FEATURED
Two recent reports confirmed what many seem to know already about today’s AI-infused job market – times are tough for new grads looking to launch their careers.
But making matters worse is the fact that college students are not being taught to think independently and problem solve, prompting companies to tend to hire older workers, one expert told The College Fix.
“Students are not being prepared to think boundlessly about contentious issues, and this lack of development greatly limits their success in the outside world and real life,” according to Connie Buehler, a talent recruiter.
By the numbers, graduates from AI-vulnerable majors have seen initial employment drop by 5 percent and starting salaries fall by 13 percent, which is akin to graduating during a major recession, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published this month.
The situation, which began after ChatGPT launched, is forcing many grads into lower-paying retail and restaurant jobs instead of higher-paying like tech, according to the research.
“Overall, our results suggest that there was a fairly immediate and concentrated deterioration in the early labor market outcomes of graduates from the most AI-exposed fields following the introduction of ChatGPT-3.5,” the bureau reported.
The findings come after a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published over the summer found that declining job opportunities are the biggest cause of increasing unemployment rates among young workers.
“Demand for AI-related jobs accounted for a meaningful share of softening labor market conditions for young workers, particularly new-entrant college graduates,” according to the findings.
“AI is not eliminating jobs across the wider U.S. economy; rather, it appears to be raising the bar more narrowly for younger workers trying to secure a foothold in a slowing labor market,” the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported.
Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson told NPR that “AI is not the whole story, but it’s part of the story and the evidence is building.”
Brynjolfsson said when companies decide to let go of employees or cut back on hiring, junior roles are usually the first to go. He noted large language models are also trained on codified knowledge found in textbooks and documents, creating a considerable overlap with entry-level workers because it is the same kind of knowledge they rely on to enter the workforce.
Reached for comment by The College Fix, Buehler, a professional recruiter and founder of CTB1, a talent placement company, said she believes the problem runs deeper than what the stats show.
The unemployment issue may also lie with the character of young workers themselves, she said. She pointed to a June talk hosted by Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse.
She had pointed out that in 2015, she began to notice “a shift in capability and engagement in a growing percentage of the seniors with whom [she] interacted.”
“By 2020, job retention among those hired in ensuing years was dramatically declining,” she said.
Buehler also expressed difficulty finding students willing to put in the work to begin their careers: “One requested a job only if there was a nice boss; one wanted a 30-hour work week so he could work on his social justice projects; and one wouldn’t complete the ‘challenging’ online case during the application process that would have been so worth it in the long run.”
Buehler suggested restrictions on free speech in many university classrooms as a possible hindrance to students developing critical skills needed for the work force.
“I found that many of their classes started within a ‘cramped intellectual space,’ with predetermined outcomes and ideologies already decided,” she said in her speech. “What was and remains missing from many of these classrooms is the comfort of free speech to challenge those outcomes.”
“Those students who choose to limp minimally challenged into employment and citizenry instead of taking a stake in their future miss the chance to see what they could truly do,” Buehler said.
“This situation affects students, but it also affects our nation’s overall financial stability. Compound these outcomes year over year, and we risk a generation unable to support themselves.”
Buehler, in an interview for The College Fix, said the role AI plays in unemployment rates may run parallel to the fact that they are overlooked for older workers.
“The concern for me more is the AI used in the undergraduate programs where [students] are just going to rely on AI and never learn to think,” she told The Fix, adding “they won’t be able to adapt to a job.”
When asked to give advice for current students on how they can better their chances of getting hired post-grad, Buehler said: “You need to start looking at topics and companies that might interest you.”
“Network with them, find out if you know people. … Get a resume going. … Take [classes] that are hard, that interest you, and really make you think,” she said.
“And then, of course, network, network, network.”
