Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to develop a Master Plan on Career Education represents a critical step forward in helping Californians adapt to the projected radical transformations in the workforce. This could not have come at a more critical time. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” “almost a quarter of jobs (23%) are expected to change in the next five years.”
I applaud the governor’s goals, which include expanding career education pathways in K-12, ramping up dual-enrollment and work-based learning opportunities, and enhancing connections between secondary/post-secondary education and the business community.
But, while critical, these goals are insufficient to ensure that every K-12 student, regardless of ZIP code or life circumstance, will be afforded full career and life success opportunities.
To maximize success, the master plan must also incorporate strategies to dislodge the entrenched, bifurcated mindset that positions K-12 career education as isolated from and inferior to the prevailing K-12 academic curriculum. This can be achieved by implementing policies that mandate the inclusion of curriculum that uses the real-world application of knowledge and concepts found in careers as a context for academic learning in all K-12 grades and subject areas. In educational literature, this is referred to as contextualized teaching and learning.
Here’s what a career-contextualized learning component could look like:
An elementary grade math lesson would be enriched by connecting lessons on ratios and percentages to applications in diverse careers. For example:
Digital media (image size and resolution; video/animation frame speed; file transfer speed).
Architecture/constructiontechnology (material weight to strength ratio, linear and cubic measurements, roof pitch, stair rise to run ratios, construction cost price per square foot)
Data analytics (e-commerce: ratio of web page visits to link clicks; pro sports team performance: shots taken to field goals made; climate change: fossil fuel vs. alternative energy usage).
The master plan’s primary policy goal should be to expand educational equity, thereby promoting more equitable career opportunities.
Key strategies to achieve this goal include:
Expandingdifferentiated instruction — tailoring teaching to meet individual needs — to better support students with diverse learning modalities, including English learners and students from low socioeconomic circumstances.
Transcending geographic barriers by utilizing virtual technologies to connect classrooms with career professionals from diverse geographic regions.
Amplifying student engagement and self-efficacy by expanding student opportunities to envision a “future self” by meeting diverse career professionals through participation in activities such as internships, mentorships and virtual meetings.
Increasing participation in career pathways and dual enrollment programs by fostering an early interest in careers through the integration of curriculum in all K-12 grades and subject areas that utilize real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning.
Increasing exposure to opportunities for college and career through strategic engagement with the higher education and business sectors in developing and deploying K-12 contextualized teaching and learning curriculum.
Cultivating skills identified by employers as a high priority through contextualized learning experiences that promote creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking.
The master plan must include strategies for planning and implementing a pilot study that involves creating, implementing and evaluating K-12 curriculum that utilizes real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning. Collaborative teams with K-12, post-secondary and business community participants must lead this work. The pilot study must involve school test sites from geographically and economically diverse state regions. Insights derived from the pilot study will guide full statewide implementation.
For decades, our K-12 education system has been disconnected from the constantly evolving world of work. We are at a critical crossroads when we must advocate for transformational change to empower students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed for future life and career success.
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Brian F. Donnelly is the executive director of Learning Curved, a California nonprofit focused on creating opportunities for students to discover and explore emerging career paths.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
A teacher shows 12th grade students how to construct a small animal house.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
Ina Gutierrez lives for the opera. She has a master’s degree in classical voice as well as a decade of singing and performance under her belt.
She tapped into that lifelong passion to teach music and choir to fourth and fifth graders for two years in Kern County using emergency credentials, and she loved every minute of it but had to stop teaching once that credential ran out.
She now often works as an adjunct professor at CSU Bakersfield, where she teaches “Music in the Classroom,” a class that shows teachers how to share music with children. Gutierrez feels frustrated that she is qualified to show teachers how to teach but can’t teach actual students. She attempted to get a Career Technical Education credential for music but was told she couldn’t use it for elementary school teaching. That broke her heart.
“I would love to be teaching children music,” said Gutierrez, a 38-year-old mother of two who lives in Bakersfield. “Art is so important for children to experience, especially music. It is unique because it simultaneously builds independence and community. In a world where children are playing less outside and addicted to screens, having music in schools shouldn’t be a luxury. It’s vital in building a more compassionate, caring and happy society.”
While many arts education advocates are championing the use of the CTE credential as the state struggles to attract new staff to teach the arts in the wake of Proposition 28, the state’s historic arts mandate, there’s a big hitch for those who want to teach elementary students. It was originally designed for use at the secondary level because it is employment-oriented.
Basically, unless the class has a clear career-based element, like a fifth grade broadcasting class, candidates like Gutierrez might get rejected. Many districts will only greenlight CTE holders to teach middle school, junior high and high school. That’s why some arts education advocates are pushing for reform.
“The CTC language, unfortunately, is from the Eisenhower era when boys took shop, girls took home economics and nobody thought about ‘jobs’ or ‘careers’ until spring of their senior year in high school,” says Austin Beutner, the former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, who authored Proposition 28. “In today’s world, all of this is career-related, and it starts in elementary school.”
