Why College Degrees Are No Longer a Guarantee: How to Prepare Kids for Today’s Job Market
Last month, I stood in my sister’s backyard swatting mosquitoes, the smell of slightly burnt hamburger buns hanging in the humid June air. Luka, my 22-year-old nephew, was slouched in a folding chair wearing his faded college graduation hoodie, scrolling LinkedIn with a half-eaten bowl of potato salad next to his phone. He’d graduated three weeks prior with a bachelor’s in business administration, and he’d just hit 37 job applications sent.
“Another rejection,” he said, locking his phone and dropping it on the grass. “Half don’t even reply. The ones that do all want two years of experience for an entry-level role. How am I supposed to get two years experience if no one will hire me to get it?”
My sister wiped grill grease off her apron and leaned over his shoulder. “We paid $80,000 for this degree,” she said, her voice tight. “Why isn’t it enough?”
I’ve had that exact conversation three times in the last month. A neighbor whose daughter graduated with a communications degree can’t get any reply to her applications. A fellow high school teacher I work with is panicking because his son, a senior psychology major, has had zero full-time offers. It seems like everyone is noticing the same thing: the degree that was supposed to guarantee a steady first job doesn’t do that anymore.
When I graduated college 20 years ago, a four-year degree was enough to get your foot in the door. Back then, only about 30% of young adults had a bachelor’s. Now that number is close to 40%, and it keeps climbing. Employers got flooded with applications, so they started putting a degree requirement on almost every role that used to go to high school graduates, just to cut the stack of resumes in half. That means a degree isn’t the advantage it used to be. It’s just the price of admission to even be considered.
My cousin Alison hires entry-level marketers for a 200-person company outside of Chicago, and she broke it down for me over coffee last week. She gets 200 applications for every opening. If your resume only lists your degree and your 3.2 GPA, it goes straight in the no pile. The first thing she looks for is any proof you’ve actually done the work, even if it was unpaid, even if it was small. “I’d hire someone with a year of side experience and a degree over someone with a 4.0 and no experience every single time,” she said.
That’s the big shift most parents haven’t caught up on yet. We grew up with the rule that good grades + a degree = a good job. That rule doesn’t apply anymore, but that doesn’t mean college is a waste of money, or that kids shouldn’t go. It just means we need to adjust what we prioritize, starting early.
When Luka was a sophomore in college, he got offered a part-time 20-hour-a-week internship at a local marketing firm. He wanted to drop one class to fit it in, which would have pushed his graduation back a semester. My sister told him no. She was worried about his grades, and about paying extra for an extra semester. That’s the mistake most of us make, right? We think the degree is the end goal, not the experience that comes with it. Now she says that decision set him back a year.
From what we’ve learned working through this with Luka, there are small, concrete things any parent can do that don’t cost a ton of extra money or stress. If your kid is still in high school, let them skip one of the meaningless resume-padding clubs they don’t care about, and free up 4 or 5 hours a week to do something work-related in an area they’re curious about. If they like graphic design, ask the local rec department if they can design flyers for their youth sports leagues for free. If they want to go into nursing, ask your neighbor who’s a nurse if they can shadow her for a few hours a month. That takes almost no extra effort, and it gives them something tangible to put on a resume before they even start college.
When they get to college, don’t panic if their GPA drops a little because they’re doing a part-time internship or a side project. Most entry-level employers don’t care if you have a 3.2 vs a 3.8, unless you’re going into research or a specialized engineering field. They care that you learned how to show up on time, write a clear email, and solve a small problem without being told every step.
If your kid graduates and can’t find a full-time job right away, don’t rush to sign them up for a master’s degree just to “wait out the job market.” That just adds tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that won’t help them if they still don’t have real experience. Instead, help them reach out to local small businesses or nonprofits to do a few small projects or volunteer 10 hours a week. Luka started doing Instagram reels and social media posts for a friend’s local coffee shop for free a month ago, and that’s the line on his resume that got him his first first-round interview. The hiring manager spent half the conversation asking him about how he grew the shop’s follower count 20% in a month, and barely asked about his degree.
Luka goes to his interview next week. We don’t know if he’ll get the job. My sister still lies awake worrying about the student loan payments that start in six months. No one knows exactly how higher education will shift over the next decade, or what will happen with youth unemployment as the economy changes. But the old guarantee is gone, and it’s not coming back. We don’t have to have all the answers, we just have to stop treating the degree as the finish line.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why College Degrees Are No Longer a Guarantee: How to Prepare Kids for Today’s Job Market