Another factor is making job hunting even grimmer: The hiring process is starting to break down. In the past, companies looking for fresh entry-level talent could rely on a college graduate’s GPA as a mark of their intelligence and work ethic. Hiring managers could assess a candidate’s cover letter and interview performance to get a sense of their writing and communication skills. Now those signals have lost much of their value. Rampant grade inflation has rendered GPAs almost meaningless. The widespread use of AI to write cover letters—and even to assist with job-interview performance—has robbed those assessments of their predictive power.
When the promise of college is a job it’s no wonder that the push to increase grades and lower standards is happening. its hard to fathom that both k-12 standings are going down and college results are going up. That can’t both be true right?
At any rate the best predictor of future work is previous work. College is an imperfect proxy for that.
Quote Citation: Rose Horowitch, “The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down - The Atlantic”, 2025-12-16, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/grade-inflation-ai-hiring/685157/