Given the state’s teacher shortage and the heightened need for art educators in light of Proposition 28, some are losing patience with the bureaucratic hoops aspiring arts teachers must jump through.
“It is frustrating to see good, qualified individuals being rejected from teaching due to complex bureaucracy,” said Gutierrez’s husband, Greg, who comes from a long line of teachers. “In order for California to fix the teacher shortage, this problem needs to be addressed. We need a process that is easy for potential teachers to work through.”
Bob Woods-LaDue, Gutierrez’s brother-in-law, has hit the same obstacle. He was told he had to get his music class reclassified as a technical class to be eligible to use the CTE credential.
“I can’t help but wonder how many teachers are in an uphill battle that don’t know how to advocate for themselves in the credentialing process, and getting different answers from different people,” Greg said. “It doesn’t seem like an encouraging environment based on his experience thus far and my wife’s similar experience.”
Beutner, for one, is pushing to have the system streamlined so that there are fewer roadblocks for teachers who are dedicated to bringing the arts into elementary classrooms as well as secondary ones.
“Change is hard, but it has to happen,” he said. “California schools will need to hire about 15,000 additional arts teachers to fully implement Prop. 28. Half of the teachers will be needed in elementary schools. There are nowhere near enough traditionally credentialed arts teachers to fill that need.”
Some experts warn that teaching elementary requires a different skill set than secondary. That’s one drawback in widening CTE credential usage, they say.
“I am not sure about broadening it,” said Eric Engdahl, professor emeritus at CSU East Bay and past president of the California Council on Teacher Education. “While it could be a stopgap to fill the arts teaching shortage, are the people teaching it with substantial industry experience appropriate to be teaching at an elementary level given the developmental differences in learning?”
Some working artists may need to bone up on educational best practices before entering the classroom, and Buetner suggests professional development be provided.
“A concern some may have is whether a CTE teacher, even with their content mastery, is ready to be in a classroom with third graders,” Beutner said. “A sensible approach would be to build in some guardrails, maybe a CTE teacher in elementary needs to work alongside a grade level teacher for a semester while participating in a certain set of CTE professional development courses.”
For many, teaching the arts is a dream gig, a way to enrich lives as well as stimulate higher levels of critical thinking in a generation hard hit by pandemic-related learning loss.
“Music is an amazing way to bring that joy to students, invite creativity to the classroom and build connections between students as well as teacher to student,” said Gutierrez. “It is in an environment like this that students can and will learn better. I love music for music’s sake, but music is a great tool to incorporate in teaching language arts, math, science and history.”
While the CTE program has long been associated with trades and vocations such as auto repair, plumbing, and culinary arts, it can also be a viable pathway to becoming an arts educator. Other routes include being a traditionally credentialed arts teacher or a classified staff member, although that role commands lower pay.
One of the key CTE pathways lets artists with considerable experience in their field, from dance and digital arts to jazz, use that expertise in the classroom. They must have three years of work experience directly related to each industry sector named on the credential and meet other administrative requirements.
“The CTE credential allows people who have 1,000 hours of experience in the field to come into teaching, bring all that experience, that wisdom that they’ve got,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California State Board of Education, during a recent arts ed conference at UCLA. “We hope many, many artists will come in and secure the credential.”
One big upside to the CTE credential is that, unlike teaching artists who need a credentialed teacher to remain in the classroom while they teach, CTE teachers can fly solo. That frees the classroom teacher up, creating time to work one-on-one with students, email parents back and meet with colleagues.
“When CTE teachers are teaching a course, then the regular classroom teacher can be doing other things,” said Darling-Hammond. “Our staff are stretched very thin. So we want to use this as a win-win for students and for staff in all of our schools.”
The greater accessibility of the CTE route, its fewer barriers to entry, may also invite a more diverse range of teachers than more traditional pathways, experts say.
“Let’s roll up our sleeves and bring the CTE standards into the 21st century,” said Beutner. “The alternative is millions of students in elementary schools across California will not have the chance to participate in arts and music.”
Rubicon Landscape Group, which has a community beautification program in the city of Richmond, hires California Volunteers’ Youth Job Corps service members.
Credit: Courtesy of Ebony Richardson/Rubicon Landscape Group
One of Kaelyn Carter’s ongoing challenges these days is working early hours as a landscaper through the cold, often rainy San Francisco Bay Area weather — a world away from the stagnation he remembers feeling when he first arrived in California less than two years ago.
Then, Carter had just been released from prison after three years of incarceration in Virginia, where he was born. He had made his way to California, which he heard might have more job opportunities.
He’d tried working, but he’d run into more trouble and once again had a warrant out for his arrest. So he turned himself in.
That decision led to significant changes in his life, he said, because his probation officer connected him with his current workplace, which is part job and part rehabilitation program.
