Talk to any recent college graduate, and chances are they’ve either planned to move back in with their parents or relatives after graduating, or they know someone who has.
According to a study by Sallie Mae and Ipsos, 64% of college graduates in America who concluded their undergraduate education within the past two years are living with their parents. Among those graduates surveyed within the past five years (who represent colleges and universities across America), 58% say they’re living at home because they cannot afford their own place.
The housing crisis is not unique to recent graduates. Many factors, including high interest rates and a housing shortage, have rendered housing unaffordable for many Americans.
According to the Searchlight Institute, 79% of Americans say housing prices are “too high” or “way too high.” This poll states that 62% of Americans say it’s become harder to find affordable housing over the past three years. The most recent Federal Reserve survey found that the median home was worth more than 4.6 times the median family income, a historic high.
“Financial markets by nature don’t usually care much about the affordability crisis,” Economics Prof. Brendan Cushing-Daniels said. “Investors are seeking high returns, and if those come through maintaining a shortage of affordable housing, so be it.”
Now more than ever, America needs financial professionals who are ready to innovate and find creative solutions to these ongoing issues.
Gettysburg’s new finance program, unveiled during the fall 2025 semester, arms graduates with the skills to approach this complex array of challenges. Through coursework in the liberal arts that builds knowledge, skills, and experience, Gettysburg graduates are prepared to address these issues head-on as the next generation of real estate and finance professionals.
Classroom preparation
Economics major Will Lightcap ’26 took advantage of various course offerings that set him apart as a candidate in the real estate industry. An incoming industrial sales associate at the Philadelphia-based real estate brokerage firm Binswanger, Lightcap said the Real Estate Finance course taught by Finance Prof. Sabur Mollah allowed him to learn real-world skills.
“The Real Estate Finance course is about putting together real-life concepts into financial modeling,” he said. “That’s really helped strengthen my real estate skills, because we’re doing a project in that course where we underwrite properties in the [Philadelphia] area, making our own offer memorandum.”
Lightcap wrote a research paper for another economics course on the effects of home values and affordability on vacancy rates. In that course, he learned to conduct statistical analysis using Stata, alongside learning Excel in his Introduction to Finance course.
“These courses taught me to think analytically and quantitatively. The numbers have to tell a story,” Lightcap said. “You’ve got to be a numbers person in real estate.”
Will Hedley ’26, also an economics major, found that learning a combination of enduring skills, such as communication, and industry-specific skills, such as data analysis, gave him a leg up during his internship with First National Bank.
“I had to do a presentation with two other interns, and I could tell the difference in terms of how comfortable we were with presenting,” he said. “Our courses teach us to take the data and statistics from projects that we work on and then present them very efficiently.”
Julie Breedveld ’26, a business, organizations, and management major, said the experiential learning she gained through the Emerging Leadership Development Program at Vanguard strengthened her leadership, teamwork, and communication skills.
“Looking ahead, I am pursuing a career in finance and will be continuing with Vanguard through its two-year Emerging Leaders Development Program, a rotational program designed to build both leadership and technical skills across different areas of the firm,” she said. “Learning how to analyze complex problems, collaborate with diverse teams, and make disciplined decisions will continue to shape how I approach my remaining studies and my future career in finance.”
A liberal arts impact
While much of the finance coursework focuses on skill-building and career preparation, Cushing-Daniels emphasizes that the curriculum also gives students the confidence and space to problem-solve and test out creative ideas.
“Many of the world’s most important innovations have come from folks with both top-notch technical skills and keenly sharpened creative abilities,” he said.
The flexibility of the liberal arts allowed corporate and real estate lawyer Farhad Eshaghpour ’91 to find a career path he was passionate about in law. His openness to change and ability to adapt to the market eventually led Eshaghpour to real estate.
“The truth is that the liberal arts education let me try a bit of everything until I figured it out,” said Eshaghpour. While he still practices law, both in the transactional and litigation field, he is pursuing his other passion, restoring and managing historic landmark properties. “My career journey has been so much better because of the influence of the liberal arts education.”
Both creative and analytical know-how are critical to pursuing today’s real estate industry. According to Carter Sackman ’86,
president of real estate development company Sackman Enterprises, today’s graduates need to be prepared for a more complex landscape than the one he encountered when he graduated.
“There’s a lot more red tape and regulations than when I first started. I think it’s harder for people today,” Sackman said. “Overwhelming and ineffective regulation exacerbates the affordability problem and reduces housing stock.”
Christina Kellar ’15, a solutions strategist and portfolio manager who has worked at T. Rowe Price Associates for 10 years, is responsible for investment decisions from a multi-asset perspective. She is not only involved in the work of investing but also in communicating with clients, ranging from beginning to experienced investors.
At Gettysburg, Kellar learned to be adaptable through her liberal arts education, tailoring her studies to the career she sought.
“My math studies in Gettysburg prepared me well from a quantitative perspective. When I started having my eye toward a career in finance, I added an economics minor in addition to a Spanish minor and refined my math major to be more applied than theoretical,” she said.
To succeed in this rapidly changing field, Kellar credits Gettysburg for the “multifaceted education” that provided the technical knowledge—the math of investing—as well as the skills of communication, connection, resiliency, and problem solving.
Challenges like the housing crisis and the growing regulations in the real estate industry require problem solvers who can view situations from multiple lenses.
“I think about majors and disciplines as lenses to the world,” Cushing-Daniels said. “The housing crisis is one problem that requires folks to think about the sociology of neighborhoods, the public policy around land development, and how we might finance the investment in new or different housing models.”
by Phoebe Doscher '22
Posted: 03/12/26