that there could be about 25 percent fewer job opportunities this year.

Careers: A Tough Job Market For Business School Grads | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com