The job is with Rubicon Landscape Group, a landscaping company in the city of Richmond that has multiple branches, including a Reentry Success Center which offers a structured 18-week vocational training program where young adults under age 30 who’ve been impacted by the justice system learn about horticulture and landscaping.
Working at Rubicon, Carter said, offered him a community and the means to provide for himself and rebuild his life.
Kaelyn Carter, right, works is part of a community beautification program in the city of Richmond as a service member with California Volunteers’ Youth Job Corps.Credit: Courtesy of Ebony Richardson/Rubicon Landscape Group
“It feels comfortable to be able to provide, to buy stuff that you need, (like) hygiene products. You don’t have to go and ask someone to do it for you. You can just go and get it yourself,” he said, and “being able to go to work every day and see a check or some kind of payment at the end of the week, it’s comfortable.”
Job placements for service members range from a few months to about a year, a timeline that’s set by each participating city or county depending on the region’s needs. The idea is to create a pathway to careers that may have been previously out of reach for them.
Priority consideration is offered to youth who are in, or transitioning from, foster care, or have been justice system-involved, or in the mental health or substance abuse system. Participants must also be low-income, unemployed and not enrolled in school. They must also not have participated in an AmeriCorps program.
Out of over 8,000 total service members to date, about 400 were either in foster care or transitioning out of it, and 702 have identified as justice-involved.
The #CaliforniansForAll project includes other service programs, such as College Corps, which in its first year included 3,250 students from 46 California community colleges and state universities.
While the Youth Job Corps prioritizes young people who may not be on a college track, it encourages them to pursue higher education.
“That’s a goal of the program, and it’s why we focused on those populations,” said Josh Fryday, chief service officer of California Volunteers. “The idea here is creating an opportunity for our young people to serve their community, to make a difference, stabilize them, and then get them on the path to a successful career, which we hope higher education is part of for many of them.”
Service members are paid at least the state hourly minimum wage, now $16, but their city or county of residence can increase their wages.
The corps launched in 2022 with $185 million in state funding, with $78.1 million in ongoing funding approved in the 2023-24 state budget.
Since then, about 8,000 young people have worked in nearly 30 cities and counties that applied to join the list of participating locations, which range from Nevada County to the city of South Gate in Los Angeles County to the city of San Bernardino and more in between.
Each location either hires the service member directly or works with local community-based organizations that provide connections to careers in city government, climate efforts such as fire mitigation, community beautification by way of landscaping, and more.
“We really wanted to provide a lot of flexibility for local communities to decide how they were going to engage young people, depending on the needs of the community and what was appropriate for that area,” said Fryday.
For example, most of the service members in the Los Angeles County city of Maywood were high school seniors or in their early college years, and one was a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
These participants were given the flexibility to choose placement in a career they were interested in pursuing. Their interests ranged from working at City Hall — which is where the college graduate was placed — to the local YMCA. Even some neighboring cities benefited from this flexibility: a service member worked at a technology center in the next-door city of Bell, which is not on the list of participating locations.
Maywood, one of the most densely populated cities in the state, is home to a predominantly low-income and immigrant population that most often commutes to work in other regions of Los Angeles County. But at the end of their Youth Job Corps service time, many of the city’s service members were offered full-time jobs in their community.
“The pay is helpful, the exposure they appreciate, but what I hear that, just to me, is so incredible and inspiring is when they say, ‘I just never thought I had something positive to contribute to my community. I never thought that I had something of value where I could give back, and I could lift up the community I love while also supporting my family at the same time,’” Fryday said. “I remember hearing that specifically in Maywood.”
It’s a sentiment also shared by Carter in Richmond.
“It might sound crazy, but Rubicon has been basically a safe haven for me because it helped me with dealing with … I want to say poverty, if that makes sense,” said Carter, now 29. His job also helps him address his depression. Rubicon’s wraparound services — such as mental health support, resume workshops — help with housing and transportation, and working with plants helps him feel more grounded, Carter said.
All Youth Job Corps service members at Carter’s job with Rubicon are justice-impacted, which has given him a community of others with similar life experiences.
“This cohort, they just really lean on each other a lot,” said Ebony Richardson, a reentry coach with Rubicon. “I feel like they look out for each other as a whole, and it shows in the work they are doing.”
This community and support is part of what has kept Carter working at Rubicon, rather than returning to the life that led to his incarceration.
“It helped me build structure as far as my character, as far as my work skills,” he said. “It’s really a rehabilitation program basically for those who need a second chance.”
Joanne Scott, left, practices pharmaceutical compounding, part of Mt. San Antonio College’s short-term vocational pharmaceutical technician program.
Michael Burke/EdSource
Top Takeaways
Short-term vocational certificates, especially those in health fields, are growing across community colleges.
At Mt. San Antonio College, 83% of students complete the programs on their first try.
Officials see vocational training as a way to recover enrollments, which dropped sharply during the pandemic.
