Although, this opinion piece by George Monbiot is good, & I would love to agree with it completely but it has a few major flaws.
Yes, students are one of the most idealistic people of any nation. They see the problem from an innocent point of view &, without any conflicts of interests or any politics, they try to find the best resolution to the problem. But with the same vein, they try to resolve every problem in a very straight-forward way, without thinking how the systems are structured or controlled or influenced. Merely protesting against the government on the streets won't help much if your demographics is not influential enough in the hallowed halls of the political powerhouses. For instance, we can see what did Egyptian youths & students achieve after protesting for weeks on end. Or students protesting against rising tuition fees around the world have not been able to convince post-secondary institutions to lower tuition fees.
So, at the same time, it is very true that students want to see the world develop in the noblest of forms; without any discriminations & prejudices. But at the same time, they also want to achieve success in their careers & life. They all want to climb high in the corporate world based on their merits & hard work. They all want to work for large, international, world-renowned companies.
The primary reason for this is how the labour market works. If these graduates get in a large, international, world-renowned company at the beginning of their careers, they can build their careers from that point, onwards & upwards. Other companies will look at their resumes & CVs & will be immediately impressed with their work experience, which they achieved at the large company. Those graduates may even build strong & influential networks by working in large multinational companies. For example, a graduate working in McKinsey or Bain or Boston Consulting Group or Deloitte or KPMG or General Electric or Phillips or Honda or Toyota or Google or Facebook etc will be able to transfer between different companies, in the same industry or even in different industries, very easily, due to how his/her work experiences will be looked upon by his future employers. A management consultant from McKinsey gets the doors flung open for him/her at other management consulting firms or even at non-consulting firms, like Google or General Electric.
Besides, the work experiences being favourably looked upon & networks being built, the salaries at these firms are good, too. But, I will not discuss the finance part of the argument, since, not every graduate chases the biggest pay packet. For many, salary comes second to experience.
Working for non-profits may elate a graduate for a short while, but, unless, they are willing to spend their whole life in the same company or stay within the non-profit sector, their experiences will most likely be considered not as important as a graduate's who has worked in a major consultancy firm. Is it unfair? Definitely. Should this be changed? Definitely. But who is willing to change it? There are not enough principals of the consultancy firms in this world who will look at a resume or CV of a person working at a non-profit agency & be immediately impressed.
Heck, even in personal lives, telling someone that one is working at such & such multinational consultancy firm or tech firm or other international company not only seem impressive but helps a lot in other ways. For instance, in Asian, South Asian, South American, & African societies, the measure of success of one's life is how big & well-known the employer of that person is. It doesn't even matter if that particular person is a janitor in that company. Parents & family members proudly boast that their family member is an employee of such a well-known international company. They don't care if that company is making weapons of mass destruction or destroying the environment or even killing the very soul of the society.
So, I agree with the argument that smart students should not be courted by large firms right before their graduations; when they may have not seen the world enough to make the right decision to choose the right career path for themselves. I also agree with the argument that students who want to work in such places where they can achieve their ideals, whatever they might be. But I disagree with the point that universities are failing in their duty of care by letting their graduates go for work for major "soulless" companies. Regardless of how much or how little universities market these companies to their intelligent students, those students will chase the large multinational companies because they know they will be able to travel the world, receive large pay packets, & most important of all, gain the work experience which will propel their careers in the stratosphere (assuming they don't screw up somewhere to derail their careers).
Everyone wants to go for the highest purposes of humankind but when push comes to shove, those noble ideas & meanings are pushed aside. It's not the fault of the universities or the companies or the young graduates, but the structure of the whole labour market is to blame. It rewards networks, not merits. It rewards experience gained at a multinational company, not the experience gained at a non-profit agency. It casts aside those who want to pursue highest purposes of humankind for the ones who are selfishly chasing money & careers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love & be loved; to create & to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.
Those who graduate from the leading universities have more opportunity than most to find such purpose. So why do so many end up in pointless & destructive jobs? Finance, management consultancy, advertising, public relations, lobbying: these & other useless occupations consume thousands of the brightest students. To take such jobs at graduation ... is to amputate life close to its base.
