Sehrish Naeem - Five Ways to Improve the Job Prospects of Recent College Grads

Sehrish Naeem Says:

The first question in last night’s town-hall presidential debate came from a college student, who asked the candidates how they would reassure him that he’d be able to support himself after graduation.

Unemployment among recent college graduates remains (although it has dropped in the last year and is still much lower than for those with only a high-school education). If you listen to many economists, presidents have little control over creating jobs.

Here are five ways to put more college graduates to work:

Encourage Work at Start-ups.

The recruiters who come to college and university campuses every spring are the big Fortune 500 companies. Rarely do small businesses or start-ups have the time or money to spend on campus hiring fairs. We need to find more avenues to get college and university graduates placed in burgeoning companies. One idea I like is  It’s a new program, modeled after that places graduates in start-up companies for two years in smaller cities across the country.

Help Graduates Create Start-ups.

The period right after college and university  graduation is a time in life when people are probably most willing to take risks. We should encourage graduates with good ideas by linking them to mentors and places to work One reason students look for full-time, paying gigs after graduation is because of their student loans. There are ways for them to defer payments or pay back the loans as a part of their income, but we need programs specifically designed for entrepreneurs.  

Improve Career Information Given to Students.

It seems nearly every college claims to have a job-placement rate of 70-plus percent. Those numbers are often based on surveys of graduates. They don’t tell you how or where they are employed, nor how many people responded to the survey. More colleges need to be like, which has published detailed employment and salary data for 92 percent of its Class of 2011.

More Co-op and Immersive Experiences.

Internships are great, but colleges and university don’t supervise the experiences enough to ensure that students are getting real experience that will be helpful to them in the workplace. Many are leaders in the co-op movement, which places students in real, paying jobs during college and university has an “immersive learning experience” that helps students partner with clients to solve real-world problems.  

Create More and Better Post High-School Pathways.

We continue to cling to a single, iconic image of life after high school as a four-year college campus or university In doing so, we exclude large portions of the population from sharing in the nation's economic successes What’s needed? More apprenticeships, public service, and other structured work environments.