Graduating from university should be one of the most exciting and hopeful times in one’s life. A whole world is waiting for you out there, one you’ve been preparing for the greater portion of your life to enter into. You know, Carpe diem, and all that. Yet, today’s recent graduates have left the pearly gates of higher education only to find they have entered into the first ring of hell: the current job market.
Ireland is now ranked the most highly educated country in the world, with over 85,000 university graduates flooding the job market just last year. Many of these recent graduates are coming up sorely disappointed with the job opportunities available. Despite earning higher credentials, many recent graduates are increasingly feeling forced to take jobs outside their area of study and for which they are overqualified. So, are there simply not enough jobs to go around? While it is true that there are fewer entry-level jobs available today, there are many complex factors at play. Rapid labour market changes and a turbulent economy, as well as recent visa restrictions (notably, the Trump administration’s recent crackdown on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers), have led to slowed hiring across most sectors. Social scientists even have a framework for uncertain times such as these, which was popularised post-Cold War, termed VUCA- or Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous environment. That is the environment people are entering into post-graduation today. To compound it all, the emerging impacts of Artificial Intelligence on entry-level jobs are already starting to be felt, especially for computer science graduates. Besides the obvious financial impact of the tough labour market on graduates, these dire job prospects are also now joining the ranks with a host of other factors contributing to the mental health crisis among young people.
Happiness studies have historically plotted an individual’s happiness over a lifetime as a general U-shape; with a happier youth and adolescence, a more difficult middle age, and finally an evening out into a content end-of-life. Yet, studies are revealing that this trend is disappearing, with the unhappiest group in Ireland and most of the Western world being young adults.
One fixture of this emerging youth “happiness crisis” is widely shared feelings of uncertainty and a sense of fewer prospects. That is to say, we are overall less hopeful for our futures. One would expect young people who have been lucky enough to attend university or receive higher education to have a more hopeful outlook, but, unfortunately, not even they have been able to sidestep the looming fears of an uncertain future, largely because of the current job market. The central issue in all of this is that the path to success drawn for us by our parents, teachers, and counsellors no longer seems to be working. Even when students have done everything seemingly right– chosen the “responsible” degree that should lead to direct employment, made good marks, and completed internships– they are still not getting the job. That reality leaves recent graduates lost at sea, unsure of how to proceed. Without a clear path to success, young people start losing hope in their future.
Many young people find themselves looking back enviously at prior generations, where higher education was a generally accepted ticket to upward economic and social mobility. If you have the degree, you got the job, and subsequently the house and the family and the nice holiday during school break. But, as graduates struggle to even get a foot in the door of their chosen fields, overqualification and unemployment have become a sign that the trend expected by each former generation– a more prosperous future for their children– is possibly becoming a phenomenon of the past. This fact only contributes to the huge swirling storm of uncertainty felt amongst young people. The big dilemma facing many grads entering the job market today is whether to settle for a job unrelated to their degree, wait until an opportunity arises that they are properly qualified for with the risk of long-term unemployment, or, if within their means, go back for further schooling. Many recent graduates who do manage to find work, often outside of their field of study, have to settle for lower salaries than they hoped for.
Graduates who are children of parents who do not have third-level education are even more likely to work these jobs for which they are overqualified, which are also generally less well-paid, revealing that higher education no longer has the same power to bridge the class divide as it did in the past. Additionally, graduates who feel they are overqualified for their positions feel increased job dissatisfaction and have a higher risk of continual overqualification down the line in their careers. Thus, fears arise over whether or not they will ever be able to catch up and obtain a position they feel truly qualified for. All of these developments have led young people more and more to doubt the return on investment of higher education.
So, what can higher education, businesses, and governments do to counteract this VUCA environment and capitalise on this sorely underutilised labour force? How can we as a society avoid leaving this generation of young people behind? Businesses must recognise that in the process of hunkering down to wait out the volatile market, thousands of young people are losing the opportunity to kickstart their careers and gain foundational work experience. This isn’t about trading profit margin in the long run- it’s about investing in and developing the next generation of leaders for the long term. Governments should also properly regulate the use of AI in the professional setting, so that we as a society do not completely discount the original work young people can produce and instead opt for a derivative product from a machine. Young people really do want to work– they just need to be given the opportunity. In supporting young graduates, more innovation and prosperity will be produced across the board, hopefully improving the youth outlook on the future and creating a happier society in the process.
