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How US universities are helping graduates succeed in a tough job market
14 October 2025
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How US universities are helping graduates succeed in a tough job market
A lot is being said about the employment market and the situation graduates are entering.
Headlines about entry-level jobs warn of a white collar apocalypse, AI killing graduate jobs or full blown employment crises. The FT went as far as to say that unemployment among recent graduates has been “one of the most-talked-about economic trends of the past year”. But are young graduates and higher education both being underestimated?
The graduate job market in 2025: A reality check
Only 22% of Americans say the cost of getting a four-year college degree today is worth it even if someone has to take out loans, according to a 2024 Pew Center Research survey.
“With a degree, you are going to learn how to think and learn how to learn, [whereas with something like a microcredential], you are getting skills,” Holly Curtis, Assistant Provost for Corporate Relations, Fordham University, said recently at QS Back to School conference in October.
Yet, it is important not to sugar-coat the tough market for higher education graduates.
As already noted in a previous edition of QS Insights Magazine, in the US, unemployment among college graduates aged 22 to 27, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rose above 5.8 % between January and March in 2025. However, by May this level dropped back to 4.8%.
Also key is that the unemployment rate among young college graduates is lower than the average for young workers aged 22-27 – a figure that stood at 7.4% in May.
Similarly important to highlight is the overall unemployment rate in the US of 4% is higher than the overall figure for college graduates (2.7%).
Supplementary training such as microcredentials, according to Curtis, does not “meet the demand of employers entirely”, statistics still show the benefit of higher education.
“There is a real need to see that the base skills are there and just [things like] microcredentials won’t necessarily demonstrate that,” Kelley Bishop, Associate Vice Provost for Career Services, The George Washington University, added.
Projected demand: Millions more college-educated workers needed
In the US, the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University projects that of the additional 5.25 million workers with postsecondary education America needs through to 2032, 4.5 million will need a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“There is a real opportunity for industry and higher ed to work more closely together,” Curtis continued. “It is about encouraging the faculty to keep doing what they are doing and then complement the team based skills, and adaptability, the students are developing in the classroom together with a corporate partner.”
And universities are continuing to develop their curricula in order to meet the needs of both employers and students, Bishop, said.
“The best models that I have seen of this, go back to engineering and have been the old co-op models where you have a student with a footprint in the classroom setting and a footprint over in a corporate setting,” Bishop detailed.
“Someone at the company gives feedback on how the student is doing to the department level to say, ‘we’ve had three of your students, here’s some things that they need more help with’.”
Another example was at a different university where the professional writing program had an advisory board made up of small businesses and non-profits in the area where students were tasked with project work as part of their degrees and then students’ work was assessed at the end of the year.
“What I thought was brilliant about that was that at the end of it, the department handed us a rubric and said grade our department. How well do you see that our students demonstrated the following characteristics, skills and abilities,” Bishop said.
“I’d never seen a humanities department do that. It is rare.”
Ties with employers: Building strong partnerships
In the UK, the chief executive of job platform Reed said that the site advertised around 180,000 graduate jobs three or four years ago – this has since dropped to 55,000.
The Institute of Student Employers however suggests that there is a 7% decline in graduate level jobs. Relying too heavily on data from online platforms like Reed or even Linked In may identify some trends, but this needs to be corroborated with other statistics.
Could the data from these online platforms show something else? That graduate recruiters are not finding these platforms an efficient way to connect with potential employees?
Both Curtis and Bishop emphasized the importance of alumni helping institutions to connect graduates with prospective employers – a role that universities and colleges are increasingly prioritizing.
A 2024-25 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that average career center budgets have risen by 21% in the last two years.
“I’ve been doing this for almost four decades now and… it’s still the case that where the people in the c-suite went to school, those employers still go to those schools,” Bishop noted.
One strategy to break into industries where we are not very well known for The George Washington University – “we are known as the school that puts people on capitol hill,” Bishop says – is to identify alumni in positions that can open doors. “We have a lot more success with that than we do knocking on the door of HR and acquisition department,” Bishop said.
“When we have alum in places we have a few different advocates,” Curtis agreed.
Bishop shared another tip to engage future employers.
“Nothing works better if you are trying to get a new employer to come into the room, to show that their competitors are hiring your students,” he said.
“[At previous schools] I would gather resumes that we knew where going to competitors and go to these employers and say these are the students that you didn’t hire but your competitors did… One employer where our reputation is elevating started with someone in the c-suite, came to campus as an alum, got to meet the president, that prompted a meeting with the dean, which got everyone in line moving.
“To get the ball rolling someone at the top had to move it both for the company and for our university.”
