There is such a thing as good bad news

College students eyeing the current job market with despair finally have both a name and a reason to be relieved, at least according to this recent(ish) piece by The Times of London's humorist/columnist/restaurant reviewer* Giles Coren.

According to Coren, you see, members of "Generation Crunch" (which sounds to me like a breakfast cereal, but never mind) should be thankful that they'll never have to make the "choice between greed and dignity" that previous generations have had to--as unusual an approach to the lack of graduate hiring as it's possible to imagine. In a nutshell, Coren's approach lauds the fact that the so-called "best and brightest" won't be getting snapped up to work their magic creating special investment vehicles for Wall Street firms or using the best years of their careers strategizing at a management consulting firm. Instead, they'll be free to pursue their dreams (assuming that, y'know, a career on Wall Street or in consulting wasn't the dream), and to find the true meaning of life, all the while unburdened by the knowledge that at some point they made a choice that's put them where they are today -- be that taking a big corporation's money over pursuing a dream, or vice versa.

As Coren puts it, Gen. Crunchers, should not "curse your fortune, but rather thank your lucky stars. You have been saved! You're an arts graduate, for heaven's sake. You didn't want to be a banker anyway. You wanted to read books and write poetry and kiss girls. Or perhaps you're an engineer, and were going to build bridges. It is terrifying to contemplate how easily you might have been lured off that noble track by some grovelling flunkey from Accenture or Goldman Sachs coming up to Oxford or Edinburgh or Bristol and waving cash under your nose. Your venality would have been tested, and you might have been found wanting."

At a time when we seem to be resetting not only our economy but also the values it's founded on (see President Obama's speech last night as an example of the kind of direction we may soon be heading in), maybe Coren has a point here. With the world crying out for green energy innovators and new approaches to age-old problems like health care provision, maybe the time has come for Gen. Crunch to step up and offer some solutions by forging a new path.

(And for those currently working at, say, Accenture or Goldman Sachs, all we can say is: Ouch! Did you know you were there because of your venality?)

*All of these are true (depending on your definition of humor, of course), but for a little more background, it's worth noting that Coren's late father Alan?whom he mentions in the piece?was a legendary Times columnist. Not that we're saying young Giles isn't in his current position on merit or anything--just that it's a little easier to pass the sort of judgment he does?even sarcastically?when you've had the benefit of some stellar connections in the industry you've become successful in.

-- Posted by Phil Stott