Grads headed for "Pinstriped Prison"?

A newly published book on the world of graduate employment, Lisa Pryor's The Pinstriped Prison, regrets that so many of the School's smartest graduates end up in banking and consulting. The author writes:

"In recent years at least four mathematicians who graduated with doctorates from the University of New South Wales' School of Mathematics and Statistics went on to work at Macquarie Bank. One of these mathematicians, who went on to work in the exotic options department, had done her mathematics doctorate on Antarctic currents. Mathematicians go on to do many things. Maths alumni from the University of New South Wales have ended up working in marine science, helping to detect money laundering, developing environmentally sustainable energy sources and engaging in defence research. But for all the variety, investment banking is one destination that seems to be dominating more than in past generations. In the where-are-they-now listings on the School of Mathematics website, the banking industry keeps recurring ... James Franklin, a mathematics professor at the University of New South Wales, feels a little uneasy about it:

'If they like it, that's fine by me, but it is of concern to me that those sorts of things are taking up so much of the talent when so many of those people, if they had their wish, would want to do environmental modelling, or pure mathematics or whatever.
There's not much incentive, really, for someone who wants to go into the scientific world or social services, they're not at the top of the tree.
You've to to get a PhD, staying more poverty stricken than your peers, then you have to struggle to get a permanent job.'

It is no surprise that so many qualified mathematicians are choosing not to teach. In the past decade, mathematical science departments in Australia's eight leading universities lost almost a third of their permanent academic staff ... "