The Market Is Grading Degrees — and Failing Them
A new study from secondhand fashion marketplace Depop, shared exclusively with Fortune, delivers a pointed verdict on American higher education: the classroom is losing ground to the marketplace.
According to the research, 71% of Gen Z sellers say running an online resale business on platforms like Depop or Vinted taught them more practical business knowledge than their formal education. Hiring managers, for their part, are not disputing the claim.
85% of hiring managers say candidates should be listing resale experience on their résumés — and they would be more likely to interview an equally qualified candidate who had it over one who did not.
The numbers get sharper from there. When asked which experience would most impress them in an entry-level candidate, 65% of hiring managers pointed to resale. Traditional internships came in at just 46%. Retail and hospitality work landed at 39%, and social media management at 35%.
Depop top seller Max Hunt told the company that thrifting his clothes 'helped me pay for gas, contribute toward my college expenses, and develop skills in branding, marketing, customer service, and entrepreneurship.'
Depop CEO Peter Semple framed it plainly: 'For years we've watched people come to Depop to earn an income through creativity and entrepreneurship, but what often goes unnoticed are the professional skills they're building along the way.'
Skills That Classrooms Are Not Delivering
Depop's research catalogued what sellers are actually learning: pricing strategy, sales, budgeting, negotiation, customer service, and marketing. More than nine in ten hiring managers said a successful resale account demonstrates entrepreneurial ability and initiative. A further 88% said it shows commercial awareness, and 87% said it builds transferable workplace skills.
Yet 49% of young resellers did not realize their experience carried any professional weight at all — a gap that suggests universities have done a poor job of connecting students to the real economy.
Great Place to Work CEO Michael Bush, whose organization surveys tens of thousands of companies annually, told Fortune that degrees have become 'completely irrelevant' to the firms on his rankings. 'They're not even talking about degrees now,' he said. 'They're talking about skills.'
Employers are simultaneously flagging that recent graduates cannot speak up in meetings, conduct presentations, or communicate professionally — basic workplace competencies that four-year programs are apparently not delivering.
A third of graduates now admit their degree was not financially worth it. Fourteen percent say student-loan debt forced them to delay moving out of their parents' home and starting a family.
The Editorial Read
The numbers here are not subtle. When 85% of hiring managers prefer a candidate who ran a small online business over one who completed a traditional internship, the market has already voted on the value of credentialism. Free enterprise, as it tends to do, found a more efficient path: real pricing decisions, real customers, real consequences.
The deeper story is what this says about the $1.7 trillion student-loan apparatus and the institutions it underwrites. Young Americans were sold a credential at enormous personal cost, and the employers waiting on the other end are increasingly unimpressed. A Depop storefront, it turns out, teaches supply and demand better than a semester of lectures about it. Capital rewards clear rules — and the clearest rule in any market is that results speak louder than résumés.
