The job market sucks: Here’s how Iowa colleges are helping students land good jobs after graduation

It’s a tough job market for recent college graduates right now. But at least two colleges in Iowa are trying to help bridge the workforce gap.

“It is a highly competitive world right now for graduates,” said Rick Sanders, president of the Iowa State University Research Park in Ames. “We just hired for an entry level position here at the Research Park, and three or four years ago, if we had posted that position, we’d have been lucky to get several to a handful of applications. And we had somewhere between 30 and 40 applications for the position—to hire one person.”

Sanders wants to make that better for students at a time when it’s getting harder for young workers to land full-time jobs after graduation. And he thinks the Research Park, which connects Iowa State students with local companies, can help.

Around 2,500 workers across 140 companies work out of the ISU Research Park. About a fifth of them, or around 500 workers, are ISU students.

“The main thing we’re trying to do is, we call it ‘try it before you buy it,'” Sanders said. “Ultimately, our goal is that they end up in the workforce for that company.”

One of the Research Park’s first companies was John Deere, which wanted to convert more of their summer interns into full-time employees.

“They came to the research park with three interns. And they put them here in the ISU Research Park in a single office and gave them real projects to work on for about 10 hours a week during the academic year,” Sanders said. “And they found that they held on to all three of them.”

Now, Deere’s employment at the Research Park has grown to 75 interns, about 90% of whom go on to work at Deere, Sanders said.

“That’s outlandish,” he said. “You don’t ever see percentages like that. And so we have other companies that are leaning in on that concept.”

Sure, that’s a big deal for companies. But, more importantly, it’s also huge for young Iowa workers, 52% of whom are underemployed—meaning they have jobs that aren’t full time, or don’t require their degree—a year after they graduate, according to a 2024 study.

“Getting out of university today looks a lot more similar to when I came out in the eighties, where you were really busting it to find that first role to hopefully get you going,” Sanders said.

“And so we’re trying to come at the attack it from both angles: We’re trying to create more opportunities for young people to get engaged with these innovative companies and see what kind of pathway there is, but we’re also trying to make it really as easy as possible for these companies to quickly identify those students that they have interest in.”

The most recent company to make a commitment to the ISU Research Park is chemical company Bayer, which broke ground on its Seed Production Innovation Center this month and should be up and running by August. Sanders said the number of student interns there is expected to be minimal at first, but they will be paid.

“A company that’s paying somebody is gonna be a little more committed,” he said. “A student that’s getting paid—first of all, I think I saw a stat that over half of Iowa State University students graduate with no debt. We’d like that number to be 100%.”

The University of Iowa has its own research park, too. Sanders thinks more college students should know about them.

“ Every piece of experience you get as a young person matters. Every single connection that you get as a young person matters,” Sanders said. “We need to put these young people in position to get the best first opportunity they can, because that puts them in a great position going forward.”