High school counselors are on the front lines of selling the college dream, but if you ask many of them these days, they’ll say it’s getting harder. On one hand, it’s their job to sell college as the ticket to a family-sustaining career. But the conflicting narratives have become challenging, confusing and downright stressful. One narrative: 70% of “good jobs” require a four-year degree. The other narrative is that college is too expensive; it isn’t worth it.
At one high school I visited recently, a fiercely devoted college prep school, two students told me their teachers recommended that they think twice before attending college because the the teachers were still paying off loans. Fear of debt is the number one reason I hear from students about why even some academically prepared kids are stepping back. The second most common reason in surveys and my interviews is relevance. Surveys suggest Gen Z students see many more ways to learn skills for work than a four-year degree path. They seek meaningful engagement in a post-pandemic world, but they also learn how to get along without it, and some can’t imagine sitting at a desk for four more years after high school.
The dilemma for advisors
This creates an advising dilemma for high schools. They now see significantly fewer students opting to attend degree programs after graduation than 15 years ago. But what alternative paths can counselors recommend without being accused of “tracking,” the much-maligned practice of advising students toward a non-college path?
Families know about trade school. About 15% of students, mostly white males, historically choose that route. But in the age of AI, YouTube, boot camps and apprenticeships, the lines between blue-collar and white-collar jobs have blurred. So many more opportunities don’t require a bachelor’s or associate’s degree. The problem is that these other paths to potentially well-paying jobs are underdeveloped, underpublicized, underfunded and undervalued.
It is striking that if you have time to be a full-time student, you can go to college with no plan for your future and get federal financial aid. However, suppose you are a single mom (as 20% of women undergraduates are) and want a shorter training route, like a six-month credential to become a cloud computing specialist or a health care radiation technician. In that case, these shorter-term programs don’t qualify for federal financial aid at many colleges.
Time to redefine education
It is time to redefine college to include an array of non-degree programs and other paths to prepare for the professional workforce. Advisors need help to better advise students about the changing nature of career pathways. Sixty-two percent of American adults don’t have a four-year degree. Forty million Americans started the college gauntlet and didn’t finish. How are we helping them prepare for jobs of the future and upskill if, as studies suggest, the expiration date for most skills is now about five years? Our future of skills and work suggests that a train-and-retrain model makes more sense than a one-and-done college degree approach.
One answer is to provide advisors with better resources to track the local and national options their students might consider beyond degree tracks.
I recently followed one group, Willow Education, as they piloted a new advising platform at several high schools. They built a curated directory of local options across an expanding array of apprenticeships, nonprofit-led boot camps, career discovery programs and shorter-term pathways colleges offer. They also provide return-on-investment figures, which the students found helpful.
The College Board’s BigFuture app, which millions of students use. has also begun to include professional paths to employment alongside college options. This was a big admission on the part of the 100-year-old College Board — perhaps we have come to the point where college can be redefined more broadly.
Finding micro pathways to careers
On the program expansion front, community colleges are building their certificate programs and linking them to financial aid. One hundred community colleges are piloting six-month to one-year fast-track micro pathways to get started on a career. Apprenticeship programs, some starting in high school, are still few. Still, a new group, Apprenticeships for America, is trying to help states and intermediaries build these pre-packaged career tracks in industries well beyond construction and electrical work. Insurance companies, financial services, consulting firms and Amazon are all starting apprenticeship programs to “fish upstream” for the best talent.
At the high-school level, more districts are thinking holistically about their career and technical education programs, making classes and industry certifications available alongside college prep courses. New York City, for example, is piloting a new initiative called FutureReadyNYC, which blends school and the workplace for everyone from the beginning of high school and is now in over 15% of the city’s high schools.
It is time to think about high school as a means to multiple ends. Career exposure, hands-on learning, certifications to build earnings power, and/or a path to the shrinking number of careers that only a degree can unlock. Within a decade, college will look more like a stepladder where learners and earners can level up rather than a ship you must catch before it sets sail. High schools are thinking more broadly. Colleges offer more college “products,” and ecosystems are stepping up to support a new paradigm. The new paradigm is a “yes and” paradigm that embraces college and/or other pathways instead of college or bust.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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