I watched it happen to my peers. People who had spent the preceding years laying out exultant visions of a better world, of the grand creative projects they planned, of adventure & discovery, were suddenly sucked into the mouths of corporations dangling money like angler fish.
At first they said they would do it for a year or two, “until I pay off my debts”. Soon afterwards they added: “and my mortgage”. Then it became, “I just want to make enough not to worry any more”. A few years later, “I’m doing it for my family”. Now, in middle age, they reply, “What, that? That was just a student fantasy.”
Why did they not escape, when they perceived that they were being dragged away from their dreams? I have come to see the obscene hours some new recruits must work – sometimes 15 or 16 a day – as a form of reorientation, of brainwashing. You are deprived of the time, sleep & energy you need to see past the place into which you have been plunged. You lose your bearings, your attachments to the world you inhabited before, & become immersed in the culture that surrounds you. Two years of this & many are lost for life.
Employment by the City has declined since the financial crash. Among the universities I surveyed with the excellent researcher John Sheil, the proportion of graduates taking jobs in finance & management consultancy ranges from 5% at Edinburgh to 13% at Oxford, 16% at Cambridge, 28% at the London School of Economics & 60% at the London Business School. But to judge by the number of applications & the rigour of the selection process, these businesses still harvest many of the smartest graduates.
Recruitment begins with lovebombing of the kind that cults use. They sponsor sports teams & debating societies, throw parties, offer meals & drinks, send handwritten letters, use student ambassadors to offer friendship & support. They persuade undergraduates that even if they don’t see themselves as consultants or bankers (few do), these jobs are stepping stones to the careers they really want. They make the initial application easy, & respond immediately & enthusiastically to signs of interest. They offer security & recognition when people are most uncertain & fearful about their future. And there’s the flash of the king’s shilling: the paid internships, the golden hellos, the promise of stupendous salaries within a couple of years. Entrapment is a refined science.
We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back. As far as self-direction, autonomy & social utility are concerned, many of those who enter these industries & never re-emerge might as well have locked themselves in a cell at graduation. They lost it all with one false step, taken at a unique moment of freedom.
John Sheil & I sent questions to 8 of the universities with the highest average graduate salaries: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, the London Business School, Warwick, Sheffield & Edinburgh. We asked whether they seek to counter these lavish recruitment drives & defend students from the love blitz. With one remarkable exception, their responses ranged from feeble to dismal. Most offered no evidence of any prior interest in these questions. Where we expected deep deliberation to have taken place, we found instead an intellectual vacuum.
They cited their duty of impartiality, which, they believe, prevents them from seeking to influence students’ choices, & explained that there were plenty of other careers on offer. But they appear to have confused impartiality with passivity. Passivity in the face of unequal forces is anything but impartial. Impartiality demands an active attempt to create balance, to resist power, to tell the dark side of the celestial tale being pummelled into the minds of undergraduates by the richest City cults.
Oxford University asked us, “isn’t it preferable that [the City] recruits bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates who are smart enough to hold their employers to account when possible?”. Oh blimey. This is a version of the most desperate excuse my college friends attempted: “I’ll reform them from within.” This magical thinking betrays a profound misconception about the nature & purpose of such employers.
They respond to profit, the regulatory environment, the demands of shareholders, not to the consciences of their staff. We all know how they treat whistleblowers. Why should “bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates” be dispatched on this kamikaze mission? I believe these universities are failing in their duty of care.
The hero of this story is Gordon Chesterman, head of the careers service at Cambridge, & the only person we spoke to who appears to have given some thought to these questions. He told me his service tries to counter the influence of the richest employers.
It sends out regular emails telling students “if you don’t want to become a banker, you’re not a failure”, & runs an event called “But I don’t want to work in the City”. It imposes a fee on rich recruiters & uses the money to pay the train fares of nonprofits. He expressed anger about being forced by the government to provide data on graduate starting salaries.
“I think it’s a very blunt & inappropriate means [of comparison], that rings alarm bells in my mind.”
Elsewhere, at this vulnerable, mutable, pivotal moment, undergraduates must rely on their own wavering resolve to resist peer pressure, the herd instinct, the allure of money, flattery, prestige & security.
Students, rebel against these soul-suckers! Follow your dreams, however hard it may be, however uncertain success might seem.
