Many community college students are on guided career pathways, but a new report shows they may need more guidance to leverage the benefits of those programs.
More than 90% of students responding to the 2023 Community College Survey of Student Engagement indicate they picked a career path, but a significant number said information was lacking in certain vital areas. For example, community college students participating in the survey said their coursework had little information about the skills they needed for their chosen career (18%), and their college experience had contributed little, if at all, to their knowledge about in-demand jobs in their area (42%).
However, when students in career pathways tapped services available at their colleges, it made a difference.
“Students who participated in internship-style experiences and students who frequently used career counseling services were more likely to have the information about the skills they would need, available jobs and average earnings in the careers the desired,” the report says.
The Community College Center on Student Engagement conducted the survey of 83,189 students from 199 community colleges in spring 2023. The survey, developed with Jobs for the Future, aimed to explore how prepared students were for meeting their career goals.
Internships, career counseling help
The report makes an argument for why having good data on available local jobs is important: Because most community college students remain in their area after attaining a degree, compared to four-year students who often leave the area. However, only 21% of polled two-year college students who had chosen a career path felt their college contributed to their knowledge about the local job market. Thirty-seven percent said their college “somewhat” prepared them, while 23% said “very little” and 19% said “not at all.”
Having an internship helps students to gauge local jobs and average earnings in their field, the report says. It notes that students who participated in internship-type experiences were likelier to say the experience contributed to their knowledge about local in-demand jobs.
Using the college’s career counseling services also helped them better understand local jobs and earnings. In fact, the more they used the services, the more they felt they knew about local jobs. About 38% of students who visited the career counseling services office five times indicated that the college helped them “very much” to understand local in-demand jobs, compared to 21% who felt the same after visiting career counseling services once and 17% who never visited the office.