Joanne Scott had been without full-time work for about two decades and was struggling to reenter the workforce. Then she learned this year about a short-term pharmacy technician program at Mt. San Antonio College in eastern Los Angeles County.
Scott, 45, is a stand-up comedian who performs about twice a week in Los Angeles, usually at The Elysian Theater in the city’s Frogtown neighborhood, but was looking for a more consistent paycheck. She and her husband have twin 11-year-old boys, and Scott wanted to contribute more.
“Obviously, being a performer is not steady,” she said.
Scott thought something in the medical field would be promising because of the high demand in the job market. She landed on the pharmaceutical program in part because it fit her schedule. The noncredit program is just 20 weeks long, and classes are during the day, allowing Scott to still perform comedy in the evenings. Students who get their certificate often enter the workforce right away as a pharmaceutical technician, either at a retail location like Walgreens or within a hospital.
The program is one of 48 short-term vocational programs that Mt. San Antonio has added in the past five years as part of an effort to serve more adults and prepare them for the workforce. Most of the new programs are in health fields, but the college has also added programs in areas such as tax accounting, welding and appliance repair.
It’s reflective of a growing trend across the state’s community colleges to target more programs at adult students who, because they often work or have family to support, have less time for school than traditional-aged students do. College officials say that enrolling those adults is one way to reverse steep pandemic declines across all populations.
Serving large portions of the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire, Mt. San Antonio has prioritized noncredit vocational programs because many adults in the region are interested in upskilling or finding new careers, said Martha Garcia, the college’s president and CEO.
“If we look at trends for our traditional students, 18 to 24, that population is decreasing,” Garcia said. “I’ve analyzed our demographics, and if I want to impact this community at the greatest level that I can, I need to focus on serving adult learners, because that’s where we have the greatest level of need.”
The number of adult learners in the community college system took a massive hit during the pandemic: Head counts for students age 35 and older declined by about 25% between 2019 and 2021, an even higher rate than students in the 18 to 24 age range.
Those enrollments have, however, been steadily recovering in recent years, especially among students aged 35 to 44, who are now enrolled near their pre-pandemic levels.
One of the reasons for that is the expansion of short-term, noncredit vocational programs.
The programs are tuition-free for students, which is common for noncredit programs across the state. That helps the community colleges compete with for-profit colleges and other institutions that offer their own short-term programs, often with much higher tuition rates.
The colleges also benefit because they receive state funding for students enrolled in noncredit programs.
In 2023-24, community college enrollment statewide in noncredit career programs rose to nearly 82,000 full-time equivalent students, up about 37,000 from pandemic lows and also much higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Mt. San Antonio now has 89 noncredit vocational programs, and about 83% of students who enroll complete their chosen program on the first try. That’s much better than the percentage of students who typically finish longer degree programs at California’s community colleges: Fewer than 1 in 10 students complete an associate degree or transfer to a four-year university within two years of enrolling, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Most of the vocational programs at Mt. San Antonio have a limited number of spots and are open to students with a high school diploma or equivalent on a first-come, first-served basis. The college’s licensed vocational nursing program has more stringent admission standards, requiring students to submit high school transcripts, write a personal statement and demonstrate basic skills competency.
On a recent Tuesday morning on the Mt San Antonio campus, Scott and other students in her program were practicing pharmaceutical compounding, a process that involves mixing or altering drug ingredients to create a medication. In a classroom on the other side of the campus, students in the medical assistant program — another noncredit vocational program — were practicing cleaning minor wounds on one another.
Many of the programs also include an externship, essentially an unpaid internship with a local employer in which students shadow employees or get additional hands-on training. Pharmacy technician students complete a 120-hour externship at a retail location or at a nearby hospital such as Casa Colina in Pomona. Students who do well in their externships often get hired right away, said Amy Kamel, the instructor for the pharmaceutical technician program.
Whenever Mt. San Antonio designs a new vocational program, it’s typically based on labor market data and filling a need, said Diana Lupercio, the college’s director of short-term vocational programs.
“One of the main questions that students will ask us is, what can I do with this? They want to make sure it’s going to lead to a job,” Lupercio said.
Other times, students enroll as a first step to a more advanced degree, like going to pharmacy school or a registered nursing program. Registered nursing programs at California’s community colleges are typically competitive, with the number of applications often exceeding the number of available spots.
Sabrina Hernandez, 29, enrolled in the medical assistant program because it seemed like a “good stepping stone” to a career in health care. Hernandez, who is considering becoming a nurse, initially attended Fullerton College after high school and dropped out to work. She recently finished the medical assistant program at Mt. San Antonio and has started applying for jobs, which she’s hopeful will give her a better sense of whether she wants to continue on her current path.
“I thought this was a good way to make sure I actually like being in a hospital,” she said. Hernandez eventually plans to return to college if she can get admitted to a registered nursing program and is hoping her new certification will bolster her application.
Scott, the pharmaceutical tech student, has some interest in pursuing a more advanced degree and going to pharmacy school, but isn’t certain because doing so would lead to a more stressful career.
