AT this year’s SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, a panel called “Keeping Kids off the Street: Wall St vs Startups” was convened to address questions including whether the finance industry was to blame for what organisers called a “failure to nurture a culture of innovation” in New York. Chris Wiggins, an associate professor of applied math at Columbia University who sat on the panel, said he was seeing students shy away from Wall Street and veer toward industries where they could work and profit without bringing their morality under the microscope.

“The claim of investment banking that it serves a social purpose by ‘lubricating capitalism’ has eroded,” Wiggins said. “It’s simply very difficult for young people to believe that they’re serving any social purpose now.”

– NY Times