Wall Street Occupying Campuses

By Joe Sheeran, Communications Director, January 2, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Our partners over at the Center for American Progress just published an interesting piece examining how Wall Street job recruiters are aggressively setting up shop and gunning for top candidates graduating from prestigious colleges.

As Alyssa Battistoni’s work points out, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Wall Street recruiters coming to campus, especially in this tight job market. The concerns come with how their luring students in, especially those facing large student loan debt, and the somewhat complicit role colleges are taking in the process.

The aggressive recruiting tactics practiced on American college campuses are diverting talented students from pursuing careers in science, public service, and entrepreneurship.

…Thankfully, some students are pushing back… Inspired by the Occupy movements, students at schools where big banks tend to recruit heavily are demanding that career centers be more proactive in helping students start careers in public service fields and promote entrepreneurship.

At Stanford University, students recently formed an organization called Stop the Brain Drain, and students at Brown University and Harvard University have begun organizing with local Occupy movements to protest income inequality, an issue made worse by Wall Street practices.

This is just one more way the one percent stacks the deck against the rest of us, by siphoning off the best and brightest who might otherwise use their talent to advance a social cause or work in public service—causes that tend to work against the 1%'s best interests.

| Related Topics: Higher Education  Economic Inequality  Working / Middle Class Issues