Everybody wants to know what the next bubble is, and there’s an easy way to tell: Just watch where Harvard grads are going. Then short the hell out of that.
It’s called the Harvard M.B.A. Indicator — though it applies to undergrads, too — and it’s one part psychology, another part economics. The idea is simple enough: It’s a bad sign when more Harvard grads go to Wall Street.
Harvard is a magnet for Organization Kids who excel at coloring between the lines. After graduation, they want to do something prestigious, something remunerative, but mostly, as Kevin Roose points out, something that gives them new lines to color between. That might be Silicon Valley, or it might be Teach for America — or it might be Wall Street, if, that is, the getting looks good.