Five ways kids will learn about careers in 2025

Key points:

When it comes to deciding what to do after high school, many young people today are anxious, uninformed, and unprepared.

Below are some growing trends that educators, counselors, and parents can use to help students explore careers. By doing so, they will be prepared to make informed and confident decisions to achieve their postsecondary education and career goals.

1. Start early. Young people need to start exploring career possibilities, based on their strengths and interests, as early as high school, and they are beginning to do so. We are also seeing more students being encouraged to tap into their passions. Instead of leading them in one direction us think they need to leave, more and more adults see the wisdom in helping children connect their passions with tangible jobs that make sense to them.

2. Educational technology is on the rise. edtech will continue to advance and grow. More dollars are being invested in it, in part because of the equity and access it provides to all students, regardless of their school or circumstances. We will increasingly see high-quality digital resources, co-created with and for young people, most of which they will be able to access at any time, for free, from their phones or other mobile devices. This means more young people will have access to personalized educational technology tools to get the information and experiences they need to prepare for future success. These activities range from mock job interviews, ai-based career counseling, career mentoring, and even virtual internships.

3. High school internships will become more common. There is no substitute for real-world learning starting in high school. In my book, Crisis-proofing today's students: reinventing career education to prepare children for tomorrow's worldI talk about the three “ships” (internships, apprenticeships and mentoring). There will be increasing demand for opportunities that allow students to “try and try” careers, gain practical experience, develop social capital, receive guidance from caring adults, and develop the skills they will need for the workforce of tomorrow. Investigation shows that employers benefit from offering high school internships and want to do them, while many students think they won't be able to get one. We will see that gap begin to close in 2025.

4. College is not the only path to success, and non-degree paths are on the rise. College has long been our country's default option, but it's not the only path to success. Research commissioned by American Student Assistance (ASA) and Jobs for the Future (JFF), conducted by Morning Consult, shows that the vast majority of young people who had chosen to pursue a career without a degree (90 percent) said they were satisfied with your choice. Top reasons selected include the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning (44 percent) and the ability to complete such programs faster than they could earn a college degree (41 percent). Fortunately, we are seeing more people adopt other options like exchanges. As long-standing stigmas surrounding the trades continue to be removed, more young people will recognize that they are excellent options for lucrative and fulfilling careers. Additionally, with the rapid growth of non-degree credentials available today and little information about what paths lead to meaningful, high-quality jobs and careers, we will see a trend toward providing equitable access to information, including free digital resources created with contributions from young people, who need to follow a path to success after high school.

5. Lasting skills are here to stay. Although technology has become integrated into today's workplace, interpersonal skills are critical to success and young people need to practice using them. Employers also value these “durable skills” (a set of professional capabilities such as teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and flexibility) that are essential in almost all jobs. In fact, an America Succeeds study found that 70 percent of the most in-demand skills in nearly 82 million job postings are durable skills.. These are the skills employers look for on resumes.

As the job market continues to evolve, these trends will help more young people find the postsecondary education and career path that is right for them.