US: Students urged to seek jobs beyond Wall Street

The financial industry has long concentrated its search for new blood on the well-manicured campuses of America's elite universities, where job prospects after graduation may be the one thing even higher than tuition fees. But that pipeline to talent is facing some push-back, writes Nathaniel Popper for the Los Angeles Times.

Fuelled by the same anger motivating the Occupy Wall Street movement, students and professors at the nation's most prestigious universities are criticising the high number of young men and women going into trading firms and hedge funds. "The best minds of my generation are using their brainpower in ways that will not make society's problems better, and could make them worse," said Andrew Lohse, a senior at Dartmouth.

Lohse and students at Yale, Harvard and Stanford have recently written articles in their campus papers calling attention to the issue, and MIT recently created an entrepreneurship centre to support students seeking opportunities outside of high finance, such as working for start-ups and other small companies.
Full report on the Los Angeles Times site