The Career Navigation Crisis Is a Symptom. The Disease Is Career Permanence.
The Wrong Problem
American education has become increasingly concerned with what many are calling a career navigation crisis. And it should. Students report feeling unprepared for life after high school. As someone who has spent time in Career and Technical Education, I can confirm they are. Parents struggle to understand the growing number of postsecondary pathways available to their children. Rightfully so. Counselors are overwhelmed by impossible one-to-many caseloads. I've seen it firsthand. Employers continue to complain that graduates lack workplace readiness. In many cases, they're right. Policymakers and education leaders have responded by calling for more career counseling, better labor market information, expanded credentialing pathways, stronger advising systems, and greater investments in career exploration programs. Those are sensible responses to a real problem.
However, I'm no longer convinced we are diagnosing the right problem.
The more I examine the growing conversation around career navigation, the more I find myself asking a different question: What if students are struggling to navigate because we keep handing them a map designed for a world that no longer exists?
FutureEd's recent report, The Crisis in Career Navigation, presents a compelling case that many young people lack the information, support, and experiences necessary to make informed decisions about their futures. The report identifies significant gaps in students' understanding of available career pathways, persistent challenges connecting education to workforce opportunities, and a fragmented ecosystem of labor market information, credentials, employers, and institutions that often leaves students and families attempting to navigate an increasingly complex landscape on their own. As someone who has spent time as a career and technical educator, I found little in the report's diagnosis that seemed unreasonable. Too many students graduate high school uncertain about what comes next. Too many parents lack awareness of alternatives beyond traditional college pathways. Too many counselors are expected to guide hundreds of students simultaneously while serving as academic advisers, mental health supports, crisis responders, and career coaches. The crisis described by FutureEd is valid.
What I found myself questioning, however, was whether career navigation itself is the crisis or whether it has become the most visible symptom of a much deeper problem. Reading The Crisis in Career Navigation alongside FutureEd's earlier report from May 2025 on the emerging micro-credential movement in K-12 education, I kept returning to the same thought: perhaps navigation has become difficult because the map itself is outdated. For decades, conversations about college and career readiness have operated under a set of assumptions that are no longer "givens." Embedded within much of American education is the belief that young people are preparing for a future that can be reasonably anticipated. Students are expected to explore options, identify interests, pursue education aligned to those interests, enter a profession, and progressively build expertise over the course of a career. The model is so familiar that it rarely attracts scrutiny within education. Familiarity should never be mistaken for relevance. Some of the most consequential assumptions in education persist not because they remain true, but because they have gone unquestioned for so long.
The labor market that gave rise to those assumptions is disappearing. According to workforce data highlighted by the World Economic Forum, the average American will hold between 12 and 15 jobs by age fifty-five. More importantly, many workers will move between entirely different careers over the course of their lives. The notion that someone will identify a profession at eighteen, prepare for it through a predictable sequence of education and training, and remain within that field until retirement increasingly feels like a relic from a different economic era. Despite this shift, much of our educational infrastructure continues to operate as though stability remains the norm rather than the exception.
This disconnect becomes especially apparent when we examine how schools discuss the future with students. Career exploration often begins with what appears to be a harmless question: What do you want to be when you grow up? The question sounds innocent, but hidden within it is an assumption that adulthood is primarily about arriving at a stable professional identity. It assumes that somewhere out there exists a role, title, or occupation that a young person should identify and pursue. Increasingly, however, adulthood appears to be defined by something very different. The workers who thrive in today's economy are often those who can adapt, reinvent themselves, acquire new skills, and create value in changing environments. The future workforce may require far less certainty than our educational system is currently built around and perpetuates.
This is one of the reasons I find myself pushing back on the growing narrative that students have unrealistic aspirations when they want to pursue careers traditional education is ill equipped to prepare them for. For example, one of the more concerns raised in workforce development conversations is the growing number of young people who express interest in becoming content creators, influencers, entrepreneurs, streamers, or digital business owners. Critics are quick to point out that while more than 127 million people identify as creators, a significant percentage earn less than $15,000 annually. The assertion is that students are chasing unrealistic dreams and would be better served by focusing on more traditional career pathways. I understand the concern, but I think it misses the more important question. The issue is not whether students are realistic. The issue is why so many students are attracted to these pathways in the first place.
Young people tend to aspire toward what they see. Previous generations grew up observing teachers, doctors, lawyers, tradespeople, and corporate professionals. Today's students spend countless hours consuming content created by entrepreneurs, creators, consultants, small business owners, and individuals who have built audiences and businesses through digital platforms. Whether adults approve of those pathways is almost beside the point. Students are responding to the economic environment they observe around them. If anything, their aspirations may reveal that they are paying closer attention to emerging forms of work than many of the institutions responsible for preparing them. The problem is not that students want to become creators. The problem is that our educational systems remain far more comfortable preparing students for twentieth-century professions than twenty-first-century forms of work.