For now, she is going to class from 8 am to about 1:30 pm each Monday through Thursday and hoping to land a job at a hospital, which she said she would prefer to a retail job because she’d be interacting with doctors and nurses rather than directly with patients.
“I’m just looking forward to a reliable paycheck,” she said. “All my friends are performers who are poor, and I’ve been texting them saying, ‘You gotta go back to college.’”
Alexis Ayala, left, goes over plans for the construction of a tiny house with instructor Rodney Attkisson at Fresno City College’s Career and Technology Center.
Credit: Ashleigh Panoo / EdSource
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to transform career and technical education to help students get training for lifelong work and careers.
Progress has been made in recent months toward creating a new state master plan for career education that goes beyond traditional concepts of vocational and technical training, according to the governor’s top education adviser.
The aim is a report that will say, “Here’s how we can move from where we are now, which is a mishmash of systems, to a more coherent set of systems that align towards supporting careers,” said Ben Chida, Newsom’s senior adviser to develop the state’s Cradle-to-Career Data System, which aims to track students’ progress through data collected from birth into jobs.
The goal is to get a plan written and released to the public by the end of this calendar year that would create “more equitable access to living wage, fulfilling work,” according to the website for the Governor’s Council for Career Education.
Then the governor and Legislature are expected to work on bills and funding measures that could make a splintered education and training system better organized and better connected to employers.
A document released in January listed “core concepts” the upcoming master plan should address. Those include establishing a new coordinating council that will try to better link high schools and colleges with each other and with employers and will allocate state and federal funds for training. Another concept is to increase opportunities for work-based and hands-on learning, with the possibility of financial aid and other benefits for adult learners too.
The process began last August when Newsom signed an executive order calling for the state to create a master plan for career education. That would aim to remove barriers students face as they move from K-12 to trade school, colleges and beyond into their employed years.
Public meetings were held around the state in recent months to get input from educators, industry and the public on turning ideas into action. Nominations from various constituencies are being sought to participate in online meetings in the fall to further discuss the state’s needs and to “identify missing topics and red flags,” according to the website.
The early “concepts” document does not specify the types of technical training most needed and what is available in California now. Officials say that is because the future master plan should be open-ended and flexible enough to adapt to changes in the job markets and technologies.
Its focus appears to be well beyond the traditional notion of teaching skills like welding, robotics and cooking. It calls for “training systems over an individual’s lifetime” at schools and workplaces that include “21st century skills.”
One goal is to not force students so much into education tracks that so strictly separate college-bound students from those aiming for vocational/career paths. ”One of the biggest things that we’re going to tackle in this master plan is how do you start thinking about high school and post-secondary in a way that doesn’t require you to basically track students into one or the other path,” Chida said.
Across the 11 campuses of the Texas State Technical College system, the recruiting motto proclaims: “Life is hands-on. Your education should be too.”
The reality of that was evident during a recent visit to its sprawling flagship campus in Waco, where students were creating robots, repairing hybrid cars, welding pipelines, baking fancy cakes, flying airplanes and climbing utility poles.
That goal,administrators say, is to get students ready for the workforce as quickly as possible and then be hired into well-paying jobs in the growing Texas economy.
And it is done with extra — some would say unusual, even excessive — focus on what industry needs and what pays best.
As a result, some students choose Texas State Technical College’s Waco campus — which offers about 30 majors and campus housing — even if some similar programs are offered at traditional Texas community colleges closer to their home.
For example, Ethan Hernandez, 19, said he was not interested in a traditional, academic college education and wanted to learn more about the repairs he enjoyed helping his grandfather with on family cars. Now he is pursuing a two-year associate degree in automotive technology and probably will add an extra certificate in collision repairs.
“I want to know how to do the interiors of cars as well as the exteriors of cars”, said Hernandez, who went to high school in Keller, Texas, 100 miles north of Waco. He also may apply for a separate 16-week program on the Waco campus that Tesla runs to teach electric repairs for its electric vehicles.
Too many young people go to a four-year college to party, while their “parents waste a lot of money” on a degree that has nothing to do with future employment, Hernandez said during an interview at his Waco campus dorm. In contrast, he said, getting a certificate or degree from a school like Texas State Technical College (TCSC) “gives you a big jump” in the job market.
The Texas technical education system — which is separate from community colleges and their wider missions — last fall enrolled 11,400 full-time students, including about 3,100 at Waco, seeking certificates or diplomas that take between one semester and two years to complete.
On the surface, that may not sound that different from the many technical and career programs offered at California’s public community colleges or other trade schools around the country. But TSTC contrasts in several crucial ways.
Some experts say that California could look to Texas for career education ideas as families andstudents increasingly question the long-term value and costs of a traditional four-year college diploma.
The entrance to Texas State Technical College in Waco.
While higher education enrollments suffered pandemic-era drops nationally, community colleges that concentrate on vocational programs showed a 16% increase last fall.
