Majority of Small Businesses Say Colleges are Failing to Prepare Gen Z for the Workplace,

A recent survey conducted by RedBalloon and PublicSquare found that a majority of small businesses believe colleges are failing to prepare Gen Z for the workforce and that nearly half of small businesses said that a college degree has zero value in their hiring decisions.

A total of 42 percent of small businesses surveyed said that a college degree has zero value in their hiring decisions while 41 percent said that a college degree is a net negative in their hiring decisions.

In addition, nearly all (91 percent) of small business owners said that they believe “colleges are creating unrealistic expectations among students about what their job and work life will be like post-graduation.”

When it comes to Gen Z, a majority of small businesses have a negative outlook on the generation in the workforce, especially when it comes to the overall difference in culture commonly among Gen Z employees.

For example, less than 4 percent of employers said that Gen Z “most aligns with their workplace culture.”

A majority of employers also believe that Gen Z employees have reliability issues (68 percent), likely mental health problems in the workplace (71 percent), and likely to bring divisiveness and toxicity to the workplace (62 percent).

While being surveyed, employers painted a picture of Gen Z as “entitled, lacking in critical thinking skills, and demanding workplace cultures that simply don’t align with the realities of running a small business,” according to RedBalloon.

“Gen Z is earning a failing grade in America’s workplaces,” RedBalloon CEO Andrew Crapuchettes said in a statement. “With baby boomers retiring in record numbers, America needs Gen Z to step up. But Gen Z is struggling big-time to engage with the workplace in a meaningful way.”

“Colleges are doing more damage than they know by failing to properly prepare students for the workforce,” Crapuchettes added. “Small businesses have essentially written off Gen Z, and that should be a wakeup call for higher education institutions across the country.”

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.