Buyer's Remorse: High Debt and Low Pay Leave Some College Grads Rueful
The labor markets for entry-level professionals is broken. On the demand side, we have companies looking for competent professionals. On the supply side, we have high school students.<p>In between we have guidance counselors, standardized test purveyors, lenders and scholarship providers, college ranking guides, universities and their career offices, internship recruiters, recent college graduate (RCG) recruiters...a line of middlemen!<p>Improving the transmission of information, most critically wages, as well as hiring conditions and preferences, from the demand side to the supply side is something we need but seldom discuss. How can we incentivise those close to high school graduates to have--directly or indirectly--skin in the game down the road? Or, vice versa, incentivise those close to RCG hiring to talk--directly or indirectly--to high-school graduates.<p>Many markets have lots of middle men and long transmission channels. But few are so benign about broken price transmission.<p>(Anecdote: I inadvertently avoided this problem by aggressively pursuing internships early on, including in high school. This let me peer through the process to the decision makers on the other side. I don&#x27;t know how scalable this is as a solution, however.)