That’s a sizable rise compared with two-year public schools that transfer students to universities — those saw an increase of less than 1%, federal statistics show.
More than anything, some experts say, TSTC’s focus almost entirely on job training and career preparation gives it a leg up and has boosted its enrollment much faster than regular community colleges since the pandemic losses.
Traditional two-year public colleges have a dual mission of both getting technical students to work, whether in medical technology or agribusiness, and to provide academic classes, such as political science, biology and music, for transfers.
‘A lesson for California’
Of California’s 116 community colleges, the only bricks-and-mortar one thoroughly devoted to technical and career education is Los Angeles Trade-Tech college, which offers more than 80 career tracks and certificates, significantly more than TSTC.
Yet, the L.A. school, which enrolls 13,500 full- and part-time students, also has transfer programs and is part of a nine-campus district with other missions. Adult workers needing skills can turn to the state’s online Calbright College, which opened in 2019 but had a slow start and now enrolls 3,700 students. Private, for-profit schools have a big footprint as well.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is trying to bolster career and trade education and is drafting a new master plan for that type of learning. But, the Texas State Technical College’s “intentionality” gives it an advantage in job training and placement and could be “a lesson for California,” according to Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who was chancellor of the California Community Colleges system for six years until 2022 and now is president and CEO of the Oakland-based College Futures Foundation,which encourages more students to earn vocational certificates or college degrees.
At comprehensive community colleges, technical education is often at a disadvantage because “there’s a competition for resources” with traditional academics, Oakley told EdSource. Texas’ technical colleges allow “more time and attention paid to career advising, to bringing in faculty who are working in the field … and I think those students get a higher level of service.”
TSTC students, however, risk being in “dead end programs” since there are few courses with transferable credits if they decide to pursue a bachelor’s degree, Oakley said. That may particularly hurt Black and Latino students who were not on the college-going track in high school, he added.
Only about 6% of TSTC students complete university transfers, but school leaders emphasize that is not the mission. All TSTC academic classes — mainly in English and math — that its students take for associate degrees are online.
TSTC loudly and explicitly embraces industries.Some of that is philosophical, and some is caused by funding: For the past decade, much of TSTC’s state financing has been based on an unusual formula tied to graduates’ average job pay up to five years out. TSTC Waco has killed off programs — such as computer repair, dental hygiene, golf course maintenance — when graduates’ pay was not high enough.
TSTC has “a strong reputation for preparing students for jobs and really for being nimble and flexible in how they go about that,” explained Charlotte Cahill, an associate vice president for education at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that works to expand well-paid employment opportunities. Community colleges nationwide also start new programs and kill older ones, but TSTC is “faster than most community colleges are when it comes to that,” she said.
An instructor at a flight simulator for pilot training at Texas State Technical College in Waco.Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
Culinary arts student William Corujo in the kitchen at Texas State Technical College in Waco.Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
The precision machine shop at TSTC.Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource
Students learning to be utility linemen at Texas State Technical College in Waco.Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
Auto shop at TSTC in Waco, Texas.Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource
Student Cristian Ramirez,works in the precision machine shop at Texas State Technical College in Waco.Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
The airplane hangar at Texas State Technical College in Waco.
(Click the arrows above to view the slideshow.)Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource
In another difference from many community colleges elsewhere, the Waco school offers a lot of on-campus housing. And, sharply contrasting to California, TSTC faculty are not unionized and can not receive job-protecting tenure.
“We don’t exist to serve faculty. We exist to serve Texas industry and the students who want to go to work and live lives of prosperity,” said Jonathan Hoekstra, the TSTC executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer.
“We have a talent line of production we are trying to develop for industry,” he added. We want to help students make good decisions about what are their passions, their skills and how they want to develop them and become part of a talented workforce.”
TSTC’s smaller scale may help it concentrate on well-paid jobs in such fields as computer programming, avionics, cybersecurity, plumbing, solar energy and diesel engines. About 40% of its full-time students seeking a credential obtain one after three years, which is slightly more than at peer schools, according to Texas state statistics.
At California community colleges, officials concede that progress and completion in career/vocational programs are much lower but attribute that tothe many students who dabble by taking only one or two classes a year.
California’s system of spreading vocational training around the state is more convenient for students and also allows them to take a variety of academic courses in case they decide to transfer to a university, said Paul Feist, the California community college system’s vice chancellor for communications. The system offers many successful examples, including Chaffey College’s InTech Center (in the Inland Empire) that trains students in welding, automation and robotics and Rio Hondo in Whittier and Evergreen Valley in San Jose which both offer Tesla electric car programs similar to TSTC’s.
An important difference is that many California students are limited to the vocational program close to their homes, since on-campus housing is rare and the cost of moving to another city for off-campus housing can be prohibitive. Only 13 of California’s 116 community colleges have housing althoughseveral more are trying to build them.
