Most High Schoolers Feel Unprepared for College and Career

At a time when more and more high school graduates are enrolling in college and looking for work, YouthTruth explored what we can learn about college and career readiness directly from the source – the students themselves.

We analyzed data collected from some 165,000 high school students between the 2010-11 and 2014-15 school years and found a number of interesting results.

Eighty-seven percent of students surveyed said they want to go to college, while only 2.8 percent do not, and ten percent aren’t sure.

When asked to think about their expectations rather than their aspirations, the numbers start dropping: 71 percent of students said they expect to go to a two- or four-year college.

But here’s the sobering reality — less than half of students, only 45 percent, felt positively about their college and career readiness.

Students’ sense of college readiness is lukewarm at best. But even fewer students feel prepared for career.

While this may seem intuitive since careers are further out on the horizon than college, it has important implications for high schools seeking to make learning relevant and prepare students for 21st century jobs.

Counseling about how to pay for college was least utilized, with less than a quarter of students reporting they had used this service, including 23 percent of juniors and 44 percent of seniors. While it may be tempting to isolate only the proportion of seniors utilizing these services, administrators, teachers, parents, and students themselves know that preparing for a future beyond high school is a process that begins well before 12th grade.

This data raises some sobering flags. And like most data, it also raises more questions. Schools across the country are already hard at work trying to better prepare students for a successful future —and, based on this data, students clearly recognize there is work to be done.

We believe that this data provides an important comparative context for understanding the student perspective when it comes to college and career readiness, and we hope it sparks conversations and ideas in schools across the country about effectively preparing students for life after high school.

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To help educators, parents, education funders, and students understand how prepared students feel for what comes next after high school, we went straight to the source for more insight. We analyzed data collected from some 165,000 high school students through YouthTruth’s anonymous online surveys administered in partnership with public schools across the United States. Download the full report to:

Understand how prepared students feel for the future
Discover resources to take action
Close the feedback loop with suggested discussion questions for principals, teachers, and professional learning communities as well as for teachers and principals in conversation with students

Section 1

College and Career Readiness

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