I think the efforts do make the markets more efficient, and it would be hard to argue the opposite.

I'm just wondering out loud if that's a meaningful use of such a large percentage of top talent. I'm not faulting anyone who chooses to go that way. There's a lot of money to be made. To me, it seems unfortunate that we don't better incentive pursuit of science/engineering.

This paper breaks down how many people from top schools (MIT, Yale, Harvard) get jobs in finance. It's between 20-30% of the graduating class every year.

https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/16-067_3d306ef...