Harvard MBAs: When Fewer Take Jobs On Wall Street, It May Indicate A Rising Stock Market

nytimes.com:

Fewer Harvard M.B.A. graduates took jobs on Wall Street this year than in the past as a result of the sharp contraction in the financial services industry. But for Ray Soifer, a former banking analyst and Harvard Business School alumnus, the reduced number of graduates flocking to Wall Street isn't a bad thing. In fact, it may actually be a positive signal for the market.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[HacunaMatata101]

11:24 AM on 11/10/2009

I was waiting for an article looking at this heavy Ivy League presence on Wall Street, and if things might change as a result of the scandal and economic crash.

A brand is only built on the success of each individual product, and a school can only be prestigious based on the actions of its alumni over generations. That's a lot of products and a lot of alumni.

I feel like the '00s decade isn't all that different from the corporate greed era of 100 years ago. It wasn't great the last time, why the heck are we repeating it? Why hasn't the recent crash sparked more revolution?

In my humble opinion, there is way too much reliance, dare I say worship, of brand names in current US culture.Buying into the BS is old, tired lazy thinking that stifles growth. Right now we need all the help we can get, from non-Ivy thinkers who are out to prove their mettle rather than coast on credentials.

[AirViceMarshalPark]

04:04 PM on 11/09/2009

At the company where I spent 22 years, we had a rule against hiring MBAs. The two MBAs we had hired, early in the company's history, were walking disasters: the first one suffered from "analysis paralysis" and could produce reams of plans with pretty charts, bullet points and spreadsheets but couldn't decide between pickles or no pickles on his cheeseburger; the second one was a very hard worker and embezzled $425,000 right away.

[loki]

07:07 PM on 11/09/2009

sounds like the last was a Harvard or other Ivy school grad

[StockMarkets]

01:21 PM on 11/09/2009

No more bailouts. No more too big to fail. more effort needs to be done to make work. Instead, unemployment keeps climbing as well as the deficit. Tax cuts and toehr stupid gimmicks aren't the answer.

hat tip to http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

[MikeDu]

02:37 AM on 11/09/2009

I live just down th street from Harvard, let me tell you those aren't Americans in the engineering and sciences classes. America used to make things, used to design thngs, used to produce things, used to be able to employ its population fruitfully. Now look at us. America 2009 = Britain 1947.

[loki]

01:12 AM on 11/09/2009

Well thats a no brainer. The less Ivy Greed educated in the chain, the less theft and corruption there will be.

[drymartini1]

02:54 AM on 11/09/2009

ya, the less educated folks are all honest and upstanding citizens !! right !!

[loki]

07:12 PM on 11/09/2009

No, I never said less educated. I said less Harvard greed educated. Ive taken classes and Seminars from Harvard in the past, so I know what they teach. I was appalled and learned a lot in those few times. I learned I do not want to know the corrupt greed , profit over everything else they taught. Now I can only attest to the business school. I have no idea about the rest.
Education is very important and I think everyone should get as much education as they can. In fact, I wish we were more like Australia that encourage and pay up to a BS degree. But we charge a fortune, make it an elitie status symbol, and then there are the ivy greed schools, where teaching to be corrupt, read between the lines, or as one Harvard professor put it, "read between the lines if they dont exactly say you cant do it, then what is stopping you from doing it. Don't let you morals or conscience stop you from making a good profit. "

More education. Less greed brainwashing

That is Right

[PhilipTaylor]

07:58 AM on 11/08/2009

"I refuse to live in a Country LIKE THIS and I am NOT LEAVING (MM)!"

Signed, Every American on Main Street and in Urban Centers!

We can TURN THIS CORNER IN AMERICA!

It is Time to DOWNSIZE G0LDMAN, M0RGAN, JPM, BofA, and C!tigroup!

"Too B1G and EV1L TO FAIL" is a thing of the PAST!

[Bettysdad]

01:59 AM on 11/08/2009

I've read many interviews with extremely successful, older businesspeople who feel that business schools in general are a negative force in business.

[drymartini1]

03:40 PM on 11/07/2009

More GED's is not going to make the stock market go up higher either !!

[petef59]

10:36 PM on 11/07/2009

I beg to differ: they are paid at 1972 wages, which means more earnings for stockholders and bigger bonuses for management.

[loki]

01:19 AM on 11/09/2009

"More GED's is not going to make the stock market go up higher either !!"

and judging from your grammar skills, you received your GED when??

but in all honesty, I think I would trust someone with a GED over someone with an MBA from any Ivy Greed School. I have a degree in Business Administration from a state university. Ive actually paid a lot of money to attend a couple Harvard Business lectures and seminars. That is when I really learned just what they are teaching there, and I am totally against it. They focus on increasing profits and your personal position in the corporate world over doing honest and harmfulness business. By that I mean they actually focus on getting around what is illegal and things on the border of being illegal because its the way to the quickest and largest profit margin.
They teach not to care about the customer at all and only about yourself and your own wealth and how you can get more. I didnt originate the saying Profit at All Cost. That was Harvard. And they mean it.

