Evolving Career Paths: The Shifting Value of College Degrees

As companies shift heavily towards “skills-based hiring” to remove bias, we now see the unintended consequence. Half of all US college graduates are now “underemployed” and 52% of college grads never use the skills they studied in school.

This new study, which looks at 10-year job histories of college graduates in the US found that “of the graduates in non-college-level jobs a year after leaving college, the vast majority remained underemployed a decade later.” This study included college grads from 2012 to 2021, conducted by Burning Glass Institute and Strada Education.

What’s going on? Hundreds of studies continue to show that college graduates outperform non-grads. The Social Security administration itself states.

Men with bachelor’s degrees earn approximately $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with bachelor’s degrees earn $630,000 more.

The Burning-Glass/Strada report also points out that students have seen this coming. College applications are down and students are moving away from liberal arts toward trade-oriented degrees in computer science and engineering.

Is this a big wakeup call to Colleges? It sure is. Listen to my explanation about what’s going on.

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