Dismissing the value of a college degree has become a national pastime. Everyone from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill is jockeying to land the hardest punch on higher education.
Traditionally, a college degree signals someone has the skills to become a high achiever. But in recent years, more employers are questioning the primacy of the four-year degree and are instead searching for ways to hire individuals with specific skills. However, the current debate over whether someone should attend college misses a broader and more fundamental point. Young adults seek good salaries, job satisfaction, security, and economic mobility.
While a college degree pathway into the workforce can create success, it isn’t guaranteed. It turns out that whatever your education level, landing a good first job is the key to both short- and long-term success.
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A new study from the nonprofit American Student Assistance found that first jobs can play a critical role in determining the long-term career trajectory of high school graduates. The report’s key insight is that while many entry-level jobs for high school graduates start at less than $25,000 per year, some lead to surprisingly good wages over the long term—and some don’t.
According to the study, individuals who started as amusement park workers or telemarketers made more than $60,000 per year 20 years later. Annual wages for those who started as bakers, cooks, and manicurists barely broke $40,000 after two decades.
‘Launchpad jobs’
It remains a mystery why economic circumstances diverge so dramatically over time—and therein lies the rub for colleges and universities. While institutions are intently focused on preparing students for professional careers, their track records are, at best, mixed when providing practical guidance on identifying and landing the right first job.
Because new high school graduates do not know which first job can help them break into the middle class, the study attempts to eliminate the guesswork. It identifies 73 “launchpad jobs” that offer workers without college degrees a potentially lucrative combination of higher-than-average starting pay, good benefits, job security, strong prospects for promotion and career mobility, and some protection from being replaced by AI and automation.
Most launchpad jobs are found in technical, maintenance, manufacturing and healthcare fields and offer opportunities for significantly higher pay by moving into supervisory or managerial roles or pursuing further education.
New college graduates encounter the same enigma: Which career path is best? An abundance of data correlates education levels with significantly higher earnings. Yet too many college graduates are choosing wrong. Slightly more than half start working in low-skill jobs that make little actual use of their degrees—and 45% remain underemployed a decade later.
These launchpad jobs—think of them as “gateway careers”—can offer a powerful new way of rethinking the value of a college degree and help institutions prepare their graduates to succeed in a rapidly evolving labor market.
A solid starting point for identifying potential gateway careers is the 2024 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce report that forecasts good jobs and promising occupations. For those pursuing a bachelor’s degree, the report predicts that good jobs—those that pay at least $44,000 annually to workers between 25 and 44 and a median salary of $82,000 to all workers—will be found in management, business and financial operations, education, health care and computer science occupations.
Gathering accurate, timely and valuable information about the best first job is essential to equip colleges and universities to support their students because the workplace landscape is rapidly changing. Of the 25 fastest-growing jobs in the United States over the past three years, according to LinkedIn’s latest Jobs on the Rise list, 15 of those roles weren’t on the previous year’s list and roughly half of these professions have emerged since 2000.
Helping more students access launchpad jobs requires colleges to rethink on-campus employment programs and career services. A wealth of data points to paid internships’ value and connection to successful career launches. College students who hold paid internships typically receive more job offers and higher starting salaries than those who don’t. Yet the demand for internships continues to far outpace the supply.
Fortifying the college degree
Institutions also should ensure that all students have opportunities to participate in programs that teach them the career habits and durable skills required to thrive in the modern workforce. California’s National University, for example, embedded a project management certificate created by Google into its MBA and Master of Public Administration programs to help students develop and practice skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving.
As they work to counter the increasingly widespread perception that “college” isn’t worth it, institutions remain fixated on degrees and majors—overlooking the critical role of a graduate’s first job and career experiences at their peril. To be sure, providing more information to their students on which jobs are “good jobs” is needed. But more importantly will be designing programs that enable students to secure access to high-growth career opportunities immediately after graduation.
That’s not to say a college degree doesn’t matter. They do. However, the potent combination of a degree and early-career experience ultimately unlocks the long-term value of higher education. If institutions can help their students identify, prepare for and secure good first jobs, the nation’s colleges and universities will again prove that they can take a punch and rise from the canvas stronger than ever.
