The Early Career Rungs are Breaking

The schools that treat alumni as members of something worth renewing, rather than a population to solicit, are the ones who will still matter in twenty years.

Ryan Catherwood

Jun 19, 2026

One of the most memorable moments in my conversation with Brandon Busteed for our Keynote this week was a story about his first hire. Brandon has spent his whole career studying what makes college worth it, from building the education practice at Gallup to leading learning innovation at Kaplan to running Edconic today. But the thing that stuck with me was this: years ago, when his company had only eleven people, a Northeastern co-op student came to work for him full-time for six months, and because she was there long enough to do real work, he simply made her his director of marketing. That, in miniature, has been the main thread animating his career.

Watch the full-length version on YouTube (53 mins)

The Gallup-Purdue Index, the largest study of college graduates in U.S. history, found that one relationship-rich, work-integrated experience roughly doubles a graduate’s odds of a good job and a lifetime of engagement and yet it still reaches fewer than a third of students. What makes this urgent is that the early rungs of the career ladder — summer jobs, internships, entry-level roles — are breaking, with AI now pulling out the very jobs new graduates were counting on.

For those of us who think about lifelong connection, the episode raises questions worth sitting with. Why is “lifelong learning” the single most common phrase in college mission statements when we do almost nothing to deliver on it? What would it mean to treat a degree not as a four-year burst but, in Brandon’s words, as “an evergreen tool” an alum returns to across a career? And if that becomes the model, what is alumni engagement’s role inside it?

Brandon’s answer is hopeful and a little uncomfortable. He believes the institutions that win won’t be the ones with the best marketing, but the ones authentic to a value proposition they can actually deliver and he’s convinced any school willing to be intentional can build it. What I keep coming back to is that the diploma is permanent, but the relationship behind it is not. The schools that treat alumni as members of something worth renewing, rather than a population to solicit, are the ones who will still matter in twenty years. That possibility sits at the center of this conversation.

Big Themes This Week

One relationship-rich, work-integrated experience roughly doubles a graduate’s odds of a good job and lifelong engagement but it reaches fewer than a third of students. The issue isn’t whether it works; it’s that no one has scaled it.
The early rungs of the career ladder — summer jobs, internships, entry-level roles — have been eroding for a decade, and AI is now accelerating it.
“Lifelong learning” is the most common phrase in mission statements, and schools do almost nothing to deliver on it. A degree could be evergreen, not a four-year burst.
With more supply than demand, differentiation is now survival but only if an institution is authentic to its value proposition and can deliver it.
Career readiness and the liberal arts aren’t opposites. Employers want graduates who are both broadly educated and specifically skilled.

Team Discussion Questions

If work-integrated learning is this powerful, what’s actually stopping us from scaling it? Resources, buy-in, or that no one owns it?
As entry-level roles erode, what role should we and our alumni play in securing applied-learning opportunities for students?
What would treating the degree as “evergreen” look like for us, and what would have to change in how we engage alumni?
Could we name our institution’s signature in one sentence and would our alumni describe it the same way?
Where does work-integrated learning sit on our campus, and is it positioned to be core to the student experience rather than an add-on?