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com
Yes, students are one of the most idealistic people of any nation. They see the problem from an innocent point of view &, without any conflicts of interests or any politics, they try to find the best resolution to the problem. But with the same vein, they try to resolve every problem in a very straight-forward way, without thinking how the systems are structured or controlled or influenced. Merely protesting against the government on the streets won't help much if your demographics is not influential enough in the hallowed halls of the political powerhouses. For instance, we can see what did Egyptian youths & students achieve after protesting for weeks on end. Or students protesting against rising tuition fees around the world have not been able to convince post-secondary institutions to lower tuition fees.
So, at the same time, it is very true that students want to see the world develop in the noblest of forms; without any discriminations & prejudices. But at the same time, they also want to achieve success in their careers & life. They all want to climb high in the corporate world based on their merits & hard work. They all want to work for large, international, world-renowned companies.
The primary reason for this is how the labour market works. If these graduates get in a large, international, world-renowned company at the beginning of their careers, they can build their careers from that point, onwards & upwards. Other companies will look at their resumes & CVs & will be immediately impressed with their work experience, which they achieved at the large company. Those graduates may even build strong & influential networks by working in large multinational companies. For example, a graduate working in McKinsey or Bain or Boston Consulting Group or Deloitte or KPMG or General Electric or Phillips or Honda or Toyota or Google or Facebook etc will be able to transfer between different companies, in the same industry or even in different industries, very easily, due to how his/her work experiences will be looked upon by his future employers. A management consultant from McKinsey gets the doors flung open for him/her at other management consulting firms or even at non-consulting firms, like Google or General Electric.
Besides, the work experiences being favourably looked upon & networks being built, the salaries at these firms are good, too. But, I will not discuss the finance part of the argument, since, not every graduate chases the biggest pay packet. For many, salary comes second to experience.
Working for non-profits may elate a graduate for a short while, but, unless, they are willing to spend their whole life in the same company or stay within the non-profit sector, their experiences will most likely be considered not as important as a graduate's who has worked in a major consultancy firm. Is it unfair? Definitely. Should this be changed? Definitely. But who is willing to change it? There are not enough principals of the consultancy firms in this world who will look at a resume or CV of a person working at a non-profit agency & be immediately impressed.
Heck, even in personal lives, telling someone that one is working at such & such multinational consultancy firm or tech firm or other international company not only seem impressive but helps a lot in other ways. For instance, in Asian, South Asian, South American, & African societies, the measure of success of one's life is how big & well-known the employer of that person is. It doesn't even matter if that particular person is a janitor in that company. Parents & family members proudly boast that their family member is an employee of such a well-known international company. They don't care if that company is making weapons of mass destruction or destroying the environment or even killing the very soul of the society.
So, I agree with the argument that smart students should not be courted by large firms right before their graduations; when they may have not seen the world enough to make the right decision to choose the right career path for themselves. I also agree with the argument that students who want to work in such places where they can achieve their ideals, whatever they might be. But I disagree with the point that universities are failing in their duty of care by letting their graduates go for work for major "soulless" companies. Regardless of how much or how little universities market these companies to their intelligent students, those students will chase the large multinational companies because they know they will be able to travel the world, receive large pay packets, & most important of all, gain the work experience which will propel their careers in the stratosphere (assuming they don't screw up somewhere to derail their careers).
Everyone wants to go for the highest purposes of humankind but when push comes to shove, those noble ideas & meanings are pushed aside. It's not the fault of the universities or the companies or the young graduates, but the structure of the whole labour market is to blame. It rewards networks, not merits. It rewards experience gained at a multinational company, not the experience gained at a non-profit agency. It casts aside those who want to pursue highest purposes of humankind for the ones who are selfishly chasing money & careers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love & be loved; to create & to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.
Those who graduate from the leading universities have more opportunity than most to find such purpose. So why do so many end up in pointless & destructive jobs? Finance, management consultancy, advertising, public relations, lobbying: these & other useless occupations consume thousands of the brightest students. To take such jobs at graduation ... is to amputate life close to its base.
