Two roads diverged in a financial crisis.

Years ago, the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz spent many months visiting coffee shops across Italy with the goal of creating a better social experience here in the states for coffee consumers. What he noticed is that Italians loved to socialize over a cup of coffee, but the infrastructure within coffee shops here in the US was not in place for this to happen. With the “if you build it, they will come” concept, Schultz decided to furnish a few of his coffee shops with couches, chairs, and tables. Immediately, Starbucks customers caught on, and the rest is history. Today, it seems the most popular place to meet and greet is at coffee shops.

For my circle of friends however, we prefer to chat while drinking a beer in a Jacuzzi. It has become what we’d like to think as our own exclusive Jacuzzi club. In one of our recent Jacuzzi club “meetings” this past winter, my best friend (a Princeton graduate) and I had a lengthy discussion about what I thought about his school after my recent visit. To say the least, I was very impressed with everything Princeton has to offer: Nobel Prize winning professors, top notch athletic facilities, a beautiful campus, etc. However, at one point, I swear I met 30 consecutive students who were all going into finance after graduating; this left a sour taste in my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I understand there are many great people working in the finance world, but I did find it troublesome that it seemed like a majority of our nation’s greatest minds are heading into finance.

Well it turns out that other people have also been wondering the same thing: “just how many Ivy-leaguers work in finance after school?” Just weeks after our discussion, my friend found a great post on this topic in the NY Times called “Out of Harvard, and Into Finance” written by Catherine Rampell. What do you think? Does it matter to you so many Ivy-leaguers head into finance upon graduation? Do you think more Ivy-leaguers will continue to choose careers in public service or non-profits as recent trends show or will this just be a short term reaction to the recent financial crisis? Is it troublesome to you that so few Ivy league graduates ever serve in the military? Can we find a way to utilize Schultz' "if you build it, they will come" concept to encourage these graduates to move in a more adventurous and philanthropic career direction? I leave these questions to you.