Our Mission

Overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.

COOP is building a diverse movement of upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections. We want to reignite our nation’s promise of upward mobility for those who strive to achieve a brighter future for themselves and their families—to ensure the American Dream is a reality for all. Our Fellowship ensures that first-gen and low-income college graduates make the connections they need for the careers they deserve.

The Challenge

Every year, one million first-generation and low-income students graduate from college believing that a bachelor’s degree will provide long-term economic wellbeing for themselves and their families.

A shocking number never realize this promise. Despite the incredible amount of time and resources they invest in getting a bachelor’s degree, one year out of college, half of these graduates will be un-/underemployed and two-thirds will remain so five years later.

The pervasiveness of underemployment fuels downward mobility. People who are underemployed earn $10K less per year than folks who are appropriately employed. That’s half a million dollars over the course of a 50-year career.

Furthermore, informal relationships dominate our labor market. Yet, networks are not distributed equally—this is the Network Gap: “Where you grow up, where you go to school, and where you work can give you up to a 12x advantage in gaining access to opportunity.”

We know underemployed grads have the skills and drive to succeed, but they don’t have someone to pull them into a meaningful career. Even in the digital economy, a bachelor’s degree is not enough. We need social capital—connections, casual favors, timely referrals—as much as we need skills.

Our Solution

Graph with our solution including near-peer connections, alumni coaches, and focus on full-time jobs. COOP's social-capital program: Peer connections for economic mobility. Alumni coaches, skills, and networks for good jobs.

COOP closes the social capital gap and propels underemployed college graduates into upward economic mobility through an untapped lever of social-capital building: peer connections. 

Our unique program model matches peer cohorts of motivated college graduates with alumni coaches to support them in building the professional skills and networks they need to get their first good job after graduation. 

We connect un-/underemployed college graduates to one another—within cohorts and across “generations” of cohorts. By growing their peer professional networks, members of our community achieve upward economic mobility by building the skills and connections they need for the careers they deserve.

Our Fellowship for underemployed graduates has produced compelling wage outcomes for thousands of first-generation and Pell recipient grads in New York, California, Illinois, and Florida. Within 12 months of program completion, three out of four COOP alumni are fully employed, earning an average of $50,000 per year (median pre-program earnings are $12,000 per year). 

We imagine a world in which peer and near-peer connections are the primary drivers to overcoming underemployment—a world in which thousands and thousands of first-generation college grads are fully employed sooner because of their web of peer connections through their COOP network.