Students said they wanted virtual career fairs. Then they stopped going.

What students said

Handshake surveyed 2,400 students, nearly 500 employers and about 500 higher education professionals in May 2021. Fifty-eight percent of Black students preferred virtual career fairs over in-person events, against 44% of white students. Fifty-five percent of women preferred virtual interviews, against 41% of men. Fifty-seven percent of Black students said in-person events tend to get taken over by the most extroverted and aggressive candidates, a view shared by 38% of white students. Students from underrepresented groups were more likely to say virtual fairs let them be noticed and more likely to apply for a job after a virtual event.

An earlier Handshake survey that February found 48.7% of students felt less intimidated meeting employers virtually and 44.5% appreciated fewer scheduling barriers. It also found more than half worried about communicating effectively online (52.2%) and about failing to make a real connection with a recruiter (52.8%). Seventy percent thought employers would have to participate in virtual fairs going forward.

At the time, 97% of institutions and 93% of employers said their fall fairs would be virtual or hybrid.

What attendance did

NACE's 2024-25 Career Services Benchmarks survey tracked what happened next. Median student attendance at virtual fairs fell from 295 in 2021-22 to 93 in 2023-24. Median organization attendance at virtual fairs dropped by 37. In-person fairs went the other way: median students rose from 419 to 700, median organizations from 98.5 to 109. For 2024-25, 93.9% of responding career centers planned to hold in-person fairs. NACE's own reading is that the attendance figures reflect the format preferences of both employers and students.

Why both are true

The 2021 survey measured preference under pandemic conditions. The comparison students were making was virtual against nothing, or virtual against a health risk. Asked in that context whether they preferred a virtual fair, a lot of people said yes for reasons that had little to do with the format's merits.

Preferring a format isn't the same as wanting to attend. Virtual removed the social cost of a career fair. It also removed most of the reason to go. Students attend fairs to meet the employers who might hire them, and employers moved their serious presence back to campus. Organization attendance at virtual fairs fell before student attendance did. Students followed the employers.

There's also a plain measurement point. Stated preference under one set of conditions doesn't predict behavior under another. Nearly every survey of intended behavior overstates it, and a 2021 survey about a pandemic-era format was always going to age badly.

The part that shouldn't get lost

The 2021 finding was never really about format. It was about who gets seen. Students from underrepresented groups said in-person fairs reward the loudest people in the room and that a virtual format let them get a recruiter's attention on something closer to equal terms. That problem didn't disappear when attendance recovered. The in-person fair that 700 students now attend is the same format 57% of Black students described as getting hijacked.

If a career center cuts the virtual fair because 93 people came, it has removed a format some students said worked better for them without doing anything about why the in-person one didn't.

What this means for career services

Don't run the virtual fair as a smaller copy of the in-person one. That version gets 93 people and confirms the case for cutting it. The things students actually valued in virtual formats, scheduled one-to-one conversations, less intimidation, reach to employers who can't travel, all survive as features without needing a full fair around them.

Fix the in-person problem directly. Timed slots instead of open queues. Pre-scheduled conversations for students who sign up. Quieter formats alongside the main floor. Recruiters told to work a list rather than the line. The complaint in the 2021 data was specific enough to act on.

Measure attendance by segment. The aggregate went from 419 to 700 and looks like success. Whether first-generation students, international students, or students from underrepresented groups came back at the same rate is a different question, and the total can't answer it.

And ask students now. The 2021 survey is the most-cited evidence on this question and it's five years old. A center that runs its own preference survey each year has a better instrument than any national figure.

What would change this reading

A current, well-designed student survey showing virtual still preferred by a majority would reopen the question. Virtual attendance recovering across NACE's next benchmarks would too. If in-person attendance by segment turns out to be flat while the total rose, the equity concern becomes the main story rather than a footnote.