OPINION

The Amherst Student • April 27, 2022 The Amherst to Wall Street Pipeline

Photo courtesy of Sam Valadi

Staff Writer Andrew Rosin ’25 addresses the culture of selling out into finance, reminding students of their potential to bring Amherst's interdisciplinary perspectives to Wall Street.

Andrew Rosin ’25

Staff Writer

Two years ago, 20 percent of Amherst College’s senior class planned to work in financial services after graduating. That equates to roughly 90 out of the 452 seniors. This figure dwarfs the other post-grad outcomes; for reference, 11 percent of the graduating class planned to work in consulting, and only 4 percent of the graduating class planned to work in law. For most students, this statistic probably isn’t surprising; however, Amherst students are arguably less likely to know who these students are and why they’re going to work on Wall Street. While there’s research that theorizes why finance appeals to elite college students, it’s worth asking why students here at Amherst are so likely to choose careers in finance. And then there’s the question that to many students will sound paradoxical: can you create meaningful change while working on Wall Street?

There are myriad reasons why students gravitate toward Wall Street, from the size of the industry to its quick return on investment, fast-paced work environment, and, of course, the salary. The average salary for a first-year investment banking analyst is somewhere between $170,000 and $190,000. The salary does draw students to Wall Street, like Sona Kim ’22, whose goal is FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. Kim hopes to retire by the age of 30 with the money she makes on Wall Street.

Stephanie Hockman, director of the Traub Center for Careers in Business and Finance, argues that individuals should be “compensated for the value they add to a company.” However, it’s hard to justify the six-figure salaries when the average salary of a public school teacher in Amherst, for example, is only around $63,000. Hockman explained that the disparity in salaries is a “factor of government” and that “without finance, we don't have an economy that moves.” However, she also noted that “educators should absolutely be paid more.”

It’s also important to recognize that money means different things to different students, as international student Sushan Bhattarai ’23 notes. Because Amherst provides generous financial aid to low income students, he argues, there is a cohort of students at the college for whom Wall Street is a means of “securing economic freedom.” For international students, too, Wall Street provides a pathway to “bureaucratic freedom.” Working at a reputable Wall Street firm increases the chances of obtaining a visa for those who are not naturalized US citizens.

The second most commonly cited reason for pursuing a career on Wall Street is job security. In the finance industry, it’s most common to work after graduating with the company you interned with during your junior summer. Junior summer internships are decided during candidates’ sophomore year, so students going into finance could already be guaranteed a post-graduation job by their sophomore year. Emily Griffen, director of the Loeb Center, noted that students “could walk into their senior year, job in hand, and they don't have to stress … or get bent out of shape over this. They can actually just focus on their senior year.”

Overall, the finance track has more of a defined playbook than the government or nonprofit paths. “Going into these other fields, the pathway looks a little bit more opaque, it's a little bit more ambiguous,” Griffen said. “The timeline can make you feel really insecure.” She also noted that nonprofits have less resources and money to recruit students.

While Griffen argues that “when you really look at what the Loeb Center resources are, it's actually very small, proportionately, for business and finance,” students perceive the Loeb Center’s presence differently. Necati Akinci ’25, for example, described the Loeb Center as “finance-oriented,” and at the end of the day, the Loeb Center does a good job of connecting finance students with career opportunities. Amherst offers programs like Hockman’s eight-week Introduction to Finance series, for example, which provide students with a foundation for careers in finance as first- and second-year students. Hockman runs an identical workshop for consulting, and it makes sense that consulting is the other big — and growing — post-grad outcome for Amherst seniors. Athletes have access to an additional set of resources to help them find work on Wall Street. Through generations of student-athletes graduating and going to work on Wall Street, finance networks have become ingrained within Amherst’s sports teams. Upperclassmen can facil-

The Amherst Student • April 27, 2022

Exploring Finance Culture at Amherst

Continued from page 13

itate mock interviews for underclassmen, and graduates can give you referrals for real interviews. As first-year lineman for the football team Jack Nagy ’25 explained with regard to networking, “You just want to find those common experiences that you have with Amherst alums and football definitely makes that easier. You can just go in the alumni directory and [filter] extracurriculars [for] football and boom. You’ve got a list of hundreds of people that are in the finance industry that are pretty willing to help you out.”

To return to the question of why students pursue careers on Wall Street, one cannot overlook students who find markets and investing, as a discipline, to be genuinely interesting. Somewhat paradoxically, the throughline for many of these students is that they have a passion outside of finance. Akinci originally wanted to be an aerospace engineer and plans on majoring in physics, but he says that he gravitates towards the quantitative side of investment banking because of its intersections with pure science and the ability it affords to solve important financial problems.

Bhattarai, who’s an environmental studies and history major, is interested in sustainability and feels like Wall Street is where he can have the biggest impact in that area — as opposed to working in politics and policy. “While policy is more at the meta level, and setting up the regulations for things to succeed, market actors actually have the power to make some of these things succeed. … [Investment banks] are also now being driven to make profits on green energy and create green bonds. And, for example, there’s now offshore farms that are going to become offshore wind farms outside of New York,” Bhattarai highlighted.

