This relates to the old distinction between “Line” and “Staff” positions, where Line positions involve decision-making authority and accountability for results, whereas Staff positions involve analyzing and recommending, but not deciding and dealing with the consequences.

I think a high % of recent college graduates (especially those with postgraduate degrees) today prefer the Staff roles: they would rather write recommendations of “Optimum Sales and Manufacturing Strategies for Universal Entities Corporation” than go run a sales region for that company, or (heaven forbid!) a manufacturing facility. If they are in government, they would rather write papers about “Transportation in the Year 2040″ than run the Atlanta Tower for the FAA.

Unfortunately, the historical policy that people need to have lower-level Line experience before being put in a higher-level Line job has eroded. There are too many cases in which a person who has spent years in Staff positions (with the exception of a couple of pseudo-jobs, like 6 months as a sales manager) get promoted into important Line jobs in which failure will have severe consequences. The ultimate example of this, of course, is Barack Obama.