Housing magnet
In contrast, TSTC ranks high in national listings of two-year schools with housing. Four of its 11 campuses do, attracting students from around Texas and the nation. Waco has about 1,100 beds, some in a complex run by a private firm. The school requires students from outside the area to live on campus the first year. There are also 126 duplexes, renovated former Air Force barracks, catering to older students who have children.
Amanda King, who studies cybersecurity at TSTC, says campus housing is important.
Being able to rent a two-bedroom house on campus was a benefit for Amanda King, who is 27 and a single mother of two young children. She is expecting soon to finish more than two years of study for an associate degree in cybersecurity and an extra certificate in digital forensics.
“It’s easier for families here,” said King, who is from McGregor, about 30 miles away. “Having housing available here makes it a little bit more possible.”
Now she hopes to be hired by a police department and earn about $55,000 a year to start as a digital investigator, cracking into cellphone records and emails of criminal suspects. That grew out of her love of television mystery shows and her desire to deter bad guys.
“There is a lot of scamming going on, child predators, human trafficking. All kinds of cases and a lot of digital footprints,” she said.
Ready to work
About 20 of the 75 employees at Fallas Automation firm in Waco are TSTC graduates, mainly in robotics, according to company Vice President of Operations Daniel Maeyaert. The firm, which creates robotic equipment that packs food products, said the school does “a really good job of getting employees trained to be ready to work. That’s really their strength.” New hires from TSTC “understand the terms we are using and understand the industry.”
A new employee might start with a $60,000 annual salary with room to grow, he added.
However, while technical skills are strong, TSTC should teach more “soft skills,” such as showing up to work on time, conducting job interviews and presenting yourself in writing and speaking, Maeyaert said. “I think they need to focus on it a little bit more,” he added.
Texas State Technical College began in 1966 at the former 2,000-acre Air Force base 8 miles north of downtown Waco and across the Brazos River. Now at the outer edge of the suburbs, the school was at first part of Texas A & M university but later became independent and added locations around the state, some full campuses, some just a building.
The Waco campus still has an active air field and looks like an industrial park, so spread out it is difficult to walk between buildings. The amount of equipment, such as robots, welding machines, flight simulators, airplanes and cars, is impressive — sometimes funded by corporate donations.
Plain and practical, it’s nothing like the ritzier Baylor University a few miles away. TSTC has no big-time sports teams, no fraternities or sororities. The on-campus recreation center includes a gym, a weight room, ping pong tables and spots to socialize, but those are relatively modest.
Yoselin Merlo, a TSTC robotics student. working with equipment at the lab. Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
Tuition and fees for most TSTC students will average about $7,200 over two semesters for 2024-25 (much higher than California’s Community Colleges’ $1,200). A majority of students come from low-income families and receive substantial federal and state aid.
About 43% of Waco’s students are Latino, 38% white, 6% Black and 1% Asian/Pacific Islanders. The vast majority are traditional college age but some students are in their 40s and 50s. Women comprise only about 10% of the students. Other TSTC campuses have higher numbers of women drawn to nursing and education studies.
Yoselin Merlo, 19, who is among the few women studying robotics at Waco, said “it can definitely be challenging to be in a room full of guys who are thinking I don’t have the answers” and to keep proving herself. Merlo emigrated from Honduras to Houston in 2016 and became the first in her family to learn English and finish high school.
Helped with financial aid, she said that coming to TSTC Waco “was the best decision I ever made.” She plans for a career designing industrial robots, earning a strong wage to help her family and to donate school uniforms and shoes to poor kids in Honduras.
Most TSTC programs allow open enrollment with just a high school diploma or equivalency. Admission to the airplane pilot training and allied health programs are more competitive.
Kaleb Sanders, 20, is following a family tradition of lineman studies and work. With his safety belt attached, Sanders skillfully scaled to the high top of one of the many 35-foot-high practice poles on a campus field. The lines are not electrified, but students are supposed to treat them as if they are “hot.”
Student Kaleb Sanders practicing to become a utility linemen during training at Texas State Technical College in Waco.Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
Sanders has seen many classmates quit. “A lot of people come to (the lineman program) because they see the good pay, the high demand. They don’t realize there is a reason for that. It’s dangerous, it’s hard. You might not have the guts for it,” he said. Instructors say linemen can start out earning $80,000 a year with overtime and get much more with experience.
All about pay
TSTC graduates’ pay is crucial for the school’s health. Since 2013, the largest pot of state revenue relies on a so-called returned-value formula linked heavily to alumni earning levels — not to the usual enrollment. For the upcoming year, that is expected to provide about $95 million in state funds, 30% of its overall budget. Tuition payments rank next in size, at about $60 million or 19%.
The TSTC funding formula “is seen as a bellwether because of its boldness,” said a 2016 report by the Lumina Foundation. While the college’s revenues have remained solid since then, the model may not work for other colleges with broader missions, one of that report’s co-authors recently told EdSource.
