Finance Dreamer Eyes IT Career

On college campuses across the country, students who once thought of a career on Wall Street, now find themselves looking elsewhere as the financial meltdown vanquishes their dreams of making it big in the canyons of Manhattan.

One of the beneficiaries of those shattered dreams could be the IT field. Take, for instance, Vinay Lekharaju who entered college with hopes of becoming an investment banker but now is studying for a master in engineering management at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Here's what Lekharaju told Jin Noh, writing for The Duke Chronicle:

"I actually applied to quite a few companies and only got a few calls back. The economy makes it difficult and I don't see it improving. Friends of mine are more or less apprehensive to go into investment banking while many are being laid off."

Lekharaju said he'll seek a job in IT consulting once he graduates, but might resurrect his dream to pursue a finance career when the economy improves.

Citing stats from BusinessWeek, the article pointed out that fewer than 3% of the students in Duke's master in engineering management class of 2009 intend to seek finance jobs vs. 17% from the class of 2009.

A few years back, I interviewed then Pratt School Dean Kristina Johnson, now provost at Johns Hopkins University, about getting more students to major in technology fields, including engineering. Click here to watch the video interview of Johnson.