Originally published in The San Diego Union Tribune, May 25, 2020.

May is graduation season. Only this year, commencements throughout the country were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. A crushing development for seniors in high school and in college, for postgraduate students — and for their families. For first-generation college students especially, the first in the family to go to college, graduation ceremonies are the culmination of years of struggle navigating the college bureaucracy. First-generation college students usually come from low-income families and they are often nontraditional students. Nontraditional students include older students, students enrolled part-time, working parents. It takes most nontraditional students much longer than four years to get their bachelor’s degree. This is why commencement means so much to them because walking on stage to get that diploma is like running through the finish line after a long, hard marathon. The term nontraditional student is a misnomer because the college population is changing. Increasingly, public institutions serve first-generation college students and nontraditional students. Our public higher education system, at least in California, is increasingly egalitarian.

Not only were there no graduation ceremonies this year, job prospects look bleak for the class of 2020. We are facing the weakest economy in our lifetime. Unemployment claims have skyrocketed to 27 million. It was already a struggle, prior to the coronavirus, for college students to find their first professional job after graduation. According to a 2018 Burning Glass Technologies and Strada Institute for the Future of Work report, roughly 43% of college graduates are underemployed in their first job after earning their degree. For first-generation college students, with limited social capital, it is even more difficult to get that first opportunity when their parents lack professional connections to help their children find a career-relevant job. As the old saying goes, talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has put a spotlight on other inequities in our society. As disaggregated COVID-19 data was released by race and ethnicity, it is evident that African Americans and Latinos have been disproportionately impacted by the illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists economic and social conditions as reasons for the health disparities. These include living conditions, work circumstances, underlying health conditions and access to care, all policy-related issues that negatively impact the poor. COVID-19 made it clear that the strong economy we were told we had prior to the pandemic was only working for some. Many low-income families were hanging by a thread. According to the Brookings Institution, wealth inequality in our country is on the rise. While the top 20% of families held 77% of total household wealth in 2016, the bottom 20% held 2%. This wealth inequality is bad for our country. This is extremely clear during a pandemic.

One way we can support the class of 2020 and also counter wealth inequality is by hiring first-generation college graduates. Broaden your recruitment efforts. Proactively share job opportunities in a broader way that gives first-generation college graduates a fair shot at working at your company. If you tend to recruit solely from elite universities, consider expanding to include any of the 23 Cal State University (CSU) campuses. Recruiting from CSU makes smart business sense, especially if a company has an eye to diversify its workforce. The CSU has one of the most diverse student bodies in the country. Its campuses consistently rank highly for academic excellence, value, sustainability and opportunity.

Also, understand what it means to be a first-generation college graduate. It means they may be lacking some information that parents who have white-collar jobs share with their children. Students may lack mentors, and they may not have held internships because they stayed working in their retail or restaurant jobs in order to pay the bills. Understand this growing population. They represent our future. When you help a first-generation college graduate start their career, you are not just offering a job opportunity, you are providing a pathway to upward mobility for them and their families.

As a society, we love the idea that anyone can make it in this country. But the American dream has become more difficult to achieve. Post-pandemic, we must do things differently to address wealth inequality. Let’s focus our efforts on upward social mobility by sharing job opportunities with those outside our social group. As Minnesotan Paul Wellstone said, “We all do better when we all do better.”