This is where I believe the conversation around career navigation is incomplete. FutureEd correctly identifies a growing gap between students and opportunity, but beneath that gap sits a more fundamental tension. We continue organizing education around career certainty while the labor market increasingly rewards career adaptability. We continue encouraging students to identify destinations while entering an economy defined by transitions. We continue discussing career readiness as though preparation is something that happens once rather than something that must occur continuously throughout a lifetime. In that sense, the career navigation crisis may be real, but it is also a symptom. The deeper crisis is that American education remains largely organized around the idea of career permanence at the exact moment when permanence is becoming one of the least reliable assumptions a young person can make about their future.
The Tyranny of Career Certainty
The more I think about the conversation surrounding career navigation, the more convinced I become that the challenge originates from an embedded assumption that few people question anymore: the belief that education's primary responsibility is helping students identify a career and prepare for it. At first glance, that objective has served our economy well since the investment of formal education. And, careers have long been viewed as the organizing principle of adult life. We ask children what they want to be when they grow up. We encourage teenagers to explore occupations. We ask college students to select majors that align with future professions. We build guidance systems, academic programs, credentialing pathways, and workforce initiatives around the idea that somewhere ahead exists a destination students should identify and work toward.
However, the problem is that it was designed for a labor market that no longer exists.
Even the language we use reveals how deeply this assumption is embedded within our thinking. Merriam-Webster defines a career as "a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling." Another definition describes a career as "a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement." Both definitions imply continuity. Both assume a relatively stable professional identity. Both suggest that adulthood involves finding one's place within an occupational structure and advancing through it over time.
Yet that vision of work feels disconnected from the realities confronting workers today.
According to workforce data highlighted by the World Economic Forum, the average American will hold between twelve and fifteen jobs by age fifty-five. Most people won't simply move between employers. They will move between occupations, industries, and entirely different forms of work. Some will spend years inside traditional organizations before launching businesses of their own. Others will move between corporate employment, consulting, freelancing, entrepreneurship, and project-based work. Increasingly, the modern workforce is characterized not by permanence but by transition.
This raises a question that I believe sits at the center of the career navigation debate.
If the average worker is likely to experience multiple careers over the course of a lifetime, why are we still organizing educational systems around helping students identify a single one?
For decades, we have conditioned students to believe that educational success depends on making the right choice. The right major. The right degree. The right pathway. The right profession. The underlying message has remained remarkably consistent: if students can simply make the correct decision early enough, future success will follow. What receives far less attention is the possibility that the labor market now rewards a different capability altogether. Not certainty. Adaptability.
This distinction matters because adaptability isn't just a workplace skill. It is the skill that determines whether all other skills remain relevant. Technical knowledge matters. Credentials matter. Degrees matter. But the ability to continuously acquire new knowledge, adjust to changing conditions, transfer competencies across contexts, and reinvent oneself professionally may matter even more. Particularly in the age of AI.
Ironically, conversations surrounding career readiness continue to focus on helping students identify stable destinations at precisely the moment stability itself is becoming harder to find.
The consequences of this misalignment are at the heart of the career navigation issue.
Consider higher education. For generations, policymakers promoted what became known as the "college-for-all" movement. The logic made sense then. Postsecondary education historically created pathways into higher-paying professions and expanded access to economic opportunity. If college graduates earned more on average than non-graduates, increasing college participation appeared to be the straightforward solution.
Over time, however, enrollment itself became the measure of success.
Schools celebrated acceptance rates. Districts highlighted college-going statistics. Policymakers focused on expanding access. Somewhere along the way, a subtle but important shift occurred. We began treating enrollment as though it were an outcome rather than the beginning of a process.
Recent labor market data suggests that approximately 42 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed, working in positions that typically don't require a bachelor's degree. That figure should force a difficult conversation. Not because college lacks value. Not because higher education no longer matters. But because it raises fundamental questions about whether we have confused educational attainment with workforce preparedness. A student can successfully navigate high school, gain admission to college, earn a degree, and still struggle to find work aligned with their education. If that sounds like a workforce problem, it is. But it's also very much a primary school educational problem.
The issue becomes even more concerning when viewed alongside another statistic. Nearly one-third of college students reportedly never use their institution's career center. Think about that for a beat. We have spent decades encouraging students to pursue higher education as a pathway to economic mobility, yet a substantial percentage of those students never engage with one of the primary resources designed to help them connect education to employment.
That reality suggests that the career navigation problem does not begin in high school and magically resolve itself in college. The problem persists because it reflects a broader disconnect between education and work.
The irony is that colleges and universities are now confronting some of the same challenges facing K-12 education. Both systems were largely built around assumptions of labor market stability. Both were designed during periods when occupational pathways were easier to anticipate. Both increasingly face pressure to demonstrate relevance within an economy characterized by tech acceleration, shifting employer demands, and growing uncertainty about which skills will remain valuable over time.
This tension becomes particularly visible when we examine the growing conversation around credentials.
One of the more striking findings highlighted in the report is there are now approximately 1.8 million credentials offered by more than 134,000 providers across the United States. At first glance, this appears to be evidence of innovation. More pathways. More opportunities. More flexibility. More options for learners. Yet, variety and many choices create their own challenges.
Students, parents, educators, counselors, and employers are expected to navigate an ecosystem so crowded that determining which credentials matter is dang near impossible. Every credential claims value. Every provider promises opportunity. Every pathway markets itself as relevant to the future of work.
The instinctive response is to search for greater standardization. Better rankings. Better validation systems. More transparency. While those efforts may be helpful, I am not convinced they fully address the underlying issue either.
Ultimately, the value of a credential is determined by whether it helps someone create value in the labor market. And already noted, labor markets themselves are changing.
This is why I find it difficult to accept the idea that some centralized authority will eventually determine which credentials matter and which don’t. Employers sit closest to performance outcomes. They are the ones observing which skills translate into results. They are the ones adapting to changing technologies, changing markets, and changing business expectations. The credentialing marketplace may be chaotic, but that chaos may itself be a reflection of a labor market still trying to determine what future workforce value actually looks like.
The same uncertainty affects career counselors.
Another statistic from the FutureEd report that stood out to me is that only four states, Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Colorado, currently meet the American School Counselor Association's recommended ratio of 250 students per counselor. If counselors are responsible for helping students navigate increasingly complex educational and workforce pathways, states gotta get their ducks in a row. Counselors are the artery that help explain why so many students feel disconnected from meaningful guidance.
At the same time, I think there is another question worth asking.
Even if every state met the recommended ratio tomorrow, would counselors themselves possess the information necessary to guide students toward the full range of emerging opportunities available in today's economy?
My own experience suggests the answer is complicated.
Many counselors are exceptional professionals working within difficult circumstances. But many were trained within systems that continue to view postsecondary education as the primary pathway to success. Entrepreneurship often remains an afterthought (I have a lot to say about that, but that's a separate post in and of itself). Portfolio careers receive limited attention. Emerging forms of digital work rarely occupy the center of career conversations. Students interested in building businesses, developing audiences, creating content, or pursuing unconventional pathways are frequently encouraged to treat those aspirations as side projects rather than legitimate economic opportunities.
That perspective may have made sense twenty years ago. Today, not so much.
The deeper issue is that we continue trying to help students identify certainty within a labor market increasingly defined by uncertainty. We continue asking them to answer questions that many adults can't answer for themselves. We continue building systems designed to guide students toward destinations while the economy increasingly rewards people who can navigate transitions.
Before we can help students navigate effectively, we may need to confront a more uncomfortable reality. The challenge isn't that students do not know where they are going. The challenge is that many of the institutions responsible for guiding them are still operating as though the destination is the most important part of the journey.
The Most Important Number in the Report Is 2%
If there is one statistic from the broader conversation around career navigation that should stop educators, policymakers, workforce development leaders, and employers in their tracks, it isn't counselor ratios. It's not even the growing number of credentials available to students. It's 2 percent. According to research cited by American Student Assistance, only 2 percent of American high school students complete an internship before graduation. For all the conversations we have about workforce readiness, college and career preparedness, employability skills, economic mobility, and labor market alignment, only a tiny fraction of students are actually participating in the type of experience most likely to help them understand the realities of work itself. That statistic should fundamentally alter how we think about the career navigation debate because it suggests that we're undoubtedly framing the problem incorrectly. For years, education has largely approached career readiness as an information problem. Students need more advising. More career exploration. More labor market information. More pathway awareness. More counseling. More guidance. While all of those interventions have value, they are substitutes for something far more powerful: direct exposure to work itself.
There is a significant difference between learning about careers and experiencing them. A student can complete a career interest inventory and discover they have an aptitude for healthcare. They can watch videos about nursing, physical therapy, radiology, or healthcare administration. They can research salaries, educational requirements, credentialing pathways, and projected job growth. They can attend career fairs, hear guest speakers, and participate in classroom lessons about healthcare occupations. Yet none of those experiences replicate what happens when a student spends meaningful time inside a healthcare environment observing professionals, interacting with patients, navigating workplace expectations, and witnessing firsthand what the work actually entails. The same principle applies across industries. Students don't develop workplace readiness by hearing about work. They develop workplace readiness by working.
That distinction may seem obvious, but much of our educational infrastructure continues to behave as though awareness and exposure are interchangeable. Career awareness helps students understand what is possible. Career exposure helps students understand what is real. The difference matters because careers aren't collections of skills or credentials. They're environments. They're cultures. They're expectations. They're relationships. They're daily routines, tradeoffs, pressures, and responsibilities that can't be fully understood through a lesson plan, a software platform, or a labor market presentation. A student may think they want to become a teacher until they spend time inside a classroom. Another may believe they have no interest in manufacturing until they see a modern advanced manufacturing facility. A third may discover a passion for logistics, healthcare, marketing, cybersecurity, or entrepreneurship only after being exposed to professional environments that had previously been invisible to them.
This is one of the reasons I believe the conversation around career navigation often misses the most important issue. We have spent decades investing in career awareness while dramatically underinvesting in career exposure. We continue building systems designed to tell students about opportunities rather than ensuring they experience them. As a result, many young people are asked to make consequential decisions about education, employment, and debt without ever having spent meaningful time in the environments those decisions are intended to support. We expect students to choose pathways before they have had sufficient opportunities to understand what those pathways actually look like live.
One of the most compelling examples highlighted in FutureEd's report comes from Cajon Valley Union School District's World of Work model. Superintendent David Miyashiro explained that students spend approximately 40 percent of their time engaged in community-based work learning experiences. Not some students. Every student. Embedded within that statement is a fundamentally different philosophy on education. The district isn't treating career readiness as an add-on, an elective, or a specialized program reserved for a subset of learners. It is treating workforce exposure as an essential component of what education itself should accomplish. That distinction is important because it forces us to confront a reality that many school systems continue to avoid. Every student will eventually need to sustain themselves economically. Every student will eventually enter the workforce in some form. Every student will need to understand how to create value for others. Yet we often structure educational experiences as though workforce preparation is a specialized concern rather than a universal one.
This is why I find myself believing that every school should, to some degree, function as a Career and Technical Education school. That statement is misunderstood as an argument that every student should enter a trade or pursue technical education at the expense of academics. That's not what I'm saying. Rather, it's an acknowledgment that workforce development isn't a niche educational function. It is a universal responsibility. Students need strong academic foundations, but they also need opportunities to apply those foundations in real-world contexts. They need exposure to professional environments. They need opportunities to understand how organizations function. They need to learn how communication, collaboration, accountability, and problem-solving operate outside the classroom. Most importantly, they need opportunities to discover not only what they are capable of doing, but what kinds of work actually align with their interests, talents, and aspirations.
Research cited in the FutureEd report suggests that early work experiences create significant path dependence. Workers who begin their careers in one field often remain in that field or related occupations for decades. Likewise, workers who begin in lower-wage pathways frequently struggle to transition into higher-wage opportunities later in life. If that research is accurate, then work-based learning isn't an enrichment opportunity. It's an intervention that can influence life trajectories. It helps students make better decisions because it replaces assumptions with experience. Students who have spent time in professional environments enter adulthood with information that can't be replicated through counseling sessions or online research. They understand not only what opportunities exist, but what those opportunities feel like in practice.
This becomes even more important as AI continues to reshape the workforce. We are entering a period where many repetitive and predictable tasks are becoming automated. New occupations will emerge while others evolve or disappear altogether. Under those conditions, career navigation can't be about identifying jobs. It must also be about helping students understand where human value continues to exist. Exposure to workplaces provides students with opportunities to observe the uniquely human dimensions of work—judgment, creativity, leadership, empathy, communication, relationship-building, and complex problem-solving. These are precisely the capabilities that experts believe will become increasingly important in an AI-enabled economy.
The challenge, of course, is scale. Schools frequently lack the staffing, employer relationships, transportation systems, and administrative capacity necessary to build robust internship ecosystems. Teachers are already stretched razor thin. Counselors are overloaded. Districts face budget constraints. Creating meaningful work-based learning opportunities requires coordination that many schools simply don't have the resources to sustain. Yet if only 2 percent of students are completing internships, the solution can't be asking schools to work harder. The problem is larger than schools. Which means the solution must be larger than schools too.
And that raises a question that sits at the center of the next phase of this conversation: if educational institutions can't solve the work-based learning challenge on their own, what other institutions should be at the table?
The Missing Institution in Workforce Development
If only 2 percent of high school students complete internships before graduation, the obvious question is why.
The conventional answer is that schools lack the resources. Counselors are overwhelmed. Teachers can't add one more thing on their plates. Districts struggle with transportation, staffing, liability concerns, scheduling constraints, and the countless logistical challenges that accompany work-based learning programs. Schools are being asked to do more with less, and expecting them to independently build robust internship ecosystems for every student ain't realistic.
But focusing exclusively on what schools lack causes us to overlook a more important question.
What if the infrastructure necessary to solve this problem already exists?
In 2021, there were approximately 17.3 million high school students in the United States. During that same period, there were approximately 32.5 million small businesses operating across the country. Those numbers are striking on their own, but what makes them interesting is how rarely they appear in the same conversation. We spend enormous amounts of time discussing workforce development as though it is primarily an educational challenge, yet the institutions most directly connected to work itself often remain on the periphery of the discussion.
Viewed through a workforce development lens, the relationship between those two figures raises an intriguing possibility. There are nearly twice as many small businesses in the United States as there are high school students. Obviously, not every business is positioned to host interns or apprentices. Not every employer has the capacity, staffing, or operational structure necessary to support young workers. Yet even if a fraction of those businesses participated in a coordinated workforce development effort, the scale of opportunity would be transformative.
For decades, workforce development has been treated as a shared responsibility between educational institutions and labor agencies. Schools prepare students. Departments of Labor analyze workforce trends. Employers hire talent. Each entity performs its role, but the system is fragmented. Information moves slowly. Partnerships remain localized. Opportunities vary dramatically depending on geography. Students find themselves disconnected from the very employers they are supposedly being prepared to join.
What I think is absent from the conversation is the Small Business Administration.
This is surprising because small businesses sit at the intersection of every issue raised in the career navigation debate. They create jobs. They understand local labor needs. They experience talent shortages firsthand. They are embedded within communities. They possess far greater awareness of emerging workforce needs than national labor statistics can capture in real time. If career navigation is ultimately about helping students connect education to meaningful economic opportunities, then it is difficult to imagine a more relevant stakeholder.
Yet workforce development rarely appears as a central pillar of the Small Business Administration's mission.
Perhaps that should change.
Imagine a national initiative designed around a simple premise: every high school student should have meaningful exposure to the workforce before graduation, and America's small business community should become a primary partner in making that possible, in my opinion, by any means necessary.
The framework doesn't need to be particularly complicated. Businesses meeting specific criteria could receive meaningful tax incentives for providing structured internships, apprenticeships, job-shadowing opportunities, or project-based work experiences to high school students. Participation could be tied to educational outcomes, workforce development objectives, and local economic priorities. States could coordinate regionally while allowing implementation to remain responsive to local labor markets. The federal government could provide incentives and infrastructure while communities shape opportunities around their unique economic realities.
Critics might argue that such an approach would be expensive.
Perhaps.
But compared to what?
We already spend billions of dollars attempting to address workforce readiness after students have graduated. We invest heavily in remediation, retraining, workforce development programs, employment services, and initiatives designed to help adults reconnect with labor markets. We routinely discuss the skills gap, talent shortages, underemployment, and labor force participation. Yet comparatively little investment is directed toward ensuring students gain exposure to work before making educational and financial decisions that can shape decades of their lives.
The return on investment could extend far beyond internships.
One of the most compelling aspects of involving small businesses more directly in workforce development is that it would generate information flows currently missing from many educational systems. Employers possess real-time knowledge about hiring needs, emerging skill requirements, operational challenges, and workforce gaps. Unlike traditional labor market reports, which often lag behind changing conditions, businesses experience workforce shifts as they happen. They know when certain roles become difficult to fill. They know when technologies begin changing skill requirements. They know when customer expectations evolve. They know when entirely new categories of work emerge.
That information has enormous value, for students, educators, policymakers, workforce agencies, and economic development leaders attempting to understand where labor markets are headed.
One of the recurring themes throughout the FutureEd report is the importance of better data. Judy Goldstein correctly notes that career navigation suffers from a lack of integrated information about labor markets, educational programs, credentials, and workforce outcomes. I agree. Students and families should have access to clearer information about employment opportunities, credential value, wage outcomes, and regional workforce demand. But if we are serious about improving workforce intelligence, we should also recognize that employers themselves represent one of the richest sources of labor market information available.
The challenge is that we have not built systems that effectively connect that information to education.
This becomes particularly important as AI accelerates labor market change. Much of the public conversation surrounding AI focuses on job displacement. There are endless debates about which occupations will disappear, which tasks will become automated, and which industries will experience disruption. Those conversations are significant, but overlook a more practical question: how do we help the next generation identify opportunities within that changing environment?
If AI is going to reshape work, then workforce development systems should become far more intentional about helping students understand where human value matters. Early exposure to workplaces can help students identify careers that rely heavily on judgment, creativity, leadership, communication, relationship-building, and complex problem-solving. Employers are the first to recognize which capabilities remain difficult to automate because they are the ones actively adapting to technological change.
This is another reason I believe the future of workforce development must become more localized even as it operates within a national framework.
One of the appealing aspects of a small business-centered approach is that national objectives would ultimately produce local outcomes. Students wouldn't be connected to generic career pathways. They would be connected to opportunities within their own communities. They would learn how local economies function. They would build relationships with local employers. They would gain exposure to industries that actually exist where they live. Businesses, in turn, would have opportunities to help shape future talent pipelines while strengthening ties with educational institutions.
Workforce development would cease being an abstract policy discussion and become something tangible, visible, and immediate.
We speak about the future of work as though it's primarily a tech challenge. Artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, and digital transformation dominate the conversation, leading many to focus on which jobs will disappear, which skills will become obsolete, and which industries will be disrupted. Yet the deeper challenge isn't technological, it is institutional. We have not updated the structures responsible for helping young people transition into adulthood and economic participation. Much of our educational and workforce development infrastructure was designed for a labor market that was more predictable, more centralized, and slower to change. Today, the pace of technological change has accelerated, career pathways have become nonlinear, and workers are expected to adapt continuously throughout their lives.
The consequences of that misalignment are already visible. Recent labor market data shows that Americans with bachelor's degrees account for roughly 25 percent of all unemployed workers. That statistic should force us to confront an uncomfortable reality. We have spent decades encouraging educational attainment as a pathway to economic opportunity, yet increasing numbers of educated Americans continue to struggle to connect their education to meaningful employment. Something is clearly out of alignment. The challenge before us isn't preparing students for jobs that may exist tomorrow. It is redesigning the institutions that connect education, work, and opportunity so they can function effectively in the labor market that exists today.
The irony is that many of the ingredients necessary to build a better system already exist. Schools exist. Employers exist. Workforce agencies exist. Economic development organizations exist. The Small Business Administration exists. The challenge is we haven't organized our stakeholders around this shared objective.
If the first phase of workforce development was helping students understand careers, the next phase will require helping communities collectively cultivate them. And if that is the future, then the career navigation conversation may need to expand far beyond schools and counselors to include an institution that has been absent from the discussion despite being uniquely positioned to help solve it.
The "Career Counselor" Hiding in Plain Sight
While much of the conversation surrounding career navigation focuses on counselors, credentials, internships, and employer partnerships, there is another piece of the ecosystem that receives little attention despite being used by millions of students every single day: the learning management system.
For most schools, learning management systems function as digital filing cabinets. They track attendance, house assignments, record grades, facilitate communication, and provide repositories for student work. These functions are important, but they also reveal how narrowly we think about educational technology. At a time when students can receive personalized recommendations from Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and virtually every other digital platform they interact with, many school systems continue using technology primarily to distribute worksheets and track compliance.
Outside of school, students interact with systems designed to understand their preferences, anticipate their interests, and guide them toward relevant opportunities. Inside school, many of the technologies intended to support learning remain largely disconnected from the decisions that shape a student's future. Attendance data, course selections, academic performance, graduation requirements, career interests, labor market information, credentialing pathways, and workforce opportunities often exist in separate systems that rarely communicate with one another in meaningful ways.
That disconnect is outdated.
If the challenge facing students is navigating an increasingly complex landscape of educational and workforce opportunities, then we should begin asking whether the systems students already use every day could play a more meaningful role in helping them do so.
Imagine, for example, a student entering ninth grade. Rather than simply using a learning management system to submit assignments and monitor grades, the student creates a dynamic career profile that evolves over time. The profile isn't designed to lock the student into a particular pathway. Its purpose is to help students explore possibilities while understanding how their interests connect to real-world opportunities.
A student interested in healthcare might receive information about local employers, projected workforce demand, relevant certifications, internship opportunities, dual-enrollment programs, and postsecondary pathways associated with different healthcare careers. A student interested in entrepreneurship might receive exposure to local small business networks, startup resources, digital marketing credentials, and project-based learning opportunities connected to business creation. Another student interested in advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, education, logistics, or artificial intelligence could see entirely different pathways emerge based on their interests and goals.
Most importantly, those recommendations wouldn’t be static.
As students mature, change interests, discover new opportunities, and develop new skills, the system would adapt alongside them. In many ways, this reflects the reality of modern work itself. Career development is no longer a linear process. It is iterative. Students should have opportunities to explore, reconsider, pivot, and evolve without feeling as though every decision permanently determines their future.
Artificial intelligence makes this vision achievable.
The same technologies currently transforming industries could be used to help students connect educational decisions to workforce opportunities in ways that were previously impossible. Rather than relying exclusively on generalized career assessments administered once or twice during high school, students could interact with systems that continuously integrate information from multiple sources. Academic performance, coursework, credential attainment, labor market trends, employer demand, workforce projections, internship availability, and student interests could all contribute to a more dynamic understanding of opportunity.
Perhaps most importantly, these systems could help address one of the most persistent challenges identified throughout the career navigation conversation: information fragmentation.
Judy Goldstein's observation that students, families, and educators lack access to integrated labor market data, credentialing information, educational pathways, and workforce outcomes speaks directly to this problem. The information exists. The challenge is that it exists in pieces. Students are expected to navigate a maze of disconnected systems while making decisions that influence years of education, debt, and employment outcomes. In almost every other domain, technology has evolved to reduce complexity. Career navigation remains one of the few areas where complexity continues to grow faster than our ability to manage it.
However, technology alone isn't the answer.
One of the most important findings in FutureEd's report is that successful career navigation programs consistently emphasize relationships. The standout examples aren't successful because they possess better software. They're successful because they create stronger connections between students and trusted adults. OneGoal CEO Melissa Connelly made this point clearly when describing her organization's approach. Technology, she explained, exists to enable high-quality advising conversations between young people and the adults supporting them, not to replace the dynamic of those relationships.
The goal should never be replacing counselors, teachers, mentors, or advisers with tech. The goal should be making those professionals more effective. Tech can organize information. It can surface opportunities. It can identify patterns. It can reduce administrative burden. It can personalize recommendations. What it can't do is replace the human relationships that help students make sense of their experiences, aspirations, fears, and ambitions.
This is where I believe much of the current conversation about AI in education misses the mark. Too often, we frame AI as either a threat to learning or a tool for increasing efficiency. Both perspectives are incomplete. One of the most promising applications of AI may be helping students understand how their education connects to the world beyond school. Not by making decisions for them, but by helping them see possibilities they may never have encountered otherwise.
The future of career navigation will emerge from the intersection of human guidance, workforce exposure, employer engagement, and intelligent systems capable of connecting information that currently exists in isolation.
Teaching Students How to Become
At its core, the conversation surrounding career navigation is really a conversation about what we believe the purpose of education should be. For generations, the answer appeared relatively straightforward. Schools existed to prepare students for adulthood, adulthood largely meant entering the workforce, and workforce preparation meant helping students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed within a profession. While the details varied across industries, educational pathways, and socioeconomic circumstances, the underlying logic remained consistent. Education was preparation for participation in a relatively stable economic system. Students were expected to identify interests, select pathways, pursue credentials, enter professions, and progressively build expertise over the course of a career. The challenge facing education was helping young people choose the right path and equipping them with the tools necessary to succeed once they entered it.
The assumptions that made that model effective are becoming increasingly difficult to defend. The challenge is deeper than, "technology is changing work." Technology has always changed work. The challenge is the speed, scale, and frequency of change. Artificial intelligence is accelerating the rate at which skills become outdated, industries evolve, and entirely new forms of economic participation emerge. Workers entering the labor market today will likely experience multiple periods of technological disruption over the course of their careers. Some will work in occupations that don't yet exist. Others will watch portions of their jobs become automated while new responsibilities emerge around them. Many will move between traditional employment, entrepreneurship, consulting, freelancing, project-based work, and opportunities we can't yet clearly define. Under those conditions, the idea that education's primary responsibility is preparing students for a single destination is inadequate.
This is why I find myself returning to the distinction between career readiness and career adaptability. For decades, career readiness has served as the organizing principle behind much of workforce development. The phrase sounds reasonable, but embedded within it is an assumption that deserves more scrutiny. Career readiness implies that the primary challenge facing students is preparing for entry into the workforce. It assumes that there is a threshold to cross, a destination to reach, and a level of preparedness that can be achieved before one's professional life begins. Career adaptability starts from a different premise altogether. It assumes that entering the workforce is merely the beginning of a much longer process. It recognizes that the modern economy rewards individuals who can learn continuously, adapt repeatedly, and navigate uncertainty with confidence. One framework focuses on helping students get started. The other focuses on helping them remain relevant irrespective of where their working journey takes them.
The distinction may sound academic, but it has implications for how we think about education. If adaptability becomes the objective, then the qualities we prioritize begin to shift. Persistence becomes more important because students will inevitably encounter unfamiliar challenges. Curiosity becomes more valuable because lifelong learning requires a genuine willingness to explore new ideas and acquire new competencies. Communication matters because human relationships continue to create opportunities even as technologies change. Entrepreneurial thinking becomes increasingly relevant because workers are often required to identify opportunities rather than simply respond to instructions. Resilience becomes essential because modern careers are rarely linear. Adaptability itself becomes a foundational competency because it determines whether all other skills remain useful over time.
Many of these qualities are not tied to any particular occupation. They are not nursing skills, engineering skills, marketing skills, or programming skills. They are human skills. They travel across industries, technologies, and economic conditions. They remain valuable whether someone works for a large organization, starts a business, joins a startup, enters a trade, pursues higher education, or moves between multiple professional identities over the course of a lifetime. This is one reason I believe middle school career exploration deserves far more attention than it currently receives. The objective shouldn't be asking eleven- and twelve-year-olds to determine what they want to be. The objective should be helping them better understand who they are. What problems do they enjoy solving? What environments energize them? What talents appear consistently across different experiences? What kinds of work feel meaningful? Those questions become important in a world where job titles may change repeatedly but personal strengths endure.
The same principle applies to Individual Learning Plans, which I believe hold more potential than they are currently being asked to deliver. Scott Solberg's observation that effective plans should be built around a student's self-defined goals, interests, values, and skills captures something essential about the future of workforce development. Effective career exploration is about helping students develop a deeper understanding of themselves while simultaneously expanding their awareness of what is possible.
Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly play a role in this future. AI systems will improve labor market forecasting, identify emerging workforce trends, personalize recommendations, and help students connect educational decisions to economic opportunities in ways that were previously impossible. They may become powerful tools for helping students understand the relationship between coursework, credentials, workforce demand, and employment outcomes. Yet there is a danger in assuming that AI will somehow eliminate uncertainty. It won't. If anything, AI will increase the importance of adaptability because it will continue accelerating change itself. The future workforce won't be defined by an assumption of any certainty. It will be defined by an ongoing need to learn, adjust, experiment, and evolve. In that sense, the most valuable outcome education can produce may not be workforce readiness at all. It may be workforce resilience.
That is why I believe the real challenge facing education is not helping students choose careers. It is helping them develop the capacity to become. Become a learner when new skills are required. Become an entrepreneur when opportunity emerges. Become a leader when circumstances demand it. Become adaptable when industries shift. Become resilient when plans change. Become capable of navigating uncertainty with confidence rather than fear. Students deserve better information, stronger counseling, meaningful work-based learning opportunities, and clearer connections between education and employment. But before we redesign career navigation, we must first acknowledge a more fundamental reality. The future of work is unlikely to be defined by career permanence. It will be defined by career adaptability. And if that is true, then the most important responsibility of education is no longer helping students decide what they want to be. It is helping them develop the capacity to become something new every time the world changes around them.
Sources:
Main Sources
FutureEd. Future Shock: The Crisis in Career Navigation. June 2026. Available at:https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Future-Shock-The-Crisis-In-Career-Navigation.pdf
FutureEd. Skill Building: The Emerging Micro-Credential Movement in K–12 Education. May 2025. Available at:https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Skill-Building_The-Emerging-Micro-Credential-Movement-in-K-12-Education.pdf
Supporting Sources
World Economic Forum. “Why Workers Will Have Multiple Careers and Need Multiple Skills.” May 2023. Available at:https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/05/workers-multiple-careers-jobs-skills/
Education Week. “Schools Are Expanding Career Ed. Are They Guiding Students to the Right Careers?” June 2026. Available at:https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/schools-are-expanding-career-ed-are-they-guiding-students-to-the-right-careers/2026/06
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Accessed June 22, 2026. Available at:https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:unemployment
Inside Higher Ed. “Survey: What College Students Want From Career Services.” November 30, 2023. Available at:https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/life-after-college/2023/11/30/survey-what-college-students-want-career
Credential Engine. “Credential Registry and Credential Transparency Data.” Accessed June 22, 2026. Available at:https://credentialengine.org/
American Student Assistance. “American Student Assistance Announces High School Work-Based Learning Digital Guide Designed to Improve Career Readiness Outcomes for Youth.” June 7, 2022. Available at:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-student-assistance-announces-high-school-work-based-learning-digital-guide-designed-to-improve-career-readiness-outcomes-for-youth-301543773.html
Eltakrori, Omar, and Dan Martell. “The Future of Careers and Entrepreneurship.” YouTube video. Referenced discussion at 50:48–52:48. Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFoNp1tdtiM&t=242s
Business Management Daily. “Hiring Summer Interns Can Give You a Tax Break.” Accessed June 22, 2026. Available at:https://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/70509/hiring-summer-interns-can-give-you-a-tax-break/
Yahoo Finance. “Americans With Degrees Now Account for 25% of Unemployed Workers.” Accessed June 22, 2026. Available at:https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-degrees-now-25-unemployed-200000306.html
SellersCommerce. “Small Business Statistics.” Accessed June 22, 2026. Available at:https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statistics/
