For years, policymakers, educators and employers have debated whether career pathways – programs that connect high school students to postsecondary education and careers – actually work.
We framed the debate as apprenticeship versus college, workforce education versus liberal arts, and careers versus academics.
Although new results by Rodel and RTI International — in one of the most detailed studies to date examining the outcomes of students participating in pathways after high school — are encouraging, they also reveal how little we still understand.
We need more detailed information about what actually happens to students in pathways after high school. We also need to understand how internships, apprenticeships, and other immersive workplace learning experiences affect these outcomes. Without this evidence, we often measure indicators of success rather than success itself – the success of programs rather than students.
Until we can answer these questions, we will continue to debate whether career pathways work without knowing whether they help students achieve goals they care about.
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As a country, we have spent billions of dollars to create career pathways, expand dual enrollment, promote apprenticeships, and redesign high schools for workforce alignment.
But we have invested much less in understanding whether students actually move toward postsecondary programs and careers related to what they studied in high school.
However, new discoveries to start to give us a clearer idea of how students progress in life beyond high school, and that’s important. Researchers followed more than 5,000 Delaware high school students across three graduating cohorts, representing more than half of Delaware school districts and charter schools in rural, suburban and urban communities.
Among Delaware students who followed a career path, 74 percent enrolled in postsecondary education within six months of graduating, well above the national average of 62 percent – and around 45 percent enrolled in a specialty aligned with their career path; 55 percent found employment within six months, most while still attending college.
After 18 months, 69 percent were employed overall, and the proportion of students balancing work and postsecondary studies increased from 35 percent to 48 percent.
Perhaps most striking: only about 6% of graduates from the courses were neither employed nor registered in six months, falling to around 2 percent in 18 months.
Related: Do career paths work? Delaware offers first clues
These results suggest that well-designed pathways can help students transition to postsecondary education and the job market.
They also reinforce something that practitioners have understood for years: Today’s students are increasingly working while they are enrolled in college. And our accountability systems at the federal and state level fail to capture this reality.
Under the federal system Act on Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century (known as the Perkins Law) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity ActStates typically report a broad “placement” measure, intended to show whether learners are successfully transitioning into education or the workforce. But in practice, “placement” often combines the number of students entering the workforce, pursuing postsecondary education, military service, and training into a single measure.
A student enrolled full-time in nursing is counted the same as a student working part-time in retail. A student entering a registered apprenticeship may seem indistinguishable from a student taking courses unrelated to their long-term career goals.
These are not the same results. But our data systems often treat them as if they were.
The Perkins Act itself recognized this problem in 2018 by calling for collecting more nuanced data on whether students enroll in postsecondary education, advanced training, military service, or employment. But the caveat in the law – “to the extent such data are available” – reveals the real problem. In most states, more detailed data simply does not exist.
However, the recent study, in addition to collecting more nuanced data on the results, hints at some significant distinctions.
In Delaware, for example, high school pathways in health care, education, and skilled trades showed particularly strong postsecondary alignment. Within 18 months of graduation, 58 percent of healthcare track students enrolled in aligned specializations, compared to 44 percent of education track students and 48 percent of architecture and construction track graduates.
These numbers are not perfect. But they begin to answer a question that most states have yet to ask: Are students pursuing futures tied to the pathways we have created for them?
This type of data allows us to identify barriers and create solutions that better connect students to opportunities by showing how postsecondary and workforce systems – not just K-12 systems – shape student outcomes. For example, Delaware’s registered apprenticeship system currently has an enrollment waitlist, which the state is seeking to address in its upcoming budget. This may not affect all students pursuing skilled trades, but it almost certainly influences how and when some young people transition into aligned careers.
The economy that students are entering has fundamentally changed. Young people are operating in a job market in which education and employment increasingly overlap, skills matter as much as qualifications, and career progression is rarely linear. At the same time, employers continue to say they need workers with both skills and experience.
The future of career paths cannot simply be about participation. It’s not just a matter of whether students are “placed” somewhere after high school. If we want education and workforce systems to truly align, then we need to ask better questions and be accountable for what we find, to ensure students navigate opportunities, mobility, and long-term economic value.
Luc Rhin is vice-president for postsecondary success at Rodelwhose mission is strengthen Delaware’s public education and workforce systems by connecting partners to help advance and implement sustainable solutions.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story on career paths was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
The article OPINION: We need to ask better questions about how and whether career pathways work appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
