Rethinking Graduate Success: Why Workplaces Must Evolve

With nearly a third of UK graduates underemployed, it’s clear the traditional education-to-work pipeline is broken. This article explores how Gen Z’s entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary mindset is reshaping graduate employability, and why forward-thinking employers must adapt or fall behind.

It’s Time We Rethink Work Itself

Every year, half a million new graduates pour into the British job market. Yet, in 2025, nearly a third remain underemployed six months after leaving university, reflecting a deeper mismatch between traditional education and workplace demands. It’s time we rethink our very approach to work itself.

Why Graduates Are Creating Their Own Jobs

Today’s forward-looking graduates don’t simply wait for roles matching their degrees; many cultivate entrepreneurial traits early, pursue extracurricular projects, side hustles, or proactively create jobs addressing gaps they’ve identified. This entrepreneurial mindset, driven by adaptability, self-direction, and interdisciplinary thinking, reveals a critical truth: the future of graduate prospects is increasingly shaped by workplaces rather than education alone.

Universities excel at theoretical instruction but often fail to impart perhaps the most crucial career skill: problem discovery. AI can automate tasks, but still can’t discern which problems deserve attention. Knowing which issues to tackle, prioritising them, and aligning them with personal skills and values is now a competitive advantage, yet education rarely teaches these skills.

Research from the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) highlights that 47% of Gen Z students seek degrees promising societal impact, yet nearly half remain dissatisfied with the practical skills provided by education. This gap between aspiration and reality is precisely where forward-thinking workplaces must intervene.

Gen Z Isn’t Just Looking for Jobs, They’re Questioning Work Itself

Today’s graduates aren’t simply entering the workplace but interrogating it. As the most crisis-hardened generation in living memory, Gen Z has come of age amid pandemics, economic shocks, climate breakdown, and political volatility. This context hasn’t just shaped resilience; it’s rewired how they assess opportunity. Immersed in a 24/7 media ecosystem, where over 80% scroll daily and half engage for more than three hours, they’re constantly decoding how global events intersect with corporate action and impact. They no longer look for roles fitting a description; they reverse-engineer prospects through the lens of urgent societal challenges, asking: What does this role solve? What crisis is it blind to? How can my skills reshape it?

Here lies the provocation: this isn’t just novel job-seeking, it’s a new framework of thinking workplaces must embrace. Employers should expect and encourage candidates to interrogate roles, reframing interviews as collaborative diagnostics exploring how real-world problems shape value, purpose, and contribution.

Here’s the Hiring Strategy Companies Are Missing

Companies frequently struggle to differentiate talent amidst identical CVs and predictable cover letters. But there’s a powerful hiring strategy they, and proactive graduates, can adopt. Imagine candidates who don’t simply apply for roles but approach companies directly with insightful analyses of overlooked problems the organisation should tackle. This initiative not only sets applicants apart but demonstrates entrepreneurial flair, critical thinking, and self-starting, traits employers increasingly demand.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, adaptability, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary understanding rank among the top five skills employers globally now prioritise. Traditionally, entrepreneurial attributes, once considered exclusive to founders, are rapidly becoming essential for every professional, regardless of industry.

Why Interdisciplinary Beats Specialist Every Time

When LIS was founded in 2019, it was with the conviction that monodisciplinary education is insufficient for today’s world. Complex societal challenges demand insights drawn from multiple disciplines like neuroscience, political economy, linguistics, and network science.

However, while interdisciplinary education holds immense value, workplaces wield greater influence over shaping future talent. The workplace is the ultimate training ground for skills like problem discovery, prioritisation, and interdisciplinary application. Rather than passively awaiting ideal candidates, businesses must actively foster environments in which emerging professionals can practically develop these skills.

We’re Raising a Generation of Narrow Thinkers

This is especially pressing given recent British Academy research highlighting a worrying decline in polymathic thinking, noting students increasingly narrowing A-level choices. We cannot afford creative industries indifferent to maths, nor tech sectors ignorant of humanities. Narrow intellectual horizons limit career resilience and hinder our collective ability to address complex global issues.

The Future Depends on Workplace Innovation, Not Degrees

Reviving graduate prospects requires businesses to champion interdisciplinary thinking, reward problem discovery, and nurture adaptability. Transforming recruitment from passive filtering to active engagement, encouraging graduates to propose, critique, and innovate, will unleash tomorrow’s workforce potential.

Ultimately, the future of graduate employability depends less on degree choice and far more on workplace innovation. Britain’s graduate market faces significant challenges, yet extraordinary opportunities await businesses willing to adapt. The graduates of 2025 and beyond won’t just fill roles, they’ll create them. The question for employers is: will you let them?

By Ed Fidoe, CEO and Founder of the London Interdisciplinary School