Page - (000119) - in Knowledge and Networks

111 characteristic of fi nancial elites and elites more generally in a process well docu- mented in the literature, postgraduate education also serves to societally and territo- rially embed fi nanciers, temporally at least, in particular national and city-specifi c international fi nancial districts. This involvement demonstrates how the topological and topographical are entwined within fi nancial elite labor markets, as well as the role of education within this. In the following, I draw attention to two ways in which postgraduate education serves to embed early-career fi nancial elites into the U.K. national economy and the City-specifi c international fi nancial district in London in particular: fi rst, briefl y, by examining the role of education in inculcating elites into the regulatory frameworks of London and the United Kingdom; and second, by examining the intersection of what remain predominately national education sys- tems with the more transnational qualities of elite fi nancial labor markets. Beginning with geographically specifi c fi nancial services regulatory frame- works, postgraduate education gained importance because it provided individuals the opportunity to study for the credentials needed to practice as a fi nancier and to offer investment advice in the City. At the time this chapter’s research was under- taken, this meant being registered with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom, as the following interviewee summarized (for a fuller discus- sion of this element of postgraduate education geographies see Hall & Appleyard, 2009 ): The FSA exams basically mean I can work in the United Kingdom—if I work overseas then I’d have to go through a similar process—it’s not necessarily a huge problem but it does mean for the moment I’m really a British banker and there would be some delay in terms of me generating revenue if I move to Dubai. ( Investment bank vice president, London, 2010) Beyond this regulatory element, the second way elite education served to embed fi nanciers into particular forms of practice and associated career pathways was through its relationship to the broader national education landscape in the United Kingdom. In this respect, although fi nancial labor markets are often assumed to be global in scope, a signifi cant proportion of new recruits to the City come from the United Kingdom. These individuals typically hold undergraduate degrees from either Oxbridge or the Russell Group, a collection of 24 of the most research- intensive and selective universities in the United Kingdom. This fact poses impor- tant questions about how a predominately national education system intersects with the more global nature of elite fi nancial labor markets and what the implications of this are for early-career fi nancial elites working in investment banking in London’s fi nancial district. As Brown and Hesketh ( 2004 , p. 23) argue in regard to graduate labor markets more generally: Some occupational elites operate in a global rather than a local context, but they accumulate elite credentials and other cultural assets within national and local contexts. How domestic competitions are organized continue to be important to understanding the fates of the even- tual winners and losers. In the case of fi nance, one of the most distinctive features of the U.K. university system impacting how early-career elites enter fi nancial labor markets are the numeracy skills required by the increasingly technical nature of investment banking 6 (Post)graduate Education Markets and the Formation of Mobile Transnational…