Education trends and cycles

European here. There’s been a sustained decline in # of grads willing to work in finance (broad industry, incl IB, HF and PE). Seemingly because finance doesn’t have the “prestige monopoly” it used to have 10+ years ago, but also as there’s been an emergence of new career paths offering better perks / lifestyle / job fulfillment if not similar comp (thinking about tech here, although the huge field of scale ups funded with cheap money over L10Y appears to be an employer of choice to the younger folks).

Although reasons are understandable, main consequence is that finance doesn’t get to pick the best talent.

Question for US folks: is your market exposed to similar trends? Do you still recruit top students from top unis, who would have the option to choose among several routes (eg maths / physics / Econ majors as opposed to humanities), or do you see them going elsewhere? Where is the average 3.9 gpa Princeton maths/econ ug going?

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