"Colleges and other educational institutions can influence which students get the more highly-skilled jobs that are available. But colleges and other educational institutions cannot, to a significant extent, affect the number of jobs that are available - highly skilled or otherwise," writes Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute. "This truth is obvious in our current economic crisis. Nobody can seriously believe that if colleges made graduates more attractive job candidates, this would cause the unemployment rate for college graduates to fall. If employers are now filling vacancies for recent college graduates in a number equal to only 20% of their class, surely this is not because graduates are insufficiently attractive as candidates. The unemployment rate for those with a college degree (including both mature workers and recent graduates) was 4.8% in May, up from 2.1% at the start of the recession, and higher than at any time since 1979."