The vice-chancellor stood on the podium in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, her voice echoing in opposition to the carved ceiling: Now go on the market and alter the world. Robes rustled. Cameras clicked. Rows of classmates smiled, clutching levels that may quickly ship them to McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Clifford Probability: the holy trinity of elite exit plans.
Simon van Teutem clapped, too, however for him, the irony was insufferable.
“I knew where everyone was going,” he stated in an interview with Fortune. “Everyone did. Which made it worse — we were all pretending not to see it.”
Profession paths for the elite have certainly consolidated during the last half-century. Within the Nineteen Seventies, one in twenty Harvard graduates went into careers of the likes of finance or consulting. Twenty years later, that jumped to 1 in 4. Final 12 months, half of Harvard graduates took jobs in finance, consulting or Large Tech. Salaries have equally soared: knowledge from the senior exit survey for the Class of 2024 exhibits 40% of employed graduates accepted first-year salaries exceeding US $110,000, and amongst these coming into consulting or funding banking almost three-quarters crossed that threshold.
Van Teutem took on the mission after watching the status treadmill siphon proficient, artistic youngsters into trivial work—after which shut the door behind them. Everybody at all times says they’re simply doing their banking job simply to get their foot within the door, he famous, however they at all times find yourself staying.
“These firms cracked the psychological code of the insecure overachiever,” Van Teutem stated, “and then built a self-reinforcing system.”
The Bermuda Triangle of Expertise
The e book,, The Bermuda Triangle of Expertise, grew out of private frustration. A longtime nerd who was fascinated by economics and politics, he had arrived at Oxford as an undergraduate in 2018 decided, in his phrases, “to do something good with my talents and privileges.”
Inside two years, he was interning at BNP Paribas after which Morgan Stanley, falling asleep at his desk engaged on mergers and acquisitions with the depth of “saving babies from a burning house.”
His discomfort wasn’t with the work itself — he isn’t one of many Gen-Zers who thinks all companies are “evil,” he insisted. “I just thought that the work was fairly trivial or mundane.”
At McKinsey, the place he interned subsequent, the work appeared extra polished however no much less hole.
“I was surrounded by rocket scientists who could build really cool stuff,” he stated, “but they were just building simple Excel models or reverse-engineering toward conclusions we already wanted.”
He declined the full-time affords and as a substitute started interviewing the individuals who hadn’t. Over three years, he spoke with 212 bankers, consultants, and company attorneys—from interns to companions—to grasp how so many high-achieving graduates drift into jobs they privately despise. The harm, he concluded, wasn’t villainy, and even greed, however misplaced potential: “The real harm is in the opportunity cost.”
Cash, he discovered, wasn’t the magnet, a minimum of not at first.
“In the initial pull, most elite graduates don’t decide based on salary,” he stated. “It’s the illusion of infinite choice, and the social status.”
At Oxford, that phantasm was in every single place. Banks and consultancies dominated profession festivals; governments and NGOs appeared as afterthoughts. He remembers his first brush with the system: BNP Paribas internet hosting a dinner at a high quality restaurant in Oxford for “top students.” He utilized as a result of he was broke and needed a free meal—and ended up interning there.
“It’s a game we’re trained to play,” he stated. “You’re hardwired that way. You’re always looking for the next level, the Harvard after Harvard, the Oxford after Oxford.”
By the point many graduates understand that there is no such thing as a gold star on the finish – that the subsequent stage is just larger pay and an extended slide deck—it’s already too late. Most individuals consider they will depart the company world after two or three years to comply with their goals, however only a few really do.
“At least I can buy my children a house”
He tells the story of “Hunter McCoy,” a pseudonym for a person who as soon as needed to work in politics or at a assume tank, for example the purpose. McCoy imagined a future profession in advocacy. Contemporary out of college, McCoy joined a white-shoe legislation agency and informed himself he’d keep two, possibly three years, simply lengthy sufficient to repay his pupil loans. He even had a reputation for the end line: his “f–k you number.” That was the sum that may purchase him freedom to pursue coverage work.
However freedom, it turned out, was a transferring goal. Dwelling in an costly metropolis, surrounded by colleagues who billed 100 hours per week and ordered cabs dwelling at midnight, McCoy was at all times the poorest man within the room. Every bonus, every new title, pushed his quantity just a little larger.
