It’s no secret that certain hiring pipelines dominate Dartmouth’s campus: according to the 2023 Cap and Gown Survey, an annual College-run evaluation of where graduates plan to work, 46% of Dartmouth graduates were working in either “finance” or “business and management consulting.” We’ve all felt it. Frantic chatter about “recruitment” swallows our campus whole, becoming an inescapable topic of conversation and a widespread aspect of identity on campus.
I don’t want to complain that Dartmouth students are too preoccupied with recruitment for these jobs, because that much is obvious. I want to point out a larger flaw in our campus culture — our abstraction of what true “value” is, and the pursuit of that abstraction for the mere sake of accumulation. This vapid desire for wealth defines how Dartmouth students see their futures, and has poisoned how they see their relationship with the world.
As our modern system of money has developed, ways to create more money have become increasingly more abstract, and further separated from human reality. In the modern American economy, absurd incarnations of profit creation abound. High frequency trading, a strategy used often by institutional investors, uses proprietary computer algorithms to identify small differences in stock prices and extract profit from the market by executing large amounts of trades in fractions of a second. Synthetic collateral debt obligations, a field of products that are purchasable bets on whether a certain asset will yield returns or not, helped to fuel the subprime mortgage crisis and 2008 financial crisis. Money is increasingly made through abstract means that do not serve the average person, and in many cases harm them.
Furthermore, major schemes of profit in our modern economy are increasingly synthetic, serving no practical purpose. The sectors that Dartmouth students largely pursue track this change closely: the only purpose of investment banking and consulting jobs is to maximize profit for the client or bank, and therefore yourself, by any means necessary. There is no moral draw to these fields, and they are notorious for their poor work life balance, high stress environments and competitive cultures.
It would be unfair and inaccurate to exclusively blame students for this disturbing culture. Beyond an insatiable desire for money, there are other dynamics at play, namely fear and institutional tradition. Dartmouth students live in a pressure cooker. They face high expectations and for many, a high paying job is the best way to please parents and secure an ideal future, eliminating anxiety about job prospects early. Extensive Dartmouth recruitment to investment banking and consulting also means extensive alumni networks in these fields, and therefore more ins when first starting the process.
The pressure to succeed and be financially independent can be exacerbated for first generation and low income students even more severely. These careers are seen as tried and true methods to make money and live a stable lifestyle — for individuals who don’t have the safety net of familial wealth, the temptation of a job that lets you support a family and achieve financial stability can be almost undeniable. There’s also the obvious peer pressure: if many of your friends are pursuing recruitment of some kind, why wouldn’t you as well? Ultimately, the primary draw of what almost half of Dartmouth students choose to pursue is either unvarnished greed or a fear-based desire for stability.
Because of these structures, personal greed and fear on Dartmouth’s campus are God. Even more strikingly though, no one seems to acknowledge this fact. Rather, the pipeline to these greed-driven sectors is accepted as inevitable and part of the Dartmouth brand. The fact that people are driven by these emotions rather than a real desire to make a positive impact in the world is an alarming sign of moral decay on our campus.
I’m sure many might dismiss this column as the rantings of a liberal arts major who will inevitably end up poor and write unsolicited opinions that no one cares to read. I challenge anyone whose first instinct is to think this to reflect on how money in our society has changed. It is no longer a tool of exchange that lubricates a well-functioning market, but is now a weapon that is increasingly hoarded by the wealthiest in our country with the primary goal of endless personal duplication. The world outside of Dartmouth is being left behind, and the existing model that increasingly creates two classes — a tiny group of wealthy rulers and a giant mass of trapped, impoverished have-nots — is untenable.
If you are considering or already have a career in one of these fields lined up, this column is not meant to malign you. Your attraction to these fields is understandable: so many factors at Dartmouth actively push students into these fields. I have one request, though. Please ask yourself: will this job be fulfilling, and will I make a positive impact on our world?
If the answer to that question is no and you don’t care, then we share different values. If it gives you even an ounce of pause though, I implore you to reconsider your plans after graduation. A Dartmouth degree is a gift, and it gives you the privilege to think about things beyond money. There is no need to immediately jump into an investment banking or consulting job, because the exceptional nature of our diplomas allows us to explore other, more fulfilling types of work that also allow people to support themselves. It’s time we start using this privilege more frequently.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He is from Connecticut, and studies government and creative writing.
On campus, Eli is an active member of the Dartmouth Political Union and Dartmouth Army ROTC. He attends Dartmouth on an ROTC scholarship, and upon graduation, he will commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He has been an active writer and political organizer from a young age, working on over 15 political campaigns varying from local to presidential races, and publishing both fiction and nonfiction on various platforms.
First and foremost, Eli loves to write, and he intends to make some form of it his full time career after his time in the Army.