I watched it happen to my peers. People who had spent the preceding years laying out exultant visions of a better world, of the grand creative projects they planned, of adventure & discovery, were suddenly sucked into the mouths of corporations dangling money like angler fish.
At first they said they would do it for a year or two, “until I pay off my debts”. Soon afterwards they added: “and my mortgage”. Then it became, “I just want to make enough not to worry any more”. A few years later, “I’m doing it for my family”. Now, in middle age, they reply, “What, that? That was just a student fantasy.”
Why did they not escape, when they perceived that they were being dragged away from their dreams? I have come to see the obscene hours some new recruits must work – sometimes 15 or 16 a day – as a form of reorientation, of brainwashing. You are deprived of the time, sleep & energy you need to see past the place into which you have been plunged. You lose your bearings, your attachments to the world you inhabited before, & become immersed in the culture that surrounds you. Two years of this & many are lost for life.
Employment by the City has declined since the financial crash. Among the universities I surveyed with the excellent researcher John Sheil, the proportion of graduates taking jobs in finance & management consultancy ranges from 5% at Edinburgh to 13% at Oxford, 16% at Cambridge, 28% at the London School of Economics & 60% at the London Business School. But to judge by the number of applications & the rigour of the selection process, these businesses still harvest many of the smartest graduates.
Recruitment begins with lovebombing of the kind that cults use. They sponsor sports teams & debating societies, throw parties, offer meals & drinks, send handwritten letters, use student ambassadors to offer friendship & support. They persuade undergraduates that even if they don’t see themselves as consultants or bankers (few do), these jobs are stepping stones to the careers they really want. They make the initial application easy, & respond immediately & enthusiastically to signs of interest. They offer security & recognition when people are most uncertain & fearful about their future. And there’s the flash of the king’s shilling: the paid internships, the golden hellos, the promise of stupendous salaries within a couple of years. Entrapment is a refined science.
We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back. As far as self-direction, autonomy & social utility are concerned, many of those who enter these industries & never re-emerge might as well have locked themselves in a cell at graduation. They lost it all with one false step, taken at a unique moment of freedom.
John Sheil & I sent questions to 8 of the universities with the highest average graduate salaries: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, the London Business School, Warwick, Sheffield & Edinburgh. We asked whether they seek to counter these lavish recruitment drives & defend students from the love blitz. With one remarkable exception, their responses ranged from feeble to dismal. Most offered no evidence of any prior interest in these questions. Where we expected deep deliberation to have taken place, we found instead an intellectual vacuum.
They cited their duty of impartiality, which, they believe, prevents them from seeking to influence students’ choices, & explained that there were plenty of other careers on offer. But they appear to have confused impartiality with passivity. Passivity in the face of unequal forces is anything but impartial. Impartiality demands an active attempt to create balance, to resist power, to tell the dark side of the celestial tale being pummelled into the minds of undergraduates by the richest City cults.
Oxford University asked us, “isn’t it preferable that [the City] recruits bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates who are smart enough to hold their employers to account when possible?”. Oh blimey. This is a version of the most desperate excuse my college friends attempted: “I’ll reform them from within.” This magical thinking betrays a profound misconception about the nature & purpose of such employers.
They respond to profit, the regulatory environment, the demands of shareholders, not to the consciences of their staff. We all know how they treat whistleblowers. Why should “bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates” be dispatched on this kamikaze mission? I believe these universities are failing in their duty of care.
The hero of this story is Gordon Chesterman, head of the careers service at Cambridge, & the only person we spoke to who appears to have given some thought to these questions. He told me his service tries to counter the influence of the richest employers.
It sends out regular emails telling students “if you don’t want to become a banker, you’re not a failure”, & runs an event called “But I don’t want to work in the City”. It imposes a fee on rich recruiters & uses the money to pay the train fares of nonprofits. He expressed anger about being forced by the government to provide data on graduate starting salaries.
“I think it’s a very blunt & inappropriate means [of comparison], that rings alarm bells in my mind.”
Elsewhere, at this vulnerable, mutable, pivotal moment, undergraduates must rely on their own wavering resolve to resist peer pressure, the herd instinct, the allure of money, flattery, prestige & security.
Students, rebel against these soul-suckers! Follow your dreams, however hard it may be, however uncertain success might seem.
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com
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