24 April 2026

Why graduates choose finance over public service

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Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013).

The finance and consultancy sectors have stolen a significant amount of top graduate talent, thanks to their high wages, fast career progression and institutional prestige.

This is concerning as young university graduates are funnelled into one industry that has relatively low real-world impact and has even been proven to have a negative impacton economic growth.

A 2022 statistic shows that 40% of Harvard graduates entering the workforce go into finance or consultancy. Scaled across a large nation such as the US, the business and finance sector – including accounting, auditing and financial operations – are projected to generate roughly 900,000 annual openings per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Our smartest minds are not moving into medicine, education or politics. Investment banks, for example, offer starting salaries far higher than those of surgeons, who spend years in training. In New York, surgeons earn an average of $100,000, while investment bankers take home $20,000 more. This difference of 20% becomes the driver for the financial sector’s popularity.

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In many Western economies, we live in a society that endorses hedonistic lifestyles. The competitive drive to be financially better off than our neighbour feeds into the reasons why undergraduates from prestigious universities almost religiously follow the same path into the so-called “Bermuda Triangle of talent” – finance and consultancy.

A reason for this trend is the high benchmark of training for the other industries. Civil engineers require 8-12 years of education and training, while their peers in finance complete a 3-4 year undergraduate course and then enjoy lucrative salaries.

There is a reason why there are no wage strikes in finance compared to health care, which saw 57 strikes in the US in 2025.

However, this trend has also created an extremely competitive environment for employment in the finance sector. The path to finance is extremely rigorous in its own way. Students are even pressured to scavenge for internships within their first two years of university.

Major corporate consultancy firms such as McKinsey receive hundreds of thousands of applications each year and only selectthe top 1%.

These are all the smartest students out of their classes.

Similarly, we cannot discredit the fact that financial firms bring important services, businesses need help with management of their finances, and it is a job that requires years of experience within the sector. So in that sense, it isn’t society that awards the firms but rather the free-market structure of Western economies.

The high demand for the services of investment banks, coupled with their multi-billion dollar revenues, allows these firms to provide higher wages for their employees.

In public sectors, such as education and health care, pay isn’t decided by demand but rather by those in charge of the government budget.

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‘The Ivy League still holds its prestige, but it’s no longer the only light guiding the way forward.’ Pictured: Harvard University building.

The harm this trend brings is multifaceted. If all the most talented persons steer off into careers that don’t positively benefit society we potentially lose out on a vast amount of opportunities – perhaps, vaccine development for diseases in developing countries; civil architecture to benefit people within a region of a city; engineers developing a product that people can use to improve their living conditions.

To sum up, the finance industry is not the problem within our societies, but rather, the fault lies with the governments that decide how much certain work sectors need to be paid.

In order for society to flourish under a talented workforce, essential jobs outside of finance need to be respectively reimbursed for their positive impacts on society.

Written by:

Lukas Abromavicius

Economics Section Editor 2026

Sevenoaks, United Kingdom

Lukas Abromavicius, born in 2009, joined Harbingers’ Magazine in August 2025 as part of the Japan Newsroomprogramme. Since then, he has written regularly for the magazine, establishing himself as a thoughtful writer on economics and politics.

His consistent work and engagement with the magazine led to his appointment as Economics Section Editor for 2026, a role he took up on 1 March.

Alongside his editorial responsibilities, Lukas will also lead a project exploring the long-term economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine, a topic closely connected to his own background.

Of Ukrainian and Lithuanian heritage, Lukas studies in Sevenoaks, United Kingdom, where he has developed a strong interest in economics and plans to pursue finance at university.

Beyond journalism and his studies, he serves as vice-chair of the Sevenoaks Youth Council and is an active volleyball player. He speaks Ukrainian, Russian, Lithuanian, French, English and Spanish.

Edited by:

Arnav Maheshwari

Editor-in-Chief 2026

Georgia, United States

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