The entice tightened slowly. First got here the mortgage, then the renovations, then the quiet creep of what has been known as “lifestyle inflation.” You purchase a pleasant residence, you need a good kitchen. In case you purchase the kitchen, you need the knife set that goes with it. Each new consolation demanded one other improve, one other late evening on the workplace to maintain all of it intact.
“High income stimulates high expenses,” van Teutem stated. “And high expenses breed more high expenses.”
By his mid-forties, McCoy was nonetheless in the identical agency, nonetheless telling himself he would go away quickly. However the years had calcified into guilt.
“Because I never saw my children, because I was always working so hard, I told myself no, I want to continue for a few more years,” McCoy informed van Teutem. “Because then at least I can buy my children a house in return for me missing out on so much.”
The saddest half, he stated, was McCoy’s uncertainty about what would stay if he ever walked away.
“He told me he wasn’t sure his wife would stay with him,” van Teutem stated quietly. “This was the life she’d signed up for.”
The confession struck him as each uncooked and deeply tragic, a glimpse of how ambition hardens into captivity.
“It made me happy I didn’t go into it,” he stated. “Because you think you can trust yourself with these decisions. But you may not be the same person three years later.”
The lengthy shadow of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Large Three
What van Teutem describes, nonetheless, is a part of a systemwide phenomenon that’s been a long time within the making.
That explosive progress of what researchers name “career funneling,” the place college students slender down solely two or three industries which can be socially deemed prestigious sufficient to work in, runs in tandem with the financialization and deregulation flip Western economies took within the second half of the twentieth century. The neoliberal revolution, pushed by former President Ronald Reagan in america and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK, expanded capital markets sufficient to create entire new industries out of manipulating monetary devices; thus, exploding the finance trade. On the similar time, governments and companies started outsourcing experience to personal corporations underneath the banner of market effectivity, giving delivery to the trendy consulting trade. (The final of at this time’s “Big Three” consulting corporations was based as just lately as 1973.)
As these corporations captured an ever larger share of the nation’s income, they grew to become synonymous with meritocracy itself: unique, data-driven, and ostensibly apolitical. They provided graduates not simply jobs, however a way of belonging and identification.
There’s one other quieter entice, right here, too: the price of residing within the large cities has by no means been larger. In cities like New York and London—the gravitational facilities of world finance—residing comfortably has grow to be a luxurious good. A 2025 SmartAsset research discovered a single grownup in New York now wants about $136,000 a 12 months to reside comfortably. In London, a single individual wants round £3,000 to £3,500 a month simply to cowl primary residing, transportation, and housing bills, and monetary advisers now say a £60,000 wage merely buys relative consolation – the flexibility to avoid wasting and never reside paycheck to paycheck – an quantity that solely 4% of British graduates count on to make popping out of college.
What number of early-career jobs pay greater than $136k, or £60k a 12 months? If a 22-year-old comes out of school with the pure need to discover the massive metropolis, a la Mates or Intercourse within the Metropolis, however doesn’t have the cushion of parental help, they need to be throughout the slender band of roles that clear the edge. Meaning many careers solely start by chasing a wage stage moderately than pursuing mission-driven work.
Incentivizing danger taking
Van Teutem doesn’t assume the answer lies in ethical awakening a lot as in design.
“You can gear institutions toward change or toward risk-taking,” he stated. His favourite instance is Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator that since its founding in 2004 has turned just a few dozen nerds with concepts into corporations now value roughly $800 billion—“more than the Belgian economy,” he famous.
YC labored as a result of it decreased the price of danger: small checks, quick suggestions, and a tradition that made failure survivable.
“In Europe,” he added, “we do a really bad job at that.”
Governments, he argues, can do the identical. Within the Nineteen Eighties, Singapore started competing straight with companies for high graduates, providing early job affords, and ultimately linking senior civil service pay to private-sector salaries. Controversial, positive, but it surely constructed a state that would hold its finest expertise.
The nonprofit world has discovered comparable classes. Educate First within the U.Okay. and Educate for America copied consulting’s recruitment techniques—selective cohorts, “leadership program” branding, quick duty—to lure elite college students into lecture rooms as a substitute of boardrooms.
“They use the exact tricks from McKinsey and Morgan Stanley,” van Teutem stated, “not as charity, but as a springboard.”
Materials pressures nonetheless distort these selections. Within the U.S., unemployment is hovering for latest faculty grads because the labor market slackens.
He hopes that universities and employers copy the YC mannequin: decrease the draw back, increase the status of attempting.
“We’ve made risk-taking a privilege,” he stated. “That’s the real problem.”
