For many of Oxford’s students, their time at the university can be fondly measured by a series of firsts, whether it be their first formal dinner, their first time wearing sub fusc, or even the inevitable first essay crisis. Most memorable of all, however, should surely be their first moment of realisation that life’s true purpose lies in maximising growth and performance at McKinsey.
Indeed, Oxford – along with many of the world’s most prestigious universities – has garnered something of a reputation in recent decades for being a direct pipeline into finance and consulting careers. Once a traditional pathway into academia, the civil service, and law, holders of the still much-coveted Oxford degree have now set their sights on corporate domination.
The 2022’s Graduate Outcomes Survey details that 11% of Oxford graduates went into careers in accountancy, insurance and financial services, and 5% into consulting. This is compared to a meagre 2% of graduates going into government and public services and only 1% choosing to work for charities, not-for-profits and think-tanks.
Statistics like these, however, don’t quite do justice to the ruthless culture of careerism in Oxford, where it has become an all-pervasive presence. I was left feeling more than a little naïve after hearing two of my college’s English cohort eagerly express their intentions to go into finance and management consulting—in Freshers’ Week. Of course, I wasn’t exactly expecting my new tutorial partners to end up as poets and secondary school teachers, but I was surprised by just how calculated everyone already seemed to be about their – somewhat corporate – career prospects.
But don’t just take my word for it – Oxford University’s Career Service itself declares that “Oxford students LOVE the idea of a career in consulting”, with “close to 1,000 students” attending their “annual Finance and Management Consultancy Fair”.
Having established the evidence, the real question becomes: why are Oxford students increasingly foregoing post-graduate creative, intellectual, and socially conscious post-graduate pursuits in favour of the cut-throat world of strategic downsizing and asset management? Why are our future novelists, scientists, and scholars holed up in the shiny offices of the Big Four? And is this brain drain an inherently negative prospect?
Old Habits Die Hard
Although the reasons behind this shift are numerous and complex, it would be short-sighted to forget that one of the most compelling incentives for high-flying careers in finance and consulting is the very same principle that spurs students to apply to Oxford in the first place: prestige.
Oxford students – some of whom at great expense – have already spent their short lives striving for academic perfection, and have grown up in social milieus where extracurricular overachievements are the norm, not the exception. Excelling in school, on the sports field, in their music classes, and in summer volunteering projects – as well as being encouraged to view their classmates as competitors – culminates in a culture that elevates status above all else. By the time these teenage wunderkinds have secured Oxbridge offers, they have already updated their LinkedIn profiles and are an inch closer to fulfilling their dream of a prestigious summer internship in the City.
Such an eye for exceptionalism, then, inevitably translates into heady career aspirations, epitomised by the attraction of financial security and professional influence that the finance and consultancy sectors can afford. For many students, career plans in these fields are well in motion before that first white carnation for Prelims has even been fastened.
A Recruiter in Our Midst
This deeply instilled pre-professional culture is no accident; Oxford is a veritable cornucopia for professional recruiters, who have established a well-oiled infrastructure to attract their future workforce. Whether it be through finance and consulting fairs, alumni events, networking dinners, or even the humble ‘coffee chat’, the presence of corporate head-hunters is undeniably ubiquitous within Oxford’s institutional structure. The university prides itself on working with the best firms and providing the best pipelines for its students, and for many these opportunities hold equal importance with their academic engagement and interests.
University clubs and societies, moreover, which were once outlets for shared interests, hobbies, and identities, increasingly compete with pre-professional bootcamps for the corporate pen-pushers of tomorrow. Again, the Careers Network boasts that “there are many student-led societies at Oxford with an active interest in the management consultancy sector”; CapitOx and Enactus are not 4th c. Roman emperors but rather your first step to boardroom supremacy. Even ostensibly non-career societies like OxfordSpeaks and Oxford Women in Computer Science Society are now funded by firms like Jane Street and Citadel, respectively.
Business As Usual
As enjoyable as it is to write with a latent smugness, it would be reductive and inaccurate to class all graduates seeking finance and consulting careers as morally bankrupt and financially driven. Universities are no longer public institutions but commercial businesses, a pecuniary shift reflected by the attitudes of its graduates. With student loans at an all-time high – leaving some graduates with over £200Kworth of debt – and the job market more precarious than ever, are students really deserving of blame simply for wanting financial and professional security? Graduates want a good return on their significant time and financial investment, a sentiment surely echoed by students of all socioeconomic backgrounds; gone are the days where university was simply a form of intellectual cultivation for the elite. Today’s students understand that the value of their university education is dictated by the prestige of their graduate jobs. When big firms offer the promise of professional growth and glamorous CVs, it’s no wonder that uncertain students pledge their allegiance to the corporate machine, if only temporarily.
The issue with this is that these ‘temporary’ graduate jobs have a way of becoming permanent. Promising to only stay in consulting or finance for a few years before doing a more worldly stint in a not-for-profit often serves as a conscience-alleviating idea at the start of your career. But by the time you have a central London mortgage, children with expensive tastes, and a penchant for Jason’s sourdough, it’s a lot harder to cut that salary in half when it comes to it. These are what economists call the golden handcuffs.
The Million Dollar Question
Yet the question remains unanswered: just what is so problematic about a career in finance and consulting? On the surface? Not much. The finance sector, in particular, is arguably one of the best routes for economic growth, and there are ethical and environmental consulting agencies which I’m sure make a positive impact. McKinsey itself has pledged “$2 billion to social responsibility efforts by 2030” (a move which will assuredly cancel out its dedication to exacerbating the American opioid crisis and streamlining the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Trump’s arm of domestic terror.)
Below the surface? Quite a lot. Aside from questions of how the finance sector mercilessly maximises profit at the expense of people, or how the consulting industry’s lack of accountability is labour alienation in action (consultants rarely see the long-term implications of their work), my biggest qualm lies in the talent vacuuming they facilitate.
The (allegedly) brightest minds humanity has to offer are using their talent and expertise not for public service but for profit-maximisation. Oxford graduates who could be curing cancer, navigating climate change, and writing their masterpieces are instead using their skills to generate shareholder value. Finance and consulting – what businessman and politician Andrew Yang termed as ‘meta-industries’ that manage the value of other industries rather than create their own – can offer rewarding and enriching careers, but shouldn’t be the lifetime ambition for such a disproportionate number of students.
I’m not suggesting that every Oxford student should wake up tomorrow and delete LinkedIn in a Scrooge-esque epiphany. But it would be encouraging for a class of people who possess confidence in such abundance to have confidence in themselves to implement a greater change in the world. Let’s touch base and circle back.