Engineering: Suddenly Sexy for College Grads

(page 2 of 2)

Preferring Startups

When I joined the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University in August 2005, more than one-third of the masters of engineering management students from the outgoing class told me they were taking jobs in financial services. From the class of 2007, 22% went into finance. In 2008, the percentage slid to 17%. I sent an e-mail last week asking the 112-strong class of 2009 how many were interested in financial service jobs. Only three, including Kurra and Lekharaju, responded in the affirmative. Nearly all of the others said they wanted to become engineers.

Shijie Deng, director of quantitative and computational finance masters at Georgia Tech, says some of his students are getting job offers outside the U.S., from such operations as the Hong Kong outpost of Merrill Lynch, which was recently acquired by Bank of America (BAC). Still, the job market is tough, and demand for his program is down. Its graduates increasingly are looking for jobs in consulting, energy, and traditional engineering that have an interface with finance but aren't in the thick of the industry. Others are applying for PhDs.

There also may be many others like Tyler. "Over the last few years, many students who have had innovative ideas ultimately chose to take a more risk-averse career in investment banking or consulting," says Travis May, another Harvard undergrad who put off finishing school to relaunch StudentBusinesses.com, an online service designed to match student-founded companies with angel funding. "Now, there is less of a pull to go in a traditional route, and the upside of that is it makes startups more compelling as a career path," May says.

The venture capital community appears to have taken note of the newfound disillusionment with finance. First Round Capital, an early-stage VC firm based in New York City, launched "Leave Wall Street, Join a Startup," a Web site that lists job openings at its portfolio companies and encourages financiers to jump to tech startups. The campaign got heavy play—and approving mentions—in the blogosphere.

The societal benefit of developing a new type of credit default swap has always been dubious. In an era when thousands of amateur stock analysts post their thoughts online, expert opinions from Wall Street analysts may also provide less value. On the other hand, we need our best and brightest engineers developing new types of medical devices, renewable energy sources, solutions for global warming, and ways for sustaining the environment and purifying water. And we need them to start companies that help America keep its innovative edge. So maybe the dark cloud over finance has a silver lining, and investment banking's loss will be engineering's gain.

Business Exchange related topics:
Career Change
Recession Job Search
U.S. Financial Crisis
Global Recession

Wadhwa is Senior Research Associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. He is an entrepreneur who founded two technology companies. His research can be found at www.globalizationresearch.com. .