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

anhtimmy · 09-17-2008, 11:35 AM

Hope this doesn't happen to the medical field. :/

eadad · 09-17-2008, 12:27 PM

The opposite is occurring in the medical field. We are now seeing the beginning of what will be an acute shortage of Doctors over the next ten to fifteen years. The graying of the large number baby boomers and the number of physicians who are retiring are working against each other to exacerbate the shortage. The AMA has asked medical schools to increase their enrollments but only a few have complied to date.

The "get rich quick" aspect of IB and the allure of Wall St, coupled with the reduction in net income of physicians due to increasing liability/malpractice insurance costs and lower payments from health insurance companies steered many of our best and brightest away from medical school and into B school.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone is cut out for Med school and should be pursuing other interests, but there are many who could have chosen either path that saw what they perceived to be a shorter route to big money and took that career path.

It's going to be a tough market for B school grads for a while. It will be interesting to see if grad school enrollment jumps as many go into a holding pattern to let things settle out before jumping into the job market.

YOU · 09-17-2008, 01:36 PM

Which is why I never think that it's a great idea to go to a business school.. it narrows down your options too much.. Why don't be an engineer and try to get into IB? It'll be tougher but at least the back up- becoming an engineer- is not bad at all

MSUDad · 09-17-2008, 02:25 PM

Of course, the invisible hand of the marketplace will put all those new BBAs to work outside of Wall Street.

Expect to see significant reductions in order processing time at Burger King, Pizza Hut, et al.

barrons · 09-17-2008, 03:53 PM

Many of the BBA's will be hired as accountants to help unravel the mess that is the market today. They will need armies of them and most come from the good BBA programs, not MIT or Harvard. Few of the typical good BBA school grads were ever hired by Wall Street so they lose something they never had. I'd rather be coming out this year as an accountant from Illinois than a BA in history from Harvard.

tomslawsky · 09-17-2008, 04:37 PM

"The "get rich quick" aspect of IB and the allure of Wall St, coupled with the reduction in net income of physicians due to increasing liability/malpractice insurance costs and lower payments from health insurance companies steered many of our best and brightest away from medical school and into B school."

I hate to burst your hubris buble here, but med school attracts a bright crop of students, but hardly the "best and brightest". Pre meds are typically fairly bright and enormously focused, driven and ruthless. Average MCAT scores of admitted students indicates the typical MD IQ of ~120 ish- well above average but hardly the "best and brightest".

southpasdena · 09-17-2008, 04:59 PM

New recruit and intern hiring at accounting firms (big 4, GT, BDO) have dropped. They are doing the same thing as the ibanks and visiting less schools. Finally. They should have started this last year.

kguo7 · 09-17-2008, 07:02 PM

Well, considering there are only 2 independent big ibanks on wall street now, there aren't that many opportunities....In matter of fact, we could possibly only know 1 big independent ibank by the end of this week. Currently, Morgan Stanley is in talks with Wachovia about merging. That leaves us with just Goldman. I can't believe all of this is occurring this week. I think books about this week and the credit crisis will be all over the shelf in Barnes and Nobles in the next couple of years.

southpasdena · 09-17-2008, 08:47 PM

they already have books covering the credit/housing problems. This is not a new development

Roger_Dooley · 09-17-2008, 09:07 PM

Perhaps in the past IB firms have done us all a favor by ensuring that few students pursue a career in medicine purely for financial reasons.

Since med schools are still highly selective and operating at full capacity, the presence of more lucrative career paths in other fields doesn't seem to have hurt the profession.

I think the beneficiary of the banking meltdown will be both traditional and high tech industries. Firms may be able to attract some talented help that they might have lost in past years.

greg7 · 09-17-2008, 09:45 PM

Wall Street needs to diversify its recruiting pool sources. Our nation's top schools should be embarrassed by the greed, abuse, and lack of common sense displayed by their graduates. I have concerns about preparing to get into a top MBA program- I don't want to join the con game.

NY_Democrat · 09-17-2008, 10:18 PM

I hope this will make undergrad business school admissions easier!!

lfecollegeguy · 09-17-2008, 10:50 PM

Carnegie mellon is still doing great. Yay for consulting and IT!

Goldman and Citi came to our BOC job fair yesterday so I'm not sure why they didn't go to the other school's.

CoffeeBreak=) · 09-18-2008, 01:52 AM

Quote:

Average MCAT scores of admitted students indicates the typical MD IQ of ~120 ish- well above average but hardly the "best and brightest".

I believe that the average IQ of college students is about 110. So 120 isn't much more. In fact, it's lower than the average IQ(130) of a professor. So being smart as in smart enough to make it into a good undergrad already proves the person intelligent enough to hack it in medicine. It all comes down to work ethic and study skills.