Opinion published in The Post, Waikato Times, and The Press.
Let's not sugarcoat it: times are brutal for graduates right now. It's the hardest job market in three decades, with entry-level positions disappearing faster than free food at a university event. AI is gobbling up graduate roles, the economy is limping along, and young people taking their first professional steps are genuinely terrified. Parents watching their kids rack up student debt are asking the big question: is university even worth it anymore?
The critics aren’t wrong: a degree doesn’t guarantee a job. But they’re missing the point. A university experience – done properly – equips students with the skills needed to build a career.
The Employment Game Has Changed
Employers have shifted the goalposts. Across Australia, the UK, and right here in New Zealand, businesses have moved into a skills-first hiring market. Your GPA? Less important than ever. What they're desperate for are the capabilities that make someone actually useful in the workplace: AI literacy, curiosity, resilience, creativity, communication, and the adaptability to pivot when everything changes on Tuesday.
And guess what universities have been teaching all along? Exactly those transferable skills. Critical thinking. Problem-solving. Working in teams (yes, the dreaded group projects actually matter). These aren't fluffy add-ons — they're the durable human skills that AI can't replicate and that future-of-work predictors say will be essential as healthcare, education, and people-focused industries grow.
The irony? These are the same capabilities once dismissed as "soft skills." Now they're the entire ballgame.
Universities Aren't Standing Still
When times get tough, the old critiques resurface - that universities are too theoretical, too disconnected from what employers actually need. But walk into most degree programmes today and you'll find anything but pure academia. Students are working on live industry briefs, completing placements, tackling real community problems, and developing solutions that matter beyond the lecture theatre. Degree learning is applied learning – more than most people realise.
Even if universities aren’t shouting about it, they are embedding employability within and alongside degree programmes in many and varied ways — course-based internships (work-integrated learning), authentic assessment (tasks that mirror professional practice), career development learning (guest lecturers and employers on campus, networking skills workshops). Students also practice communication and resilience through AI-simulated conversations with realistic workplace personas — like a skeptical colleague or demanding executive — building confidence in low-stakes settings before real consequences matter. At Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC), we've made employability everyone's shared responsibility, not just something that is outsourced to a careers team. That means upskilling staff university-wide – academic and professional – so they can weave career development into everyday student interactions. The goal is simple: career conversations happen early, frequently, and in low-pressure ways, helping students gradually build confidence rather than panicking in their final year. We're also advancing industry partnerships toward more strategic, sustained collaborations that directly address regional workforce development and economic challenges — positioning universities as essential partners in building New Zealand's economic future.
But here's where universities need to get more serious: we have to teach students how to articulate what they've learned better. A student might have developed resilience through a challenging research project, honed their communication through presentations, and built adaptability through navigating group dynamics — but if they can't explain that to an employer, those skills might as well not exist.
Everyone Needs to Step Up
Universities can't do this alone. Here’s what actually needs to happen – and who needs to do what.
Universities need to double-down on in-classroom reflection about skills development, expand work-integrated learning opportunities, and get more deliberate about preparing students earlier in their degrees.
Students can't treat employability as something that magically appears in their final semester. Get involved in first year. Volunteer. Take courses with applied learning. Do the internships. Build the portfolio of experiences that sits alongside your qualification.
Employers and industry partners, whether already working closely with universities or just starting the conversation – now's the time to scale your interactions with us, and to take a partnership approach to developing talent. The pipeline works both ways — you get better-prepared graduates when you help shape their education.
Parents need to understand that university is about more than the piece of paper at the end. It's the three or four years of developing those lifelong competencies that will carry your kids through multiple career pivots.
The Baby and the Bathwater
Yes, we're at a transitional point in history. Major technological advances have always changed jobs — roles disappear and new ones emerge. AI is following the same pattern. But it's less about replacement and more about learning to work differently.
Courses once deemed irrelevant to employment — like those in the Arts — are now critical for developing the human-centred capabilities our future workforce needs. The creative industries, often dismissed as peripheral, now contribute $12.9 billion to New Zealand's GDP, making them our fourth-largest commodity export. That places them ahead of fruit, wine, and seafood. In a policy landscape obsessed with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), these numbers prove that the degrees dismissed as 'impractical' are among our most valuable economic assets. Better yet, the creativity, critical thinking, and adaptability honed in these fields transfer seamlessly across industries.
Don't panic, and don't write off universities as obsolete. During those university years, students are developing exactly the capabilities that will matter most in an uncertain future. Universities are experts at cultivating these skills — we've just traditionally been rubbish at telling that story.
The qualification might not get you the first job anymore. But the qualification plus everything you do alongside it during university? That's what builds a career. And in a world where jobs are temporary but skills are permanent, that distinction matters more than ever.
