The Broken Relationship between Students, Alumni, and Career Services

Once, Swarthmore’s alumni network was a gold mine of opportunity. I saw firsthand as a student from 2014 to 2018 how alumni actively engaged with students, often opening doors to coveted career paths such as finance.

I remember walking into Shane Lounge during Garnet Weekend and being struck by a garment rack full of professional clothes—free for students who needed them. It was part of an initiative led by BoHee Yoon, a member of the Alumni Council, who introduced herself warmly. I did not know then that she was a high-powered and successful attorney; all I noticed was how genuinely she wanted to help. The experience left me with the impression that Swarthmore alumni were committed to lifting up the next generation of students.

Fast forward to today, and that sense of community has eroded. During a recent networking Zoom with a current student, I asked if he had attended Garnet Weekend. He had no idea what it was. “It seemed like something for athletes and students whose parents lived nearby,” he told me. As a student on financial aid from another state, he felt left out — disconnected from an event that was supposed to foster inclusion.

The contrast to my own experience was stark. In the mid-2010s, career paths felt accessible, fueled by a tight-knit alumni network that actively looked out for its own. There was an implicit belief that Swarthmore graduates were destined for success — “You’re smart, you have good ideas, and you’re a Swarthmore student — of course you’ll land a great job.”

Despite that optimism, my own post-grad reality was different. With degrees in the humanities and social sciences, I found myself shut out of roles at major nonprofits and think tanks. Employers advised me to get more “technical experience.” So I did what everyone was telling liberal arts grads to do: I learned to code. I spent three years struggling through a master’s program in programming and algorithms. It was far from easy, but it eventually led me to job stability. Other Swatties from humanities backgrounds have taken similar paths — bootcamps, startups, launching their own ventures — just to gain a foothold in a shifting job market. But not everyone has been so lucky. Many grads are still floundering, and when they reach out to the college for career support, it is like shouting into the void.

Swarthmore’s Career Services should be a bridge between students and alumni. Instead, it is a bottleneck. Alumni eager to mentor or offer jobs find themselves lost in bureaucratic purgatory. The problem is not that alums do not want to help — the college makes it too difficult to do so.

Consider these failures:

The internal alumni directory has been offline for six months longer than expected due to a data migration issue, making it harder for students and alums to connect.

The once-successful Externship program — a one-week mentored job-shadowing experience held in various locations across the country during winter break, through which I landed two internships — was shut down during the pandemic. Its replacement, SwatWorks, lacks essential in-person networking components.

Career Services over-relies on Handshake, a job platform now bloated with irrelevant postings. 

As an alum, I routinely receive job notifications for things like radiology technician positions—despite Swarthmore offering no allied health degrees. When students seek career guidance, they are simply told to “check Handshake.” It’s lazy, impersonal, and ineffective.

I have been raising these concerns for years through multiple alumni networks — including the LGBTQ+ and young alumni groups. Yet the institution’s response has been sluggish at best.

This is not a resource availability problem. Swarthmore is one of the wealthiest liberal arts colleges in the country. It has the prestige, the funding, and the alumni power to create a career pipeline that exceeds expectations. So what is stopping it?

We have been making some exciting progress through the Young Alumni Ambassadors Program (YAAP), including recent happy hours and regional events, but it is time for the administration to act and take a leading role. 

I recently met with the director of Career Services, Claire Klieger, who was generous enough to share the office’s latest data with me. She mentioned to me that despite Swarthmore’s immense resources, the Career Services staff is only a fraction of that of peer institutions, which partially explains some of the bureaucratic bottlenecks alums and students have been facing. 

Despite that staffing limitation, in many ways, the stats are impressive: high student satisfaction with SwatWorks micro-internships, a living strategic plan, and plenty of new tools accessible to students like Big Interview, and upcoming dashboards aimed at tracking alumni outcomes. There is also a commendable push to start career conversations earlier, evidenced by postcards to incoming first-years, leading to more one-on-one advising.

For students who respond to structured events and digital platforms like Handshake or SwatLink, these initiatives seem to offer a solid foundation. Still, I left the meeting with a nagging feeling: our conversation focused on the office’s overall success through data points, rather than how to plug in and activate alumni who simply want to pay it forward every once in a while. 

When I mentioned wanting more fluid alumni-student connections, I got thoughtful but platform-focused answers. SwatLink is great — especially with the new Job Search Discussion group—but it’s still a single online channel. Swarthmore has a wealth of alumni who are not on the Alumni Council and do not volunteer regularly but genuinely wish to offer career advice or job opportunities. Yet there is no obvious, low-barrier way to connect them with students.

The new dashboards, data points, and expanded programming show the college is working hard on career readiness. But while these metrics highlight what Career Services does well, they often overlook how “human” the network can (and should) be. Here are some critical blind spots:

Alumni Directory Downtime: It is an old complaint, but it has not been resolved. Without a functional directory, the college’s best resource — its people — remains underutilized.

Fewer In-Person Events: The absence of the annual Wall Street trip and the old Externship program leaves students without key face-to-face experiences.

Departmental Ties: Many academic departments keep informal alumni connections that never make it to Career Services. A coordinated push to integrate these departmental links would multiply networking opportunities.

Reliance on Handshake & Formal Structures: Handshake can be unwieldy, and its job listings often miss the mark for liberal arts grads. We need simpler channels for ad hoc collaborations, quick Q&As, and personal outreach.

Rather than just measuring how many students attend workshops, we should be asking:
When was the last time a student had a genuine, one-on-one conversation with an alum in their desired field? Do alumni feel that Career Services actively leverages their expertise or job leads? How easy is it for alums who aren’t formally volunteering to participate in a Q&A panel, host a few students for a weekend, or post a role at their company?

At its best, Swarthmore fosters deep relationships. That ethos doesn’t need to disappear when students and alumni leave campus—it can anchor a vibrant, lifelong network of support.

Here are some additional steps the college could take to immediately address the situation: 

1. Goal: Establish a formal partnership between the faculty/Provost’s Office and Career Services to create department-specific alumni career networks that offer mentorship, job referrals, and industry insights.
Success Indicator: Every department designates a faculty or staff liaison to work with Career Services, ensuring that alumni connections are actively maintained and utilized for student career support. Within one year, at least 75% of departments have an active alumni mentorship or career panel initiative.


2. Goal: Increase Career Service staffing, including a dedicated alumni liaison who actively facilitates connections between students and alumni in relevant career fields.
Success Indicator: Faster response times — within three business days — for alumni offering job opportunities and students seeking career advice.

3. Goal: Relaunch an externship-style program with a focus on in-person opportunities in high-demand industries.
Success Indicator: At least 100 students securing externships annually within two years of implementation.

4. Goal: Ensure students from low-income or other historically underrepresented backgrounds have equal access to networking and career opportunities.
Success Indicator: A 25% increase in first-generation and financial aid students reporting successful alumni mentorship connections and career placements.

Swarthmore students and graduates deserve better. Alumni are ready to step up. The real question is: Will the college let us?

If you are a student, alum, or faculty member who is interested in continuing the conversation, please feel free to email me at rzipp1@alum.swarthmore.edu.