Can a college finance professor easily get a job on Wall Street if they wanted to?
Hypothetically, since finance professors are the most knowledgeable about finance. Can the vast majority of college finance professors easily get a Wall Street job? And make multiples of their current salary as a professor.
Only data point I have is my dad has been a Econ professor at a target uni for 35+ years and as do many, does a lot of research/publications and analysis on the side of teaching, so I think he could transition to a economist role or research easily but I’m sure there’s a lot of other factors that would make it easier or harder for this to happen
No.
It depends on their prior experience.
Yeah the back office could always use a few more mids
Last time I recall that this happened en mass was LTCM. That didn't work out to well for people.
Most finance professors have no practical experience or pattern recognition (which is what a banker or investor is paid for, really). What they do have is econometrics, which is useful in more quantitative roles.
Lots of finance professors do consulting work, but this work is often adjacent to their research/area of specialty. For example a professor who does lots of valuation research might consult as an expert witness to value a unique asset whose ownership is disputed in a lawsuit. Or a professor who spends a lot of time with factor models might be called in to consult with a university endowment on how much they should allocate to private investments.
As others have said a "talking head" type role is probably the easiest transition.
Don't assume that the professors are the smart ones though, there's truth to the adage that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
We had the head of LSE's Finance department in once as part of an academic speakers series. He was talking about a study he did in some corner of the FI market. My team's FI guy (who literally designs quantitative FI strategies for a living) raised his hand and pointed out that it was a dead corner with no new issuance, and that his research had no real world value. I still remember the guy's response: "and that is why it's worthwhile to discuss research with practitioners."
Non-target college finance profs wouldn't get a WS job easily, but big name target school profs would. Even then, they wouldn't excel at an analyst role, but they're best suited in a consultant/ economist/ big picture expert role. Hot take: Many non-target no-name college finance profs are incompetent.
I like this question cuz I'm genuinely curious as to what my obscure financial math/ financial econ/ macrofinance prof would have to say in a Wall Street/ HF setting
I recall going through the resumes of random finance professors at nowhere universities a while back and almost all of them had an elite academic pedigree. Getting a full-time faculty position in finance appears to be very difficult, so even random universities seem like they can bring on top people, especially if they are located in a tier 1 city.
Fair enough. Now that I think of it, I see quite a few Chicago finance PhDs joining the faculty of nowhere unis. Tough out there
Better to fuck than watch boyo
Those who can do , those who cant teach. Nuff said
Perhaps. But it can be more advantageous and secure to sell pans than prospect for gold.
Spoken like a true community college econ 101 professor. Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
Of which an econ professor does neither but rather pontificates about the impact of gold on the market.
You missed a couple of commas here and your phrase means nothing.
As Whatever1984 said:
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
no, because no one wants to hear (and less the CapMarkets MD) that markets are efficient
It takes a special type of person to tolerate the atmosphere of a university/college.
...and I don't mean that in a good way :)
My derivatives professor worked at a market maker for a couple of years before returning to lecturing. He enjoyed teaching.
I feel academia is hindsight focused - trying to empirically explain events. In contrast the finance industry is by nature commercially minded, iterative, and forward looking.
Good college econ professors often go into strategy/MBB.
Can they go into risk taking roles? Maybe depending on their profile. Can they get a job? Yes. All of my professors were consultants for large financial firms on the side, and if they wanted, they could have likely made the jump given the numerous interactions with clients. Moreover, most of them did work full time in finance at some point and either made the transition to academia or returned to it. Some of them were pretty successful. They’d have to give up a lot of security and lifestyle to go back to Wall Street full time. A $200k+ day job and maybe equal or more income from consulting plus a pension. On top of that, they set their own hours and don’t have comparable authority to report to like in corporate America. I had one tenured professor who outright ignored his department head and taught concepts that were not part of his teaching curriculum. Try ignoring a higher-up in corporate and see how far you get. There is an almost unbelievable example here that I can’t share as it’s too specific but think not just teaching concepts you were told not to but basically not showing up for a class you promised to teach.
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