Two-thirds of American high school students say the adults at their school put “a lot of emphasis” on attending a four-year college, while far fewer hear the same push toward community college, apprenticeships, work, or the military, according to a new RAND Corporation report on career-connected learning in K-12 schools.
The survey of 626 public high school students found that 66% reported heavy emphasis on a four-year college or university. For families weighing whether college is worth the investment the study confirms what many suspect: the default advice inside most high schools still points in one direction.
The report paired the student survey with surveys of district leaders and school principals. Those educator surveys show why the message is so uniform. Nearly every high school principal (96%) reported offering one-on-one counselor meetings about college or career plans, and 63% of schools set numeric targets for how many students meet with a counselor each year. Yet only 32% of schools track whether students are accepted to college, and just 15% track whether students land a job after graduation.
The number is not surprising then, considering that schools are measuring the wrong metric of success.
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Why It Matters
About 45% of students enroll in a four-year college immediately after high school, according to National Center for Education Statistics data, while 38% of high school graduates don’t immediately enroll in any college at all.
That means a large share of the students hearing the four-year message every day are not headed there, and the report says the “comparative lack of emphasis on other pathways may indicate a gap in school supports relative to some students’ needs.”
Students who skip the traditional route still have options, from free community college programs in a growing number of states to registered apprenticeships, but they are less likely to hear about them from school staff.
The students who feel this gap the most are the ones who already know a bachelor’s degree isn’t for them. Among students who do not want a four-year degree, only 13% said the planning information they get at school “very much” matches their interests, versus 27% of students aiming for a bachelor’s or higher.
Half of the non-bachelor’s group rated their school as doing “better than OK” at helping them plan, compared with 70% of college-bound peers, and 23% rated their school as doing “worse than OK,” double the 11% among degree-seekers.
Lower-income students were also more likely to say the information didn’t fit their family’s finances: 23% of students from households earning under $75,000 said the guidance matched their family’s financial situation “not at all,” versus 8% of students from households earning $150,000 or more.
That tracks with our reporting on what families really pay for college after financial aid, where sticker prices and net prices diverge sharply by income.
What Students Say They’re Hearing
RAND asked students how much adults at their school (teachers, counselors, principals, and coaches) emphasize each option after graduation. The share saying “a lot of emphasis,” broken out by family income, shows how lopsided the messaging is, and how little of it covers the two-year and career-training routes that cost a fraction as much:
- Four-year college or university: 58% of students from families earning under $75,000, 66% from families earning $75,000 to $149,999, and 72% from families earning $150,000 or more.
- Two-year community college: 22%, 11%, and 20%, respectively.
- Technical training or apprenticeship: 23%, 16%, and 12%.
- Work part-time: 18%, 15%, and 13%.
- Work full-time: 14%, 17%, and 12%.
- Join the military: 5%, 8%, and 9%.
- Gap year: 5%, 3%, and 2%.
The four-year push is strongest among the highest-income students, but even among lower-income students it outweighs every other pathway by more than two to one. Apprenticeships, which we’ve covered as a booming alternative whose job pipeline hasn’t always kept pace, barely register for wealthier students. A gap year is almost never spoken about.
The Follow-Through Problem
The report also found that the counseling itself arrives late. By spring of junior year, more than four in ten students had not yet met with a counselor about their post-high school options or developed a plan for what they want to do. In grade 11, 53% had met one-on-one with a counselor about school or career options, and 57% had developed goals or a plan.
Even among seniors surveyed in March, 20% still had no plan. RAND attributes part of this to well-documented strain on counseling capacity, a reason some families turn to private college admissions counselors despite the cost.
Work-related learning fares worse. Only 37% of districts offer internships and 21% offer apprenticeships in any industry, and students’ plans consistently outrun what schools deliver.
Among seniors, 71% had planned to visit an employer or workplace before graduating, but only 39% had done so. Two-thirds (66%) had planned to complete an internship or apprenticeship; 22% actually had.
The report says “student interest is not the limiting factor” and that schools “are not doing enough to encourage take-up of the opportunities that do exist.” Families paying for trade or career training have their own tools, including 529 plans, which can now cover trade school and other non-college programs.
How This Connects
The four-year college default is running into a post-college market that is questioning it. Gallup found Americans’ confidence in higher education fell to 38% as doubts about AI and job prospects grew, and RAND cites Pell Institute research showing the share of high school students who expect to earn a bachelor’s degree has dropped sharply over the past two decades.
At the same time, more students are picking work over college, and 18-to-20-year-olds have become the largest group earning associate degrees. The advice students get in school hasn’t caught up with the world they are actually entering.
That lag has a price that is compounding the problem. Students steered toward a four-year program that doesn’t fit their goals are the ones most at risk of leaving with debt and no degree, and our student loan debt statistics show how heavily that outcome weighs on borrowers who never finish.
The skilled trades aren’t risk-free either, though. Federal data shows a higher disability risk for trades careers even though they can pay off earlier. The point of RAND’s findings isn’t that the trades beat college. It’s that students should be hearing a real comparison, and most aren’t.
What’s Next
RAND recommends that schools and districts “reconsider the mix of career-planning supports that they prioritize” and close the feedback loop by tracking what happens to graduates, a job the report says state education agencies are well positioned to support.
Watch for whether states tie career-pathway funding to post-graduation outcome data rather than counselor-meeting counts, and whether the Education Department’s new earnings test that cuts federal loans to low-earning college programs pushes high schools to broaden the conversation.
The RAND data is cross-sectional, so it can’t show whether the four-year emphasis changes outcomes, only that most students are hearing it and a sizable share say it doesn’t fit.
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.