Berkeley Professor Believes His ‘Outstanding’ Students With 4.0 GPAs Not Getting Any Job Offers Is An ‘Irreversible Trend’
Vukasin Ljustina | ShutterstockRecent college graduates aren't faring any better than other job seekers in this difficult market, despite having a degree and four years of educational training.
The number of available job openings has stayed quite low, which has forced everyone to intensely compete for those that do exist. Understandably, many employers choose to take on more experienced candidates over recent graduates. It's become such a problem that a UC Berkeley computer science professor said that even his best students are struggling.
The professor observed that even his 'outstanding' students with the highest GPAs weren't getting any job offers.
Professor James O'Brien shared his perspective in a LinkedIn post and insisted that it's become a bleak reality for many college graduates. "Tech degrees no longer guarantee a job," he wrote. "Lately, I'm hearing similar narratives from students."
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Berkeley is a highly respected school, and that used to be enough to get an applicant's foot in the door, but not anymore. "Previously, a Berkeley [computer science] graduate, even if not a top student, would receive multiple appealing offers in terms of work type, location, salary, and employer," he continued.
He noticed that even his most "outstanding" students who graduated with 4.0 GPAs were now reaching out to him for help because their impressive transcripts and experience weren't enough to land them a job. He concluded that this was happening because of an "irreversible trend" that has become pervasive across the job market.
He hypothesized that even people starting college today will find themselves in a bit of a bind when they are looking for employment.
O'Brien hinted at the fact that there are increasingly limited options available, citing a Wall Street Journal article about how tech jobs seem to be drying up. The publication found that postings for software development jobs have been down more than 30% since February 2020, according to Indeed.com. Much of this was blamed on the advancement of AI.
Layoffs have been running rampant in the tech sector, with major companies like Meta, Cisco, PayPal, and Cloudfare letting go of a combined 127,000 workers last year. Infusing the already struggling job market with that kind of competition seems like a recipe for disaster, especially for new graduates.
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O'Brien argued that the time to take action on behalf of new and future job seekers is already here. "We should be doing something about it today," he urged.
It's disheartening to hear how lackluster the job market is for recent graduates, especially with how often we hear about the benefits of going to college and earning a degree that will make the job market your oyster. Now, it seems like even though people are going through four years of college and accruing unimaginable debt, they are still struggling to find employment.
Job hunting has become a real problem for college graduates, no matter what field they're heading into.
According to a report from the Strada Institute, researchers found that 52% of graduates with a bachelor's degree end up underemployed a year after graduation, meaning they work in jobs that don't require a degree. Ten years on, that number only drops to 45%.
Similarly, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that unemployment for college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 sat at a fairly high 5% in 2025. Things look marginally better for the class of 2026 than they did for the class of 2025, but not by much.
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To combat the grim reality for college students who are inching their way towards graduation, universities and colleges are being urged to really educate their students on what the job market is like now. That includes quality career counseling and resume assistance, as well as being transparent about the types of occupations that students may end up in once they are no longer in school.
But even all of the honesty in the world won't make it easier when someone doesn't get any job offers after being told that a college degree was their ticket to success their whole life.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
