Many school districts are shifting away from a near-exclusive focus on college preparedness and are instead providing opportunities for students to explore and engage with a broad range of post-high school pathways.
The change comes as more students and families are questioning the trade-offs and return on investment of a traditional four-year college education. Policymakers and industry leaders are also working to ensure there is a pipeline for students to end up in high-demand jobs, such as nurse practitioners, data scientists, and clean energy technicians.
But are school counselors keeping up with this shift?
A nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of 472 teachers, school leaders, and district administrators with CTE connections, conducted between September and October, found that a plurality (46%) say their school counselors spend less time on CTE-related counseling than college counseling, while 41% say their counselors spend about the same amount of time on both.
The survey results show “that we have a long way to go” and that it’s “going to take a long time to change culture and to change minds,” said Chelle Travis, the executive director of SkillsUSA, a national career and technical student organization.
For decades, “college for all” has been the guiding principle for K-12 education, the nation’s education policies, and a multitude of school improvement efforts. At the same time, career and technical education had the reputation that it was just for students who don’t have the academic performance or financial resources to attend college.
Even though CTE programs are evolving to support new and emerging professions beyond the traditional skilled trades, such as those involving artificial intelligence and sustainability, the survey results show that many counselors still have the same mindset, Travis said.
For Ebonee Magee-Dorsey, a CTE counselor for the Lawrence County Technology & Career Center in Monticello, Miss., the findings align with what she’s seen in the field.
“For so long, the CTE world has been on an island by itself,” Magee-Dorsey said. It makes sense that a high school counselor wouldn’t be knowledgeable about CTE because “they’re not directly working in that field. … They’re doing the everyday work,” she added.
In Mississippi, many districts have a career center with a career counselor, Magee-Dorsey said. School counselors work with those CTE-specific counselors to provide resources to students who are interested in postsecondary options besides the four-year college education, she said.
But in districts that don’t have career counselors, it might be difficult for a school counselor to be able to provide those resources, Magee-Dorsey said. They might not have industry connections the way CTE-specific counselors do, she said.
School counselors also have a lot on their plates, experts say. They have to deal with students’ academic performance, their social-emotional and mental health, and other challenges. And their caseloads are huge. Nationally, schools had on average one counselor for 385 students in the 2022–23 school year, according to an American School Counselor Association analysis.
As student demand and interest in CTE increases, school counselors need more resources and training to provide students with all the postsecondary options available to them, from apprenticeships and certifications to two-year or four-year college degrees, experts say.
Travis, however, is “encouraged” by the fact that 41% of educators with CTE connections say their counselors spend about the same amount of time on college and CTE-related counseling, she said.
“I don’t know that you could have said that 20 years ago,” she added.
The data point signals progress and that “many districts and schools are elevating CTE as a legitimate, respected postsecondary option,” Travis said.