Morgan Stanley, 'Gold Man Sacks' unloved at Ivy League colleges

New York: The best and the brightest from America’s Ivy League schools have every reason to expect an easy passage into a Wall Street career and lavish bonuses. These elite Ivy League schools are the happy hunting grounds for the blue-blooded investment banks. But there is a new trend: students in these elite college campuses are giving banking recruiters nothing short of hell. Goldman Sachs canceled visits to Harvard and Brown University this month following an incident where Occupy Harvard protesters attempted to enter a recruitment session. Students at Yale University, Princeton and Cornell University have also protested campus events by investment firms. At Princeton, students masquerading as job applicants entered two Wall Street informational sessions, shouted slogans at bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and posted videos of their protest which caught everyone by surprise on YouTube. “We protest the campus culture that whitewashes the crooked dealings of Wall Street as a prestigious career path,” the Princeton students chanted. Bloomberg News columnist Michael Lewis who is the author of Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World and The Big Short, observed that “across the Ivy League the young people whom our Wall Street division once subjugated with ease are becoming troublesome.” [caption id=“attachment_168569” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Ivy League students have been occupying Wall Street for years, as part of the banks, but they are now identifying with the rallying cry of “Occupy Wall Street.” AFP”] [/caption] Lewis said the November-December protests were a “sure sign of trouble” for the banks. “The whole point of going to Princeton for the past several decades has been to get a job at Goldman Sachs or, failing that, JPMorgan. That Princeton students are now identifying their interests with the Lower 99 percenters is, in its way, as ominous as the return of the Jews to Jerusalem,” wrote Lewis in his Bloomberg column. Ivy League students have been occupying Wall Street for years, as part of the banks, but they are now identifying with the rallying cry of “Occupy Wall Street.” More students at these insular, elite campuses appear willing to sacrifice salary and employment opportunities in high finance in favour of jobs that they actually enjoy. About 22 percent of Harvard 2011 graduates who planned to enter the workforce were headed into finance and consulting, down from a high of 47 percent in 2007, according to a Harvard Crimson survey published in May. “Most of the students entering finance are only doing it for the money. Frankly, the banking jobs suck! As an Indian student with a $100,000 student loan to repay, I can’t take the high ground and spurn evil ‘Gold Man Sacks.’ But I would love to work in a more meaningful profession if salary wasn’t a concern,” an Indian MBA student at Columbia University, who didn’t want to be identified since he was job hunting, told Firstpost. “Still, it is great to see Anna Hazare mobilising India against corruption and the spirit of Occupy Wall Street on campus. We all have to be more politically engaged,” he added.