Forum: When students have to be labourers long before they enter the workforce

“Job-hunting is so hard.”

This is the common consensus among graduating students today. Simply holding a tertiary degree no longer guarantees employment.

It is not uncommon for a graduate to send out dozens of applications, only to receive a handful of automated rejections. To make matters worse, we face a frustrating contradiction: Almost every entry-level job description now demands three to five years of experience.

To bridge this gap, students aggressively collect co-curricular credentials and take on volunteer work, operating on the institutional promise that these activities build necessary competencies.

While these pursuits do offer value, they have created an unsustainable loop of pressure.

Today, an undergraduate needs a stellar portfolio just to secure an initial internship. Often, a formal internship is required just to qualify for a second, more competitive one.

Many students now complete three or four internships before graduation, only to find themselves entering another internship post-graduation because entry-level jobs still remain out of reach.

Unfortunately, when graduates struggle to find full-time employment, the narrative often shifts to individual blame, with a lack of experience framed as a personal deficit of ambition, and structural bottlenecks written off as a lack of “hunger”.

This creates an exhausting double standard. Students are essentially engaging in pre-professional labour long before they formally enter the workforce. The experience students are forced to acquire during their university years rarely aligns with the rigid corporate definitions demanded by employers.

We have reached a critical impasse in our workforce transition. When “experience” becomes the strict prerequisite to merely gaining experience, we must re-evaluate our hiring norms. Otherwise, we risk burning out our younger generation before their careers even begin.

Nur Tiara Delylah Suzaine, 22

Year 4 university student