Higher education has been lauded, for better or for worse, as one of the best paths to a career. This makes some sense: A significant percentage of today’s jobs require bachelor’s degrees, and workers with four-year degrees earn higher wages than those with less education experience. While more than 80 percent of students cite the prospect of a job as a critical factor in their decision to enroll in college, few feel confident once they’re enrolled in their ability to participate in the job market and the workplace (34 percent and 36 percent, respectively), according to nationally representative findings outlined in a new report by Gallup and the Strada Education Network.

Gallup and Strada reached out to students currently enrolled across 43 randomly selected colleges and universities, both public and private. The survey found that, after creating or updating a resume, students tend to use some of career centers’ least beneficial services—taking a skills test, for example—more than they do the more beneficial ones. Fewer than 20 percent of undergraduate students reach out to their school’s career centers for advice on finding jobs or finding and applying to graduate programs, both of which the recent report identifies as some of a center’s most valuable services. Often, students instead consult with friends and family members about important decisions that can determine employment, such as choosing a major.

College students’ failure to fully capitalize on their career center’s services in their pursuit of a job is not a new problem. But this tendency could help explain why so few students are confident they’ll graduate with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the job market—this at a time when it’s especially important for millennials to secure a comfortable income after college, as they’re entering a world with fewer robust safety nets, such as social security, and skyrocketing housing prices.

On top of that, droves of college students continue to graduate with crippling debt. And report after report has found that automation, and new technology more broadly, will make it harder and harder for people to find well-paying work. New technologies are already eliminating certain jobs and are predicted to get rid of additional ones; sectors such as commercial driving and retail sales could start seeing job losses due to automation as soon as 2020. College graduates will be better off than their peers who are less educated because the former more often than not land white-collar jobs, which are not immediately threatened by automation. Still, even white-collar employers are poised to start chipping away at the cushioning they historically provided to workers with four-year degrees: Some of those companies are increasingly encouraged to look toward workforce-development programs, such as apprenticeships, rather than colleges for candidates, given bachelor’s recipients’ lack of work readiness and high salary expectations.