Even as schools invest in expanding their career education offerings, students still don’t have access to all the information and counseling they need to make sound and realistic career decisions, argues a new report.
Furthermore, the report says, there’s little evidence that the career-and-technical education programs offered in schools align with industry needs, and many schools have yet to fully embrace the complexities of preparing students for potential careers because they lack the staff to support the efforts.
The report from FutureEd, a Georgetown University-based think tank, points to schools’ chronic shortages of counselors as a barrier to effectively implementing relevant and engaging career prep.
Even counselors who are in place are stretched too thin to really get to know students’ interests and help guide them to relevant programs. And counselors have so many duties—from supporting kids’ social and emotional needs to helping them schedule classes—career prep can easily get pushed to the back burner as they “prioritize immediate crises over proactive planning,” the report says.
There were 372 students for every school counselor nationwide in 2024-25, according to the American School Counselor Association, compared with the group’s recommended ratio of 250 to 1.
“You are seeing this proliferation of career pathways and this career focus, but just offering the programs is not the same as actually providing career exploration, navigation, and counseling so that students choose the right pathway for them,” said Anne Kim, a senior fellow at FutureEd who wrote the report.
To be sure, in a 2025 EdWeek Research Center survey, nearly half of CTE educators (46%) said their school counselors spend less time on CTE counseling than college preparation. About 41% said counselors spend about the same amount of time on both, while 13% said counselors spend more time on CTE-related counseling.
At the same time, more than 70% of those educators report that students’ interest in CTE programs has grown over the past five years.
FutureEd’s report says other barriers to schools providing strong career-prep programs include: a persistent “college for all” mindset, a lack of understanding among students and their families about potential career options, confusing credential and certification options without clear ways to track their quality, and data voids about which industries anticipate needing more employees.
The result is that students say they feel unknowledgeable about and unprepared for life after high school. Only 13% of Gen Z teens said they felt “fully prepared to choose their path after high school,” according to one survey-based report cited by FutureEd.
A disconnect between students’ career interests and realistic possibilities
To illustrate the disconnect between students’ early career aspirations and the reality of jobs that will be available to them and provide a livable wage, Kim pointed to a 2025 survey by Morning Consult, in which nearly half of Gen Z respondents said their ideal career is to be a “professional content creator,” whether full- or part-time. Only one-third of survey respondents said they’d want a “traditional job.”
Students may have lots of exposure to influencers on social media but not a realistic idea of their incomes, the report argues. Of the more than 127 million people who say they work as “creators,” at least part time, 70% reported earning less than $49,000 per year and more than half reported making less than $15,000, according to the Morning Consult survey.
Similarly, the most popular occupations students initially research when looking into potential careers on Future.me, a career-navigation startup site for K-12 schools, include professional athletes, lawyers, actors, singers, fashion designers, pilots, and hairdressers—occupations that either have average incomes below $45,000 or employ a small percentage of the U.S. workforce.
Meanwhile, the fastest-growing jobs in the United States include wind-turbine service technicians, solar-panel installers, nurse practitioners, and actuaries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Counselors encourage students to pursue CTE courses
Educators who responded to the 2025 EdWeek Research Center survey said their students are increasingly showing interest in career pathways related to digital technology and AI, construction, physical and behavioral health, and hospitality.
Seventy percent of CTE educators said students pursue CTE coursework because of a genuine interest in a particular career path. Two-thirds said CTE coursework is engaging and interesting for the students who pursue it.
Nearly 40% of respondents said students are encouraged to participate in CTE programs by their counselors.
Kim acknowledged that hiring more counselors to help navigate career conversations with students is easier said than done. In lieu of bulked-up staffing in that area, she said, districts could consider partnering with local organizations that can provide career exploration, coaching, and advising in middle and high schools. Schools should also start embedding career education into curriculum as early as possible so students are exposed to different options that could spark an interest.
Some companies have developed tools schools can use, often incorporating artificial intelligence, to help students explore careers and learn about credentialing.
Future.me, for example, has a database of 800 careers students can explore, excluding those that don’t pay a living wage or that school leaders may find inappropriate (like gambling or bartending). The platform provides information about specific skills, degrees, and credentials the jobs require and whether there are related job openings in their area. It also has a module for students to see if the job’s pay would support their desired lifestyle, the report says.
While those tools can be helpful, they should not replace humans, Kim said.
“The tool or the AI can supplement a counselor’s knowledge, supplement a student’s knowledge, provide labor market information, provide information on the credentials necessary for a pathway, and those kinds of things,” Kim said. “But the actual navigation piece, like thinking through the options and the pros and cons, really requires a one-on-one relationship between a student and a counselor.”
