When Jon Carson founded College Guidance Network (CGN), he wanted to help high school students make better decisions about where to go to college. Families were committing substantial sums to a consequential choice, often with little personalized guidance. Then the school districts using his service began pointing out that many of their students were not planning to attend college, and they needed guidance too.
His company, now called Career Guidance Network, helps schools provide personalized guidance to all students, drawing on more than 700 career pathways. Starting with career exploration makes college one of several educational options rather than the assumed destination, while helping students who do choose college make more informed decisions about where and what to study.
A More Expensive Decision in a Less Predictable World
“Tufts is $100,000 this year,” Carson told me. The financial stakes of higher education have risen for decades. Carson argues that rising costs have steadily eroded the return on a college investment and made the consequences of choosing poorly more severe. “College has become a risky decision,” he said. A degree can still open doors, but graduates may carry substantial debt without securing the careers they anticipated.
AI is adding new uncertainty to an already difficult employment outlook, particularly for people entering the workforce. Employers are reconsidering entry-level roles as software takes on tasks that once provided graduates with their first professional experience. Students must make expensive educational decisions without knowing how the occupations they hope to enter will evolve.
Forty-Five Minutes a Year
Carson estimates that the average high school student receives roughly 45 minutes of individual counseling annually. Even that figure masks considerable variation, as counselors must devote more time to students with the greatest difficulties. Meanwhile, no counselor can reasonably maintain detailed knowledge of hundreds of occupations and their changing requirements.
AI offers a way to expand that limited capacity. Carson’s company has developed Eva, an AI assistant informed by material from approximately 450 experts in college admissions, financial aid, and career coaching.
Carson described the questions Eva helps students investigate: “What is the job? What does it take to get it?” Students can also explore what a typical day looks like, what people enjoy and dislike about an occupation, its exposure to AI, and related careers they might consider. They can compare possibilities, narrow their choices, and develop a personalized plan that connects career interests to educational decisions.
AI as a Crutch or an Accelerant
A student can ask ChatGPT to write a college admissions essay and receive a polished draft in seconds. The assignment may be completed, but the student may have learned very little.
“Eva will not write your college essay for you,” Carson explained. It can help brainstorm ideas and review a student’s work using guidance informed by college admissions experts. Eva helps students develop their own essays rather than producing finished ones for them.
The underlying AI technology is widely available, and students remain free to use other tools. But school districts, rather than individual students, are CGN’s customers. Schools can choose an application designed to support learning and expand the capacity of their counselors.
Carson describes Eva as a “nurse practitioner for the counselor doctor.” The assistant can work with students throughout the year, helping counselors make better use of their limited time and expertise.
AI applications can perform intellectual tasks for us, or help us develop the knowledge and judgment to perform them better. Entrepreneurs will increasingly decide which capabilities to automate and which human abilities their products should strengthen.
Better Guidance, Greater Prosperity
Better career decisions improve the use of human capital. Someone who discovers a good match between personal abilities and productive work can develop those abilities further, earn more, and create more value for others. Educational institutions and employers also benefit when people’s choices are better aligned with their abilities and ambitions. Across millions of people and decades of working lives, even modest improvements in these decisions could produce substantial economic gains.
Career opportunities also change as prosperity grows. Personal fitness training, now an occupation employing hundreds of thousands of Americans, has grown into a substantial profession since the 1980s. Rising incomes and greater attention to health helped create demand for services that earlier generations rarely considered as careers.
AI will change the range of careers available to future generations. Some occupations will evolve substantially, and new ones will emerge. Better guidance can help people recognize possibilities that did not exist when they began their working lives.
Carson was eight minutes into a demonstration of his career guidance system for a university enrollment executive when she stopped him. “You need to do this in higher ed. I will be your first customer,” she said. He is now preparing pilots with several universities.
Carson began by helping high school students choose colleges. His customers led him toward career guidance, and now universities are extending its reach. As AI changes the economy, the ability to recognize new possibilities and change course may become increasingly valuable throughout our working lives.
Learn about Career Guidance Network: https://careerguidancenetwork.com/
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