“We’ll See”: What Haverford’s Class of 2026 Is Facing After Graduation

Graduation has a way of arriving all at once for seniors.

For most of the year, it sits somewhere in the distance, folded into conversations about thesis deadlines, final seasons, and last rounds of interviews. Lately, though, as March drew to a close, graduation has started to feel closer as the practical questions of post-grad life begin to take shape and demand answers: where people will be living, what they will be doing, etc. How quickly things are supposed to come together once the structure of the semester and the past four years in college slowly fade in front of our eyes.

For seniors, that shift has been unfolding during a year that has felt unsettled on campus, where administrative departures have made questions of continuity harder to ignore, not because they will still be here to see the long-term effects, but because they have been navigating their final year without the sense of institutional steadiness that typically frames the transition out. What happens when something that is supposed to be stable begins to feel less certain?

An Instagram poll conducted in February among members of the Class of 2026 asked two questions: whether students expect to be living at home six months after graduation and what type of degree they are completing, using “living at home” not as a measure of personal failure or cultural expectation but as a proxy for financial independence at the point where students are expected to begin supporting themselves.

Among 40 respondents, roughly 1 in 9 students in the 2026 graduating class, 62.5% are uncertain about where they will live, 25% expect to live at home, and 12.5% will not live at home.

Across responses, there is no clear separation between STEM and humanities majors in expected post-graduate living situations. Among students who expect to live at home, 50% are STEM majors and 50% are humanities majors. The same split appears among the small group who said they will not be living at home.

The largest group, those who are uncertain, skews more heavily toward STEM. 70% of students who said they are unsure are STEM majors, compared to 30% from humanities fields. Taken together, STEM majors make up 62.5% of all respondents, yet they account for a disproportionately large share of those who are uncertain about their post-graduate living situation.

The data do not suggest that STEM students are insulated from instability. Still, the survey’s findings show that uncertainty remains high even among students in STEM fields, which are typically associated with stronger job placement.

Student uncertainty stems from a labor market that has become harder to enter, even as students are expected to move into it.

Recent data place youth unemployment in the United States at 10.5%-10.8% in 2025, more than double the overall rate. For recent college graduates, unemployment has reached 5.7%, while underemployment, defined as working in jobs that do not require a college degree or fully use one’s skills, sits at 42.5%, its highest level since 2020.

These numbers start to explain why many students feel that those first post-graduate jobs are less guaranteed than they felt promised when they entered college, why students transition out of college feels slower, and why opportunities post-grad feel more dependent on timing and access than on whether students have the qualifications they were told would prepare them for success in the working world.

That tightening carries into how entry-level work is structured. Roles that once functioned as places to learn now expect some prior experience. Around 35% of entry-level jobs require at least three years of experience, moving the starting line for college grads. The way employers read readiness has shifted, too. A significant share of hiring managers hesitate to bring on recent graduates, pointing to gaps in communication, adaptability, and other skills that tend to develop through practice rather than instruction. The expectation leans toward years of demonstrated experience, and the opportunities to build that experience are less evenly distributed, even for people between 18 and 22.

Artificial intelligence also plays a central role in the shift in entry-level opportunities in the workforce. A.I. has not erased entire professions, but it has begun to thin out the kinds of tasks that once made up early-career work. Entry-level hiring is projected to grow by only 1.6% for the Class of 2026, a sharp slowdown from the 7.3% growth projected for the Class of 2025, and that limited growth arrives alongside projections that parts of that early-career layer of opportunities will continue to change or disappear.

Students are already adjusting to that reality before graduation arrives.

“The looming threat of AI overtaking entry-level jobs has hastened my process of decisions regarding which job markets can actually be the most viable as I enter post-grad life,” said senior Claire Jordan, a history major from State College, Pennsylvania.

Even in industries that feel more stable, students’ sense of direction often depends on something more concrete than coursework.

“My thesis advisor has been a great resource during my application process, and his mentorship has helped me feel confident in my professional abilities,” said senior Zenzele Greene, a psychology major from San Diego. “Fortunately, psych research labs aren’t getting infiltrated by AI, so it hasn’t been too bad.”

What begins to shape how prepared students feel for post-grad life is less about their major and more about whether they have had access to mentorship, research, or sustained work that carries consequences beyond the classroom. 

The academic experience remains unaltered. Students are trained to think carefully, to read closely, to write with precision, and those skills continue to matter. What is becoming less certain is how that training translates into a professional environment that now expects familiarity with systems and comfort with uncertain job security, as technological changes like artificial intelligence continue to reshape the structure of early-career, entry-level work.

At the same time, skills that would help students navigate that transition into the workforce are not consistently built into the college educational experience in a direct way. For example, financial literacy—understanding how compensation works, how the cost of living interacts with salary, and how to make decisions that carry long-term consequences—is not a streamlined part of the discourse at Haverford. AI literacy, not as a distant concept, but as a tool that is already shaping workflows, expectations, and the structure of early-career work, is also not taught at Haverford. In most classrooms, it is dismissed and banished. 

Haverford administrators have noticed the increasingly difficult transitions into the workforce that Haverford students are facing and have proposed potential solutions. In 2022, President Raymond laid out in the 2030 plan that a career-oriented goal for students is for Haverford to “facilitate and fund at least one paid summer internship, language study, fellowship opportunity, or research position for each student over their four years at Haverford.” This section of the 2030 plan may now be more important than ever.

Without correct preparation, the transition out of college begins to feel less like a continuation of a career, from studies to the workforce, and more like a reset, in which students are asked to learn a new set of rules while being evaluated against them.

Haverford prepares students to think, and that remains one of its strengths. What becomes harder to locate is how that preparation consistently moves into doing, into adapting within environments that are already changing, into making decisions that extend beyond the academic frame.

Editor’s Note: “…as March draws to a close,” was edited to “…as March drew to a close.”