*
Kevin Hicks ’89, former dean of Berkeley College, thinks it’s a load of crap.
“As for the argument that consulting provides an extraordinary skill set with which one can eventually change the world, I just don’t buy it,” he said. “Everyone knows what the skill set is for most entry-level consultants: PowerPoint and Excel.” He sees a huge problem with the idea that consulting and finance are good ways to prepare oneself for a career elsewhere.
“Most firms are looking for people who will stay up until three A.M. seven nights a week making slides for a partner who goes home to Wellesley for dinner every night at five P.M.—and who will do so thinking that they’re ‘winning.’ Look at it this way: most firms assume that you’ll leave for law school or business school within three years, and they invest in your training accordingly. Quality mentoring when you’re young is worth whatever you pay for it. Sometimes that means less money, sometimes that means less of a life beyond work. But quality mentoring is not going to be delivered by someone who is twenty-six, and just one tidal cycle ahead of you.”
Hicks believes this idea of skill-set development is a product of fantastic marketing by the firms themselves.
“There are a half dozen more life-affirming ways you can acquire those same skills, including taking a class at night at a junior college while you do something more interesting. I suppose I’m open to the idea that consulting may truly be a great first job for someone, but too many seniors march lemming-like toward it because everyone else seems to be doing it, and it’s the next opportunity for extrinsic validation. If McKinsey says you’re okay, you’re okay.
“The danger in doing a prefabricated thing after graduation,” he continued, “is that there’s no unique story to tell about it. If there was ever a moment to be entrepreneurial and daring—whether in terms of business or social change—and really test yourself, this is it.
“If you’re like most people, you’ll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then—somewhere in that five-to seven-year distance from Yale—you’ll see a need to fully commit to something that’s a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to ‘cast your whole vote,’ you’re reasonably confident you’re not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you’re on is really yours, and not someone else’s? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way—holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome—you’re less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger.”
Yikes!
Professor Charles Hill also believes it’s an unproductive use of Yalies’ time—but for slightly different reasons. He sees the job world as split into two categories: primary functions and secondary functions, productive and unproductive. Unlike straight-up corporations, he doesn’t see these banks or consulting agencies as contributing to the world in a primary, meaningful way.
“People go into it without knowing why,” he said. “They consider you a crop. They harvest you, put you in their grinder, pay you well, and off-load you.” He sees consulting services as something companies invest in to protect against potential lawsuits—providing somewhere for CEOs to point the finger in the event of legal trouble. When the economy goes down, corporations cut back on the use of consultants. Hill argues that if their services were truly needed, the exact opposite would occur (i.e., the corporate use of consultants would increase).
His alternative? Professor Hill wishes more Yalies would go into the productive economy, i.e., work for the corporations themselves.
“Students have these ideologies dropped down on them from the sixties and seventies about corporations being evil,” he said. “For some reason people will work for consultants and banks but not for PepsiCo or General Motors.” As for the nonprofit world, Hill sees it as a waste of our talents. “It’s a question of grand strategy,” he said, insisting that our energy is better spent elsewhere.
Yikes!
As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes “there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service.” He rejects the notion that “people who choose a business career aren’t interested in being public-spirited,” asserting that “what’s outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live.”
Harold Bloom disagrees.
“Alas,” he groaned, “this is the death of the mind. That is not my vision of Yale University.”
*
Inevitably, some of the students I spoke with aren’t interested in the industry at all. “I can never say for an individual person because I don’t know their financial circumstances,” Alexandra Brodsky ’12 said, “but twenty-five percent is a lot of talent that could do a hell of a lot for the world elsewhere. I think that we have to be aware of that when we make these choices.” Brodsky, the co-coordinator of Dwight Hall,* spends a lot of her time at Yale surrounded by nonprofit management. For her, the argument that working in the private sector is the best way to prepare oneself for this line of work is faulty.
“I think the best way to get the skills to work for a nonprofit is to work for a nonprofit,” she said. “The answer people give about skills acquisition is very convenient.”
Sam Schoenburg ’12, a political activist and campaigner, is on the same page. “I’ve always been interested in government work or advocacy and I don’t feel that [consulting or finance] would satisfy me in the same way—even if it was only for a couple of years,” he said.
“There seems to be a great disconnect between the lofty speeches we hear at commencement from Yale administrators about devoting ourselves to public service and the career advice we’re presented with during the rest of the year.”
Still, some people I talked to were interested in the industry for its own sake—fascinated and excited by the work itself. Three such students requested to remain anonymous, but one, Sam Bekenstein ’12, was willing to comment on his genuine interest in consulting as a career choice in itself, not as a means to another end.
“In my everyday decision making, I want to be doing something that has an impact,” he said, “and when I think about how best to be in that position, I usually think of some kind of strategic management.”
Joe Breen ’12 is caught somewhere in the middle. He’s interested in eventually going into affordable housing development, running a nonprofit that improves services for a community or provides services that do not yet exist. But he’s applying for a series of jobs in the real estate private sector and isn’t sure how he feels about it morally.
“It’s hard to say which types of things are improving communities and which are exploiting communities,” he said. “But ultimately, I want to work for an organization that I’m positive is not exploiting communities for profit.”
Joe isn’t sure where commercial real estate falls on that spectrum, and it frustrates him.
“I would love for there to be a great two-year program that helps you gain all of these skills and gets you to start helping people right away, but I haven’t found that yet,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to be proactive in finding your own alternative, meaningful experience when you’re running an organization and taking classes. These commercial systems are already in place. They have deadlines. They present themselves to you.”
At times, Breen admits, he worries we’re sending our “best and brightest” into jobs that “abuse communities for profit.” (He also worries that every quote he gave for this article has the word community in it.)
The Office of Yale Undergraduate Career Services is well aware of these complaints. But Associate Dean and UCS Director Allyson Moore contends that they’re seeking to answer them.
“We recognize that financial services and management consulting firms have a wealth of resources at their disposal and that their on-campus recruiting efforts are thus highly visible,” she said via e-mail. “That means there is a responsibility for UCS to help those industries with fewer resources, such as arts, nonprofit, and public sectors, to receive equal visibility.” This year, they made sure that one third of the organizations at the career fair were from these categories.
“We were quite pleased with that,” she said, “and will continue these efforts within the coming months.” One such initiative is an online self-assessment service designed to identify students’ passions so they can “hone in on motivations” to better address their needs.