Degree in hand, jobs out of reach: Why recent grads are struggling in a competitive market

(CNN) — Madia Bellebuono, a University of Vermont graduate, spends her days in a Boston coffee shop scrolling through job openings on LinkedIn.

Since earning her degree in strategic marketing and public communications in May 2024, she has applied for more than 300 jobs. Despite two internships, a strong GPA and looming student loans, she is unemployed.

Bellebuono said she felt unprepared to enter the competitive job market.

“I think the school could have done — and still can do — a better job preparing their students for the post-grad world,” she told CNN. “And not just focusing on the test that’s coming up next week or your grades.”

The University of Vermont told CNN helping their students get started on their career paths is an important part of their educational experience.

Bellebuono’s story isn’t unique. A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported the widest unemployment gap between new graduates and experienced degree holders since the 1990s.

The struggle to find work

The unemployment gap is partly due to the increase in competition and changing employer expectations, said David Deming, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“What you’re seeing is a consequence of the success we’ve had in educating more people,” Deming told CNN. “Graduating college no longer gives you a leg up, as recent cohorts have seen the highest graduation rates ever.”

Skill requirements for entry-level roles are higher today than a decade ago, he said. But the change has been gradual from year to year.

The US economy added an average of 186,000 jobs per month throughout 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s similar to the pre-pandemic era but a slowdown from the blowout gains during the recovery.

“Entry-level workers are continuing to have a challenging labor market, and their slowdown is a little bit worse than it is for others in the workforce,” Kory Kantenga, head of economics for LinkedIn Americas, told CNN.

He also said job openings don’t always translate into hiring; there are often more job openings than unemployed people.

“So there’s something employers are often looking for that they don’t necessarily find in the labor market,” Kantenga said.

Around 58% of hiring managers said recent college graduates are unprepared for the workforce, according to a December survey from Intelligent, an online magazine focused on higher education.

Employers, Deming argued, also share responsibility for the mismatch.

“The first thing you can do is raise wages,” he said. “I think it’s pretty rare that you can’t find what you want. It’s more likely that you don’t like the price you have to pay or you don’t like the compromises you have to make.”

A shifting landscape for Ivy League schools

The challenges recent graduates face have placed universities under scrutiny, with increasing demands to ensure students see a greater return on their investment.

Nearly half of Americans say the cost of attending college is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans, according to a 2024 Pew Research survey.

While Bellebuono doesn’t regret her decision to take out loans, she felt her university had some “missing pieces” to fully prepare her for the job market.

“I’ve come across a lot of interviews where they’ll ask me questions that I just don’t have an answer for because I don’t have enough experience,” she said.

She feels she would have benefited from more structured support, such as mandatory internships, career prep courses and mentorship programs.

“I could have done my research and realized that applying for jobs isn’t as easy as it used to be,” Bellebuono said. “But for what I invested into the university, it could have had a better output for helping those graduates get jobs.”

The University of Vermont, from where Bellebuono graduated in 2024, told CNN: “We have a wide range of resources available for (students), beginning with our career center, which connects students with internships, prospective employers, job opportunities, and career prep resources.”

Students’ desire for a focus on career outcomes is reshaping how universities are evaluated. The Wall Street Journal’s university rankings now prioritize career outcomes over prestige, with schools like Claremont McKenna and Babson College outranking Harvard and MIT, signaling a shift in what matters to prospective students.

Deming explained that these rankings reflect the market’s response to demands for colleges to focus more on career readiness and employment outcomes.

“Does it mean that people will go to Claremont McKenna or Northeastern over Harvard? Maybe not today, but maybe someday,” he said. “What it does is spotlight schools that are excellent in ways that are not traditionally captured by rankings, and that’s a good thing because students need to be informed.”

Career-driven education gains traction

Colleges can better support students when they offer realistic expectations about the job market and adopting more career-driven strategies, said Deming.

“However, I don’t think it’s obvious exactly how to do that,” he said. “It’s a lot of different ways, ranging from the narrow — connecting with employers directly — to ‘should we have new kinds of majors, new training programs, new curricula?’”

While universities face criticism, programs like Northeastern University’s cooperative education (co-op) model, which integrates real-world work experience with academics, are becoming more popular. Applications to Northeastern have jumped 53% since 2020, driving the acceptance rate down to 5.2%.

“I think the innovation you see and will see happens among the schools that are not quite as selective, trying to become one,” Deming said. “That was the success story for Northeastern.”

Following this trend, the University of Vermont plans to launch an undergraduate co-op program in fall 2025.

“We are further expanding career readiness efforts thanks to over $15M in recent donations supporting new co-op experiences for UVM business students and expanded internships for our students,” the university told CNN. “We also recently added a new role, Director of Professional & Career Development, to support graduate students preparing to enter the job market.”

Drexel University, which has had a co-op program since 1919, is another leader in this space. US News & World Report ranked it the second-best co-op program in 2024, behind Northeastern.

Ian Sladen, Drexel’s vice president for cooperative education and career development, said their graduates consistently succeed in the competitive job market.

“Drexel graduates just don’t see the impact as much as other institutions because of their preparation and professional network that they’ve already built prior to graduation,” Sladen told CNN.

The university’s website states that 97% of the undergraduate class of 2022 were employed or pursuing further education one year after graduation. Of those employed, 87% landed jobs in their field of study.

For graduates like Breanna McClarey, Northeastern’s co-op program was pivotal. McClarey, who earned her degree in criminal justice and political science in May 2023, completed three co-ops and said they gave her and her peers a competitive edge in the job market.

“I think we have a lot more confidence going into interviews and have a lot more sense of security in ourselves knowing that we can perform these jobs and we kind of know what we’re doing,” McClarey told CNN.

After spending the summer abroad working for Northeastern, McClarey began her job search in September and secured a litigation paralegal position within a month.

“My friends who went to other schools eventually got jobs,” she said. “But for most of them, it took six to nine months to find something.”

McClarey said most of her peers at Northeastern landed their jobs about two to three months after graduation. She also said that many of them were hired by their co-op employer.

“I do hear from employers that Northeastern students they hire are ‘working-world’ ready,” she said. “That’s not to say you can’t be that if you graduate from other schools, but it’s almost a guarantee coming out of Northeastern you’ll be ready to dive right into a job that you’re passionate about.”

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