[drymartini1]

02:56 AM on 11/09/2009

If you want to do good for the world, go open a charity !!

If you want to do good for the world, start your own business and go do it. But as long as you are an "agent" (that is management), you listen and follow what the owners of the business want !! thats your job.

[factotem]

02:56 PM on 11/07/2009

Count on it... Is it not abundantly clear in 2009 that the Harvard MBA was about making yourself rich, and noone else, and "scr=w the nation"?

[loki]

01:20 AM on 11/09/2009

Like all the Ivy Greed Universities teach. The richer their Alumni get, the richer they expect to get. Its greed producing thousands of ivy greeders to feed them and make them fat.

[NO more]

12:38 PM on 11/07/2009

Unemployment is too high

good articles: http://financeopinonss.blogspot.com

Need more stimulus directed at job creation only.

[topguide]

02:29 AM on 11/07/2009

The only thing an MBA helps you do is write a resume in business-speak and the ability to manipulate the numbers in a Excel sheet

What I find hilarious are the 20-something MBA consultants out and about "advising" 50+ CEO's on business strategy.

And we wonder why our economy is teetering at the brink of bankruptcy.

[TheBMChief]

04:52 AM on 11/07/2009

How about giving back to society with a real job? Doctor, policeman, fireman, TEACHER? Please

[Furby2]

11:01 AM on 11/07/2009

I think we call them firefighters now and props to police women. And how about all those engineers, pilots, sanitary workers, small business owners, barbers and hairdressers, coaches, mentors, writers, bus drivers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and lest we forget, NURSES. The list is virtually endless. Heck even the cable guy is worth a couple of MBA's in my book :)

[loki]

01:26 AM on 11/09/2009

I wish being a teacher was worth it. Its one of the most important jobs out there. Shaping the minds of our kids. Our kids spend more time in schools that they do with their families each school year.
But, teachers are the worst paid and worst treated. Police and fireman make a lot more. And, they dont have to work from 6 or 7am until 6 or 7pm mon-fri and then take work home to get it done. Buy supplies for their class, and then work summer school just to make enough money to make ends meet. Most teachers I know have to do this and sometimes work a second job. Face it, 35k and 60+hour weeks just dont cut it.
Teachers deserve much more. Let me qualify that. Good teachers deserve much more. I also believe teachers should be tested every couple years and monitored. If they are abusive to the students, and dont know what they are doing. They shouldnt be protected by the Unions. either they can do the job, or they are not worthy of teaching and should find another profession., Because a bad teacher or abusive teacher can to irreparable mental and physical harm to our kids.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

08:04 AM on 11/07/2009

No doubt the economy is teetering at the brink of bankruptcy because too many 50+ execs don't know anything other than manipulating numbers in an excel sheet and writing resumes and reports in business-speak.

But you may be mistaken about the 20+ consultants. They don't advise 50+ CEOs much. There aren't enough CEOs to provide work for the army of 20+s.

The challenge is to learn more or know more. But how do you get there if the entire community ticks like that? How do explain an actual idea to anybody if nobody is able to listen because they can't write a standard resume or report about it and can't fit it into numbers in an excel sheet?

To me it's been obvious from the beginning of these developments (which dates back into the 1980s) that there's a limit as to what you can do with an army of people who have nothing on their mind but to try to 'fit in' - whatever that means.

I must admit that I wasn't the only one with such prescience. The Talking Heads tour 'Stop making sense' had similar wisdom - and maybe I even received it from them.

[ntmessage]

08:59 AM on 11/07/2009

Silly. When you are taught maximun profit as the goal, 20+ or 50+ does not matter. The issue here is assuming that 50+ experience knows less than 20+ experience. That creates a new cycle of the same mistakes.

[Philclock]

02:20 AM on 11/07/2009

I see, is this part of Climate Change theology?

[LunaPark]

10:30 PM on 11/06/2009

We need to shut down Harvard Business school before anymore damage is done.

[KristinNoelle]

11:53 PM on 11/06/2009

HBS and their alumni have done many wonderful things. There are always going to be immoral people in the world, but that doesn't mean Harvard created them.

[collettethehedgehog]

03:33 AM on 11/07/2009

They bankrupted their own university for example and have gone on to bigger and better things. Thank you Larry Summers.

[Furby2]

10:52 AM on 11/07/2009

OK I'm waiting for that list of wonderful achievements, as compared to community service, for example.

[hypnotoad72]

03:41 PM on 11/07/2009

Harvard Business School.

HBS.

Given the consensus, HBS could stand for "haphazard bull s..."

/ducksforcover

[Ranta]

10:13 PM on 11/06/2009

Enron had a policy of hiring the best and the brightest from the Ivy League schools. All they got was the best and brightest thieves.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

08:51 PM on 11/06/2009

How very interesting.

However, I am still waiting for the day somebody with some clout dares to discuss the relationship between the elitism in the world of finance and the assumptions of the efficient market hypothesis.

Of course it's not a priori self-contradictory. And it's also not demonstrable empirically that it involves a contradiction.

But, hey: is it PLAUSIBLE?