Students and faculty alike commented on the diverse skill set that employees gain on Wall Street. These skills can be applied to careers in different, less finance-oriented fields, Bhattarai emphasized: “Versus Wall Street being that inner bubble where you have to go from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan, know that you can go from Goldman Sachs to the World Bank, you can go from the World Bank to the World Wildlife Fund, you can go from that to starting your own shoe company. Those are skills that are transferable. Wall Street itself is temporary. And that’s how you should look at it.”

However, Bhattarai worries that “the conversation kind of stops at, ‘You go to Wall Street, and you’ve made it.’” Students frequently talk about the skill set one learns on Wall Street and the connections they’ll make, but hardly anyone talks about life after Wall Street. It’s unclear, therefore, how many students have a clear vision of where their Wall Street skills will take them. “We talk a lot about transferable skills, but nobody really tells you what transferable skills you get out of Wall Street,” says Bhattarai.

On the flip side of this thoughtful, long-term approach to finance, the image of the finance bro is omnipresent on college campuses. “[Finance bro] brings to mind a sense of laziness, maybe like not caring about academic pursuits or the things that Amherst prides itself upon, like learning something just for the sake of learning,” Akinci reflected.

Bhattarai seconded Akinci’s assessment of finance bros: “Because there’s so much pressure put on finance bros, or students that from freshman year onwards are driven to get into Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, they forget — or they don’t want to indulge in — the more creative pursuits within the liberal arts.”

Bhattarai finds that finance bros are unable to engage in conversations outside of the world of finance. They choose to ignore the social, cultural, and political complexities of the profession and of the world. “[Finance bros] are so bent on going into finance that they put a wall around them, and they dig up a moat where the only thing they can talk about is finance,” Bhattarai says.

Finance culture’s pitfall is that it can consume an individual's identity and serve as blinders obscuring the outside world. There’s more to life than markets, investing, and money. When you’re on Wall Street, it’s easy to perceive the world through this narrow lens of finance. But if you do, you’ll end up neglecting the values of curiosity, creativity, and knowledge that define Amherst. You’ll violate one of Amherst’s core principles: to engage the world around you.

It’s critically important to situate finance within larger social, political, and systemic issues. People who work in finance have to actively cultivate an awareness of these issues.

Finance or Wall Street are not categorically bad; however, it’s easy and it’s common to get caught up in the world of finance and abandon the elements of it that do have value. Students who work in finance have a responsibility to live up to certain standards as citizens of the world, even if their career doesn’t specifically ask it of them.

Bhattarai embodies this nuanced conception of finance. “I think what people often don’t realize with the markets and investment banking in general is that it’s a very big force in how policy is driven. Goldman Sachs now has a group dedicated just to sustainable finance. And they want to invest $750 billion by 2030,” he explains. But Bhattarai also admits, “I completely disagree with exploiting people halfway across the world and building factories to generate profits when people are suffering. Wall Street can be used as a mechanism to create investments that will help communities and help our transition away from an economy that’s based on capitalist exploitation. But there are bits of it that I completely disagree with.”

Part of being a globally conscious employee in the finance industry involves reckoning with just how harmful the industry can be. Only from this reckoning can Amherst students help nudge Wall Street in the direction of progress, equity, and justice.

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

The Loeb Center provides resources for career planning across campus. Students interested in finance have frequent opportunities to recieve aid in career advancement.

w Amusements

The Amherst Student Crossword | April 27, 2022

ACROSS

1 Tiny pests 6 Feeling regret 12 Puffy cloud 14 Book boo-boos 15 Severe, swelling sunspot of the skin 16 Wispy cloud 17 "Johnson Chapel," "Amherst College,'" and "the Town of Amherst," e.g. 19 Shrek, for one 20 Amtrak stops: Abbr. 21 Director Burton 22 Some golf clubs 23 Low cloud 26 Full-size pickup model 30 Kitchen scrubber 35 Like leftovers 36 It brings up the rear 37 Rain cloud 38 Large fruit in Gotham? 39 Book of hymns 41 Famous last words 45 ___ tai 46 Fill to the gills 50 Author ___ Neale Hurston 51 What 12A, 16A, 23A. and 37A are all examples of, in the context of Music@Amherst 54 Shock to the system 56 Unagi sushi pieces 57 Consume, like sashimi 58 Crept 59 What 12A, 16A, 23A, and 37A are all examples of, outside the context of Music@Amherst 60 Cobbler, at times

