Recent College Graduate Says It's Insane That Getting A Job Right Out Of School Is So Hard — '80 Hours A Week Of School Work Should Qualify Me To Work In My Field Of Study'
Should you really have to "pay your dues" to get an entry-level job after all that hard work?
Peopleimages.com / YuriArcurs / Canva Pro College graduation is supposed to be a time for celebration — not only for all the hard work you did to get your degree but also for the bright future you have ahead of you in the career you're supposed to be launching.
But for all too many graduates nowadays, that last part is practically a fantasy since landing a basic entry-level job after college often requires prior on-the-job experience you can only gain by… getting an entry-level job.
One graduate on Reddit is furious about this bizarre system and that so many of their fellow young people just accept it as normal.
The recent graduate said it is 'insane' and 'sadistic' that getting a job after college is so hard.
If it seems to you like it's never been quite so hard to get a job after college, you're not wrong. The National Association of Colleges and Employers says hiring for 2024 graduates is expected to be down by nearly 6% as compared to 2023, and they predict it will take graduates up to six months to find a job.
This is definitely disappointing, given that the requirements of many entry-level jobs make all too many graduates unqualified in the first place. This Redditor argued that this situation is downright absurd given just how much work is required to even obtain a college degree.
The graduate said that the work of getting a college degree itself should qualify as experience in the field of study.
"Congratulations. You just completed a four or five-year engineering program where you pulled countless all-nighters, studied several subjects at once with exam averages in the 30s, and even managed to graduate with a high GPA while also volunteering 20 hours a week," the Redditor sarcastically wrote in their since-deleted post.
"So what? So did thousands of other graduates. You just want to walk right out of school into a job? Like a lazy, entitled brat?" they continued.
It's hard to argue they don't have a point. Many degree programs force students to work incredibly hard on levels far more intense than most 9-5 jobs, after all.
This graduate said that even their professors admitted that both the 80 hours a week they spent working toward their degree and the "abstract" subject matter they studied were "way beyond the scope of daily job tasks."
They went on to share that they worked so hard in school that they "sometimes [slept] on the floor of the classroom" and felt that "should qualify [them] to work 40 hours per week in [their] own field of study."
The graduate is furious that young people are considered lazy and entitled for expecting to be employable based on their education alone.
The graduate raged about constantly being questioned regarding what extra work they'd done outside of class to make them more qualified for a job.
"Shut up," they bluntly said. "Literally 98% of these graduates are perfectly capable of doing the job," especially given the rigor of many STEM programs like engineering.
But instead of simply hiring them, "we have… this sadistic crossover between Stockholm syndrome and prisoners' dilemma where we split hairs and quadruple stress and tell people who have worked their [expletive] off that they're entitled and not good enough."
And even more galling, the graduate said, is the way many of their peers seem to agree that this is just the way it is. "The vast majority of people in the same boat as me seem to have no objections to this," they wrote. "Brainwashed into disrespecting their own lifetime accomplishments."
The job market for graduates has drastically changed in recent decades, and technology is likely to change it even more.
“Congratulations! You have earned the right to apply to our unpaid internship," one Redditor sarcastically replied to the graduate's post. "Requires 3 years of professional experience. Internships do not count," another responded.
Both highlight the absurdity of the American job market. Most internships nowadays are positions that used to be entry-level jobs — ways for new graduates to get a foot in the door, network, and begin proving themselves.
Now, they are ways for companies to extract cheap or even free labor from students — most often the most privileged students out there, since working for free is only an option for people with resources.
What entry-level jobs haven't been replaced by internships have been done away with by technology, a trend that is only escalating in light of artificial intelligence. A recent survey by Intelligent.com found nearly 80% of companies plan to lay off recent graduates and replace them with AI tools instead.
Many companies are attempting to address this mess — or at least pretending to — by doing away with college degree requirements entirely and focusing on skills instead. However, many are skeptical given that simply removing a requirement from a job listing ultimately doesn't change much systemically.
Something's gotta give, though, because given how crippling student debt is and how punishing the economy is becoming, this absurd system is not sustainable. You can't blame this graduate for being furious about it and wondering what it will take to finally change things.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.