Ep. 110: Underemployment of College Graduates: How Concerned Should We Be?

Half of all graduates don’t work in jobs that require a bachelor’s degree. What can institutions do to best prepare their students for work?

More than half of bachelor’s degree holders are underemployed a year after graduation, and roughly four in 10 are still underemployed a full decade later. How worried should we be about those rates, and what can colleges and universities do to decrease them?

That question was at the heart of “Talent Disrupted,” a recent report from Strada Education Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute, which adds important nuance to the larger discussion about post-college outcomes for graduates.

In this episode, we dig into the report with two experts. Carlo Salerno is a managing director at the Burning Glass Institute and an author of the aforementioned report. Gary Daynes is founder and principal of Back Porch Consulting and a former professor and senior administrator at several private nonprofit colleges.

They discuss what underemployment means and how serious a problem it is, the conditions that contribute to it, and what colleges and universities can do to shield their graduates from it.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by the Strada Education Foundation.