Inside a gymnasium on the Boston campus of Wentworth Institute of Technology on a recent afternoon, hundreds of students clutched resumes and wore little colored stickers showing their majors, hoping to find a potential employer — and the right fit.
If you closed your eyes for a moment, it almost sounded like speed dating.
“I don’t really have any openings right now,” one employer told student after student waiting in a line that wrapped around a corner of the gym.
“OK,” one replied, smiling before moving on to the next booth covered with swag.
At this career fair, students said it’s a difficult moment to be entering the workforce.
“It’s true what they say about the job market,” said Anna Claro, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering major from Blackstone. “It’s a little tough right now.”
“It’s definitely scary,” added Ryan Ballard, a 21-year-old senior from Norwalk, Connecticut.
Students nearing graduation are often asked what comes next, and how they plan to put their expensive new degree to use. And while it’s typical to joke that many will end up working at the neighborhood coffee shop, that may be reality for more grads this year than in years past.
Economists say many recent grads are underemployed, meaning they’re working in jobs that don’t require the degrees they just earned. There’s evidence that even students with degrees once considered safe, like computer science, are now being impacted. But getting exact numbers gets tricky, they say, because it’s often hard to find the data, and the reports that do exist don’t always match up.
The Burning Glass Institute, a research nonprofit, estimates the underemployment rate for new grads could be as high as 45%. A survey from economists at Georgetown University says it may be closer to 22%. And another survey from Gallup and Lumina found that among bachelor’s degree graduates since 2015, about 71% reported having a job within six months, while another 10% said it took between seven months and a year.
Meanwhile, colleges and universities often report that more than 90% of their graduates are employed or in graduate school within six months.
So what’s the real number?
“It’s an easy question, a hard answer,” said economist Jeff Strohl. “Nobody has a consistent methodology to address the question.”
Why it’s hard to track underemployment
Strohl, who directs Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said it’s difficult to track exactly what jobs graduates land and — perhaps most importantly — when they land them.
Yes, that uncertainty even includes the stereotype of baristas with diplomas living in their parents’ basements.
“We dump all these graduates into the labor market — often three million at the same time — and then tell them to go swim,” Strohl said. “It takes a while to find a good match.”
The National Association of Colleges and Employers helps hundreds of colleges track what their graduates do after leaving campus. The association says on average each year, just over half of those alumni have full-time jobs within six months of graduating. But even when colleges have the data, many don’t publicly report it.
“It’s a complicated story,” said NACE CEO Shawn VanDerziel. “Not all students go directly into employment. About 20% to 25% of students go on to continuing education. There are other students who may go into military service. Some want part-time jobs, so they’re working in a part-time job while they’re raising a family.”
Whatever the precise number, many in higher education say underemployment among college graduates is too high — especially considering that only about 60% of students who start college in the U.S. complete a four-year degree on time. Then there’s the cost.
“Let’s face it, college is expensive,” VanDerziel said. “If you’re going to invest your life savings into a college education, you want to know that you’re going to have marketable skills upon the completion of that degree.”
Strohl said there are few reliable ways to measure how well schools actually prepare students for the workplace.
“We don’t track it,” he said. “The only thing we have is Professor Joe or Sally says, 'I attest that my course produces X, Y, or Z, and you’ve just got to believe me.’ And that doesn’t seem very rational.”
Wentworth tracks graduate jobs
Susan Duffy, associate provost for transformational learning at Wentworth, knows the widespread lack of clear data contributes to skepticism about the value of a college degree.
“We don’t need any more of that in higher education,” Duffy said, laughing.
That’s why Wentworth actively tracks its alumni, keeping information on more than 80% of its students post-graduation.
She said 87% of graduates are employed or in graduate school within six months. “And the overwhelming majority of those are employed in their major of study,” Duffy said.
At Wentworth’s career fair, many students had questions about how artificial intelligence and other new technologies might shape their futures. They were doing exactly what Strohl described: trying to find the right match.
“Do you feel like you get to support people,” senior Dalton Crawford asked one employer, “or do you feel removed from the individual consumer?”
Crawford is a 25-year-old computer science major from Idaho Falls, Idaho. After walking the floor of the gymnasium, he said he appreciated the chance to meet employers face-to-face.
“I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to meet people that match my values and get to suss that out,” he said.
But Crawford said that kind of matchmaking takes time.
“It can seem like there aren’t options,” he said. “But they do exist.”
With graduation day around the corner, he’s optimistic he’ll find a job in his field — and avoid joining the ranks of the underemployed.
