Noah Smith, Columnist

The Riddle of the Wall Street Brain Drain

Is it a problem if lots of the best and brightest go into finance?

August 17, 2016 at 7:13 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

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Nowadays, if you’re a smart college graduate, Silicon Valley and its tech-startup scene is the hot place to be. But 10 years ago, it seemed like everyone with a brain and big ambitions wanted to go to Wall Street. The worlds of investment banking and trading were a golden ladder to the good life.

The numbers tell the tale. Via the New York Times and the Princeton University's Office of Career Services, here’s a chart of where Princeton graduates went during the decade of the '00s: