An Analysis of the Career Navigation & Guidance Product Landscape
Institutional leaders, policymakers, and philanthropists recognize that it is no longer enough to ensure that students make it to graduation. Rather, if education is to serve as a tool for social and economic mobility, it matters what students are graduating into. Jobs—and ultimately careers—are an important metric of whether K-12 and postsecondary education are expanding opportunity or simply reproducing the status quo. Yet our current systems face challenges in helping students connect education to career, which disproportionately harms the students who most need education to provide economic mobility.
It doesn’t have to stay that way. Our educational systems and institutions can build a future where career navigation and guidance support all learners, starting in middle school and continuing throughout high school, postsecondary education, and a life of learning. This paper takes a close look at how better navigation and guidance might transform the status quo. In particular, it examines the market of tech-enabled products that has emerged to help increase career navigation and guidance.
