AI’s Impact on the Labor Market
As artificial intelligence reshapes the labor market, students without built-in professional networks are at the most significant risk of being left behind.
Nearly 80 percent of hiring managers now believe AI will reduce the number of entry-level positions, eliminating many of the opportunities that once served as gateways to careers. For students who don’t already have access to the networks that open professional doors, that contradiction means fewer chances to gain the first critical foothold in a career. Half of graduates are underemployed a year after graduation, and 45 percent remain underemployed even a decade later.
The truth is, there has long been a disconnect between the college experience and career readiness. As much as we want to believe success is purely about what you know—or in this case, what you learned in college—it’s still too often about who you know.
The same unfair side doors that have fueled backlash against legacy admissions also exist beyond enrollment, shaping who gets access to internships, mentors, and the informal networks that open professional opportunities.
Higher Education
Higher education has long assumed that career preparation and networking happen outside the classroom, left to chance encounters or reserved for those with existing social capital. Of course, career centers host resume workshops and job fairs, but those interventions often reach too few students and come too late to make a meaningful difference.
To prepare all students for meaningful work, higher education will need to disrupt its broken career networks and intentionally create structured opportunities for career development and professional connections, as it does in other parts of the curriculum.
At National University, the Academic Peer Navigator program is showing what that intentionality can look like in practice. The initiative pairs students in high-enrollment general education courses with trained peer mentors, often working adults and veterans like those they support, who help classmates navigate assignments, connect to resources, and build confidence in foundational “gateway” courses.
Early results show that students who engage with a peer navigator are significantly more likely to complete and pass these critical courses, with pass rates up to 16 percent higher in some subjects.
For working, parenting, and military-connected students, those kinds of relationships aren’t just nice-to-haves. They can be the difference between stopping out and stepping forward on their path to a fulfilling career. The program represents a wholly new way for predominantly online students to build support networks.
The need for disruption has never been more urgent. As AI transforms job functions, the traditional value proposition of a degree is under greater scrutiny than ever before. As algorithms and automation replace many roles that once served as training grounds, the human connections that lead to opportunity are becoming even more valuable. If the benefits of higher education are seen as stemming more from networking than from learning, then what does that say about the purpose of college itself?
To stay relevant, institutions must ensure the education, not the prestige, they deliver translates into sustainable, well-paying careers. That means designing every aspect of the student experience to build relationships, mentorship, and exposure to real-world work.
Students should encounter authentic work-based projects, real employer challenges, and mentorship opportunities as a natural part of their learning, not as extracurricular add-ons. The most forward-looking institutions are already moving in this direction.
Employer-Designed Projects and Menotrships
A growing number of colleges are embedding employer-designed projects and mentorship into the classroom, giving students the chance to develop the professional relationships that once required “knowing the right people.”
National University is one such institution and has embedded virtual projects and internships into its courses for several years, partnering with the work-based learning platform Riipen to provide these to students.
Riipen’s online platform connects students with real employers through short-term, project-based learning experiences embedded in their courses. More than 9 in 10 students on the platform report that the embedded employer projects they completed would help them in the workplace, and more than two-thirds say they received a job offer after completing the project.
Meanwhile, organizations like Education at Work are working with institutions to integrate paid, resume-building jobs directly into the college experience. By connecting students with paid work experiences at Fortune 500 companies, EAW and its partner colleges are allowing them to earn income and build professional capital simultaneously.
Complete College America and work-based learning platform Riipen have also collaborated to form the AI Readiness Consortium, designed to help colleges integrate AI skills into their curricula.
These models go beyond supplementing traditional education to upend the stale networks that have long dictated who gets access to opportunity. By bringing real employers, mentors, and projects directly into the learning process, they democratize experiences that once depended on privilege or proximity.
A student who might never have a family connection at a Fortune 500 company can now build one through a classroom project, peer mentor, or campus job. The result is a more level playing field where talent, curiosity, and persistence count for more than inherited connections or social capital passed down through generations.
Social capital and career capital must be inseparable from academic capital. Colleges can redefine success not only by who graduates, but by who thrives afterward. And they can make career success a reflection of what a student has learned—not of who their parents went to school with.
This belief is core to our mission at National University. We know that “experience– and connection-rich” opportunities must happen while students are still enrolled, not after graduation. Every student, regardless of background, should leave college with both the knowledge and the network to thrive.
Luck and legacy can no longer determine whose education pays off. The future of higher education depends on whether colleges can close the gap between learning and livelihood—and build a system where every student leaves with the knowledge, skills, and connections that matter.
