The Economics of College: Your Career Before You Start

Graduating from college and going to your dream career can take a lot of time, jobs, and money.  In more recent years though, that process is becoming easier – in 2019, graduating seniors received an average of 1.1 job offers – a 12 year high, and since 2012, wages for young college graduates have grown at a steady pace. But even with more jobs available for graduates, they have had more and more difficulty finding jobs and internships that stick. From 2014 to 2018, less were being offered jobs after an internship, and from 2000 to 2018 the levels of underemployment and unemployment have been rising. With the hiring market up in the air, the journey to your dream job starts long before graduation.

Your path to your dream really can start as early as graduation from high school, when you are picking your majors for college. 4 out of every 5 employers want hires with a broad knowledge of liberal arts and sciences. 93% of employers agree that soft skills, such as critical thinking, communication, and problem solving , are more important than majors. 8 out of every 10 of the fastest growing jobs for college graduates are in STEM, and many graduate level STEM programs don’t require a related bachelor’s degree, rather they require the soft skills learned through liberal arts. In 2008, Google studied its most successful employees to determine what skills were the best predictors of success, and they found that of the top 8 skills identified, 7 were soft skills, and STEM expertise was the lowest ranked skill set. So finding that one college that will give you the soft skills you need to succeed is important to your career and how it plays out in the long run 

Find out which colleges you should go to, with your final dream in hand here.