Hello all,
At Amherst College, roughly 31% of students go into finance/ consulting while only about 12% go into public service. Many other schools have similarly imbalanced post-graduation outcomes. A group of us at Amherst College are trying to change that, starting here. We want to create a public service pipeline akin to the finance/ consulting pipeline that already exists.
Issues we need to address:
- Public service opportunities are not as well known or advertised as finance or consulting jobs
- The finance and consulting timeframe is super early and takes advantage of college students' uncertainty
- Public service jobs are usually not seen as prestigious compared to finance/ consulting
These are just a few of the major issues that we need to address. I'll be happy to go more in depth in the comments or additional posts. We have some ideas to address them but I'd love to hear any ideas you have or you have seen work at your universities.
Thanks so much for your help!
This sounds great! I don't have any solutions, but a related issue I wonder about (as someone who went into consulting after undergrad): Does public service have the same or similar learning opportunities and exit opportunities as finance consulting? Being EA-minded in college, I did not perceive public service as having either of these strongly. So this is either a strike against people in public service, or a matter of bad marketing
I would totally agree and that's why we're trying to push more people towards it. I think all of the concerns you bring up are entirely valid but I think one huge piece of why people don't go into public service after college is visibility of these jobs. Private sector companies advertise all of their internships and jobs super well whereas non profits don't nearly as well. There is also the clear recruiting timeline for finance and consulting that takes advantage of college student's general lack of information on future opportunities.