The case for helping college students get jobs

It would seem the US higher educational system is broken.

Be it the overpriced tuition, the ease of access to federal debt, the lack of regulation around institution quality or the irrelevance of many majors to today’s employers, the facts would suggest we are printing worthless college degrees, and indebting an entire generation of ‘graduates’ that are not going to see any return on this supposed ‘investment’ we call higher education.

The system and the rules are changing — the government is forcing more school scrutiny, technology startups are entering the online education and student debt financing fields, and lower tier institutions are slowly going bankrupt or being severely devalued — yet an argument could be made that these changes are not going to be sufficient.

Student debt is skyrocketing to the tune of $100Billion a year, tuition costs show no sign of stopping their rise, and employers appear generally dissatisfied with the output of the educational system — ‘millennials’ — struggling to know how to recruit and retain them.

At the same time, technology is disrupting industries at an unprecedented pace, wreaking havoc in the labor markets as corporation life cycles shorten, certain jobs become obsolete or get relocated and employee skillsets change every few years as new technologies get added to the system.

As a society, we are not going to stop having children, are not going to stop educating them, which means at some point, we are going to have to make sure they get their foot on the ladder and find a good career.

Futurists will argue that smart machines and artificial intelligence will ultimately replace the need for human workers. For task based jobs, where ultimately a machine can be taught how to behave, it would appear they will be proven correct.

Yet a case could be made that any service related job where a human needs to interact with another human — serving them, convincing them, empathising with them — or any job involving creationism, the human will always have a competitive advantage over the machine.

As such, as new generations become of age of independence, look to decide whether to pursue higher education or start a career, it may be wise as a society to look beyond the problems with the educational system and form a joint view as to which career paths we believe young adults should start considering and exploring.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics point us towards the field of healthcare as we look to find new ways to deal with an ever aging population and countering rising healthcare costs. Whilst machines may have the efficiency edge, the natural empathy of a caring human may be better suited to the needs of a sick mother or sick child.

If the collective can agree to invest in one long term career path, one that is not going to disappear, be replaced, or relocated but instead offers the promises of variety, opportunities for advancement and an addition to the greater good, we believe it possible to create incentives to steer the next generation of graduates towards these careers.

If a soon to be high school or college graduate would be willing to dedicate the first formative years of their working life towards a helping the elderly, the sick or the disabled, should we not do all is possible to help them with this goal?

Getting your first job out of school is tough. Where do you start? Who is there to advise you? Parents and career services seem disconnected from the job market. And peers are in equally confused states and often competing for the same jobs. Combine that with the fact that at most schools, all the recruiting is done by local companies, it is not easy for a soon to be graduate to find the right job.

We intend to change that through pairing soon to be graduates with recent grads and headhunters that will coach them through the process of finding a job and are incentivized if a good match is made.