I am in love with the the NYT (One-Page) Magazine: 

You have to think that historians will probably look back on the 2011 Congressional “supercommittee” and wonder what on earth we were thinking. It’s as if the greatest minds in Washington said to themselves, Hmmm, if only there were some respected assemblage of lawmakers — representatives from both parties, perhaps — that could get together and hammer out an equitable budget compromise. Eureka! Such a group already exists: It’s called Congress, and there’s no reason to think its epic failure can be overcome just by putting it under a shrink ray.

Excerpted from here:

“When I arrived at [college] as an eager 18 year old, I had never even heard of consulting or I-banking. And to be honest, I still didn’t totally understand the function of a hedge fund. But what I do understand is that students here have passion. Passion for public service and education policy and painting and engineering and entrepreneurialism. Standing outside a freshman dorm, I couldn’t find a single student aspiring to be a banker – but at commencement this May, there’s a 50 percent chance I’ll be sitting next to one. This strikes me as incredibly sad.

So what happens? Sometime between freshman fall and senior spring, an insane number of students decide – one way or another – that entering the banking industry makes a whole lot of sense. A few weeks ago I interviewed over 20 [students] to try to figure out why.

What I found was somewhat surprising: the clichéd pull of high salaries is only part of the problem. Few college seniors have any idea how to “get a job,” let alone what that job would be. Representatives from the consulting and finance industries come to schools early and often – providing us with application timelines and inviting us to information sessions in individualized e-mails. We’re made to feel special and desired and important.

Of course, none of us are actually special. The important thing is that we go to a top-tier school and they recruit at top-tier schools and their recruitment is pretty darn smart. They understand that it’s no longer “cool” to explicitly seek wealth. Our generation inherited a kind of corporate hate from the ’60s and ’70s that dissuades most students at schools like Harvard and Yale from working for corporations after graduation. But we will work for banks and hedge funds because they’re marketed to us (quite strategically) as something to merely do for a few years — as a perfect way to gain skills for a future career in somehow saving the world.