College graduates have a new outlook on education.
According to a Kickresume survey of 1,277 respondents, entering the workforce is becoming increasingly complex, even with a college degree. Of fresh graduates, 58% claim they have not yet found a job, which compares to 25% of earlier graduates who were surveyed and have worked at least a year. This tracks as the survey reveals it is three times harder for graduates to land a full-time role before they leave college. Of earlier graduates, 39% had secured a full-time job before graduating; however that number shrunk to 12% for the fresh graduates in the study.
In Resume Genius’s “2025 Gen Z Career Prospects Report,” which surveyed 1,000 full-time Gen Z workers, one in five respondents felt their degree did not add value to their career. Additionally, one in four expressed regret about attending college.
“These kids got sold a bag of goods. College became this magical ticket that supposedly guaranteed success,” Michael Ryan, a finance expert and the founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek. “But nobody mentioned the $60,000 a year price tag or the fact that your communications degree might qualify you to manage a Starbucks. I’ve had parents sobbing in my office because their kid’s drowning in debt for a degree that’s essentially expensive toilet paper in today’s job market. The math hasn’t worked since 2008, but we kept pretending it did.”
Lewis Maleh, CEO of staffing and recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, told Fortune, “Universities aren’t deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise.”
Nonetheless, graduates’ current reality in the job market is not negatively impacting their confidence at the same rate as earlier graduates, according to Kickresume’s survey. Additionally, more and more are banking on LinkedIn to search for traditional roles, as the platform is the top tool used for recent graduates. Overall, Fresh graduates rely on social media platforms four times more than earlier graduates (26% vs. 7%).
The survey also revealed that earlier graduates feel what they were learning in school has become outdated, and they are pointing to the rise of AI as a significant reason. It is becoming increasingly essential to equip yourself with AI skills, and Newsweek notes that today’s graduates have to compete against AI agents for jobs.
“Every job currently posted on Indeed’s job board will likely experience some level of exposure to generative AI and the changes it represents,” Linsey Fagan, senior talent strategy advisor at Indeed, told CIO Dive, according to Newsweek.
Former Gen Z job-seeker Basant Shenouda may provide some hope for today’s graduates. Fortune states that after not landing a job for six months following graduation, she started waitressing at a marketing conference to get noticed. Her LinkedIn mentions that she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in international marketing management and a minor in communications from a top school in Germany in 2019. She would go on to share her cover letter with various people at the marketing conference, ultimately landing a role at LinkedIn.
“It is becoming harder and harder to reach the hiring manager, even virtually—which used to be a more nontraditional method,” she told Fortune. “It’s incredibly hard to spotlight yourself.”
She later added: “When you’re a graduate, you think everyone’s going to say yes to you and things are going [to] work out. But it’s a matter of building up resilience. You need to keep reassessing your process so that every no gets you closer to that next yes.”