DOWN

1 Disney warrior who sings "Reflection" 2 Some Apples 3 Ditty 4 Soon-to-be owner of Twitter 5 Certain Indonesian 6 CDs and LPs 7 Swiss canton 8 Faux pas 9 North Dakota city that's also a movie 10 One-eighty 11 Emits coherent light 12 Gael, for one 13 "Green Eggs and Ham" character 15 AWOL chasers 18 ACEMS member, eg. 22 Weather-map line 23 Installations 24 Lock of hair 25 Accepted practice 26 Demand payment 27 Demon of Japanese folklore 28 FDR or JFK 29 Shoot the breeze 31 Absorb, with "up" 32 Grammy category 33 Silent communication: Abbr. 34 Poor grade 36 Country folks? 38 Forest fires, e.g. 40 Doctors' org. 41 Nahuatl speaker 42 Aesopian ending 43 Muse of poetry 44 Pacific island nation 46 Fire sign 47 More qualified 48 Spilled the beans 49 Snaky shape 51 Spielberg's first blockbuster 52 Nile queen, familiarly 53 Word-of-mouth 55 Furious

Ryan Yu ’22

Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Solutions: April 20

& Arts Living

Collecting 101: The Complex Art of Acquiring Art

Cassidy Duncan ’25

Staff Writer

“Collecting 101: Acquiring Art for the Mead” is an internship created by Nichols Clark to honor his late wife, Trinkett Clark, Mead curator of American art. He has generously funded this program for over a decade, covering the costs to purchase and ship the artwork. This internship is typically run by the curators and educators at the Mead for Five College students who want to work together to acquire artwork through a collaborative cohort-based experience. Due to Covid-related complications in 2020, “Collecting 101” was postponed.

In the Spring 2022 semester, the Mead Museum and Amherst Athletics conducted a restructuring of “Collecting 101” which I was a part of. With the help of Billy McBride, associate athletic director of diversity and inclusion, the Mead partnered with Amherst Athletics to further include student athletes in the artwork-acquisition process.

In seven meetings between the months of January and March, students learned the core principles of artwork acquisition and researched artists’ processes to help curate new artwork for the Mead’s collection. Students’ work culminated in a trip to New York City to tour artists’ studios, visit galleries and museums, and participate in a public presentation, where attendees voted on which single piece of artwork they believed should be purchased for the Mead.

Students decided to investigate several artists: Glendalys Medina, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Tomashi Jackson. These artists collectively exuberate originality and power.

Glendalys Medina’s “Gratitude” series is the product of a gratitude exercise Medina practiced during quarantine, where she would go outside and find a color that moved her, then sketch it down. Her use of geometric forms and distinct color language creates beautiful, satisfying pieces.

Trenton Doyle Hancock creates eccentric, thought-provoking works that tell stories by engaging viewers with his own world. His piece in the collection is “Exchanging Variables,” a series of four aquatints that show his character “Torpedo Boy” — a superhero alter ego he created — meeting a policeman, a KKK Klansmen, Jesus, and himself.

Tomashi Jackson takes a contemporary take of screenprint on paper to tell the story of Mary Joseph Lyons, an abolitionist who used her home in Seneca Village to host runaway slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad. Seneca Village, one of New York’s first free Black communities, was later uprooted for the construction of Central Park. Jackson constructs a portrait of Mary Joseph Lyons in a bright neon orange color. This contrasts with how often historical images are presented in black and white, creating the illusion that the subjects they depicted are far in the past, even though they are not..

As a participant in “Collecting 101,” I can say that the climax of the internship was our trip to New York City. We underwent a unique experience within the art world through our intimate touring of galleries that housed our perspective artists’ work — the James Cohan Gallery, the Hunter College Art Galleries, The Black Index Exhibition, and the Jack Tilton Gallery — as well as the opportunity to speak with Tomashi Jackson over Zoom and tour Glendalys Medina’s studio. We also visited the Whitney Museum of American Art, which exposed us to the real life art collection market, an industry that sparked the interest of myself and other interns. The cohort

Photo courtesy of Cassidy Duncan ‘25

“Collecting 101: Acquiring Art for the Mead” is an internship that helps select new pieces for the Mead Museum while studying the art of curation. At a final presentation in the Alumni Gymnasium, attendees voted on which single piece of artwork they believe should be purchased for the Mead: Trenton Doyle Hancock’s “Exchanging Variables.”

had a few prospective art majors, but it was also filled with people from many different interests and pursuits, all of which aided in growing our combined perspective on the art that we considered and enriched our appreciation for the artists we had the pleasure to meet.

Our work throughout “Collecting 101” led to a final presentation in the Alumni Gymnasium, in front of staff and part of both the athletic and broader college community to celebrate the artwork that the program worked to bring to Amherst. The cohort split into two groups, one presenting on Tomashi Jackson’s “Mrs. Mary Joseph Lyons” and the other on Trenton Doyle Hancock’s “Exchanging Variables.” Following the presentations was a vote to decide Mead’s newly acquired piece — which the committee decided would be “Exchanging Variables.”

I am grateful for Mead’s collaboration with the athletic department to provide student athletes with a unique opportunity to connect to the art world and engage in its innerworkings. It was a tremendously impactful and memorable experience, thanks to the work of Billy McBride, Miloslava Hruba, Emily Potter-Ndiaye, and Lisa Crossman.