Wall Street's worries have come to College Avenue.

Concern is spreading among graduate business school students in the Sacramento region and elsewhere as they watch the nation's financial markets go through wrenching changes.

Their studies sharpen their view of the crisis as professors seize on the credit crisis and the home mortgage meltdown for lecture topics. One instructor at the University of California, Davis, assigned students to read the government's multibillion banking bailout plan.

The curricula cast a shadow on what was once a bright future for MBA graduates who looked forward confidently to jobs with big companies and big paydays working for banks and other financial firms. But while they sit at their desks, the earthquake shaking the financial markets has jangled students' nerves.

"I definitely think that there's some real nervousness among students about what opportunities will be available when we graduate," said Tanya Marston, who graduates next year from the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Business Management. "Last fall people weren't feeling that way. Now we're all watching which recruiters come to campus – and which ones don't."

The shock waves that hit Wall Street came around the time that classes started at college campuses around the country. Mammoth financial institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch went into bankruptcy proceedings, were purchased, seized by the government or changed their business model to survive.

The shake-out has taken a toll on finance jobs already thinned by the housing market's meltdown.

Financial sector companies in September dumped 17,000 jobs nationwide, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with nearly half the losses coming from securities and investment firms. The industry has lost 172,000 jobs since its employment peaked in December 2006.

In California, the industry lost 3,300 jobs from August to September and it is down 31,400 jobs from the same period last year, according to the state Employment Development Department.

The financial crisis affected UC Davis' annual career fair, which usually attracts about 30 employers, including a half-dozen banks.

"This year it's more like 20 to 25 companies," said James Stevens, the graduate business school's assistant dean of student affairs. "And just one bank – Wells Fargo."

Marston and other business students notice.

"We see what's going on. We know CEOs are nervous," said Marston, who interned with Wells Fargo last summer. "You get the feeling that companies are just trying to figure out how they can maintain their current work force, so they're probably not hiring new people much."

Sanjay Varshney, business school dean at California State University, Sacramento, said students are pulling in their postgraduation expectations as the economy pulls back. Uncertainty, like working for startup companies, is out.

"Risk aversion is definitely kicking in with MBAs," Varshney said.

Business professor Ed Fredericks of Pepperdine University said that students recognize that the traditional route to investment banking – getting into a company's training program, getting an MBA and then getting hired back by the firm – is drying up as companies go under or merge.

"Overall, it's a cautious environment," he said. "I don't think it's a panic yet."

The economic upheaval in the last few months has given educators fresh classroom fodder. High-profile bank bankruptcy filings and money market shortfalls have grabbed attention and given professors a shot at teaching high-minded topics that some students care little about.

"It's always a challenge to teach when you get away from business nuts and bolts," said UC Davis business professor Michael Maher. "Students tend to think, 'OK, you're going to teach me to read financial statements and that's great. But what's the use of this ivory tower theory?' "

To show the relevance, Maher, shortly after Congress last month passed the controversial $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to bail out financial firms, assigned 414 pages of the legislation as reading for his corporate governance class.

"We talked about the ramifications of it," said Marston, who is in Maher's class. "It's interesting to see why this happened and what this all means."

With graduation less than a year away, Marston said that she's building a network of contacts to enhance her job prospects.

"I'm in the thick of figuring out my next step after school," she said. "My goal is to meet once a week with someone with a company that I'm interested in working for. I really think there's still opportunity out there."

Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. The Associated Press contributed to this report.