College sought to protect students from discomfort. The economy demands they perform under pressure. The resulting collision is reshaping early-career outcomes.

Guess who’s coming home for Christmas? Many college graduates are getting fired just five or six months into their first “real world” jobs. Sixty percent of the 1,000 employers surveyed by Intelligent.com last October said they’d already dismissed graduates hired in May or June of 2024.

Seventy-five percent of companies reported that some or all of the recent college graduates they hired were unsatisfactory. According to the same survey, over half of businesses hiring Gen-Z employees believed these young professionals lacked motivation, communication skills, and readiness for the workforce. Many who hadn’t already fired recent graduates they hired this summer said they’d seen enough to avoid hiring from next year’s cohort.

Such reports invite skepticism; older generations have always criticized the younger for perceived shortcomings. It’s not uncommon for aging generations to despair of those who follow them. Poor work ethic and reliance on technology are the usual culprits. In Ancient Greece, teachers at Aristotle’s Lyceum supposedly complained of the slowest and dullest students resorting to writing things down on parchments (taking notes) because they couldn’t be bothered to use their brains.

But the modern culture clash is likely to be acute: corporate norms bear little resemblance to the post-pandemic campus culture from which young people are emerging. But this isn’t just a story of generational tension. It’s a direct reflection of the US university system — and its failure.

...read more at thedailyeconomy.org