It would be politically difficult to abandon older departments and fire tenured faculty to “chase the new hot major and industry,” said Martin Van Der Werf, who is director of education policy and partnerships at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. And it would be hard to evaluate future earnings for community college graduates if they transfer to earn bachelor’s degrees, he added.
While Texas and California reforms now factor in some outcomes — such as degree completions, job placements and wages — in calculating the state revenue community colleges receive, California still relies mostly on enrollment.
TSTC’s strong emphasis on graduates’ pay “definitely helped drive expanded opportunities for students. And it’s also created powerful incentives for TSTC to focus their programs,” said Harrison Keller, who is commissioner of higher education and CEO of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, a state agency. TSTC competes with regular community colleges in Texas in some majors, but TSTC’s is “more readily positioned to provide opportunities for folks to reskill and upskill than many of the community colleges,” Keller added.
TSTC system enrollment declined slightly in the pandemic but now surpasses pre-Covid levels, while many Texas community colleges struggle with continuing enrollment drops.
Despite TSTC’s increased state funding, some faculty complain that there are shortages in instructors because pay is not enough to attract technical experts from industry who want to move to Waco. Students are divided on TSTC’s recent shift in some majors to what is called performance-based education, in which students can proceed at their own pace, mastering skill by skill. Some think it is great, but others contendthere is too much reliance on online material and not enough team spirit.
Still, in what can be viewed as a sign of confidence or a marketing stunt, TSTC offers a money-back guarantee in nine majors — including precision machining, heavy truck diesel equipment, robotics and welding — if a student does not find a job in that field within six months of graduation. So far, no one has asked for that refund, officials said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Friday that the state has released $470 million to 302 school districts, charters and county offices of education to fund the Golden State Pathways program.
The program allows students to “advance seamlessly from high school to college and career and provides the workforce needed for economic growth.”
“It’s an incredibly historic investment for the state,” said Anne Stanton, president of the Linked Learning Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates giving youth opportunities to learn about careers.
Both the state and federal governments previously made big investments in preparing students for college or career at the K-12 level, but the Golden State Pathways program is different in that it challenges school districts, colleges, employers and other community groups to create “pathways” — or a focused series of courses — that prepare K-12 students for college and career at the same time. These pathways aim to prepare students for well-paying careers in fields such as health care, education and technology, while also ensuring that they take 12 college credits through dual enrollment courses and the A-G classes needed to apply to public four-year universities.
“By establishing career technical pathways that are also college preparatory, the Golden State Pathways Program provides a game-changing opportunity for California’s young people,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Thurmond said in a statement.
The Golden State Pathways are an important part of the new master plan for education — Newsom’s vision to transform career education in California — which is expected by the year’s end.
The state is distributing the vast majority of the funding — $422 million — to enable schools to implement their plans in partnership with higher education and other community partners. The remaining $48 million will assist those who still need grants for planning.
All sorts of schools throughout the state — rural and urban, large and small — benefited from the funding.
Schools in the rural Northern California counties of Tehama and Humboldt — whose K-12 enrollment is under 30,000 students — jointly received about $30 million to implement and plan pathways to help students stay on track for college and careers with livable wages.
“That’s a big deal to have that kind of influx going to that many small schools,” said Jim Southwick, assistant superintendent of the Tehama County Office of Education, which plans to expand career pathways in education, health care, construction, manufacturing and agriculture.
Schools in Tehama had previously begun to implement career pathways at the high school level in concert with local employers and Shasta College. However, many students struggled to complete the pathways because they were ill-prepared in middle school, Southwick said.
But one middle school pilot program did successfully introduce students to career education, he added, leading to an influx of funding through the Golden State Pathways that will expand the program to other middle schools.
Long Beach Unified, the fourth-largest district in the state, received about $12 million through the Golden State Pathways program. District spokesperson Elvia Cano said the funding will provide counseling and extra support for students navigating dual enrollment, Advanced Placement courses, college aid, externships and other work-based learning opportunities.
The district also plans to increase access to dual enrollment through partner Long Beach Community College and to create a new pathway in arts, media and entertainment at select high schools.
Advocates are celebrating the governor’s commitment to the program despite the uncertainty surrounding the budget this year.
Linda Collins, founder and executive director of Career Ladders Project, which supports redesigning community colleges to support students, said, “It’s an impressive commitment at a time that it’s desperately needed.”
Newsom said in a statement that this funding will help students even if they don’t go to college , saying it “will be a game-changer for thousands of students as the state invests in pathways to good-paying, high-need careers — including those that don’t require college degrees.”
Participants in a Climb Together networking event that provides an opportunity for students to build connections and make contacts.
Credit: Courtesy of Climb Together
A recent study found a whopping 85% of jobs are filled through relationships. Imagine a network of successful professionals eager to hear about your career goals and guide you through the professional maze. As new grads begin looking for jobs, it’s important they understand the power of social capital — the connections you make that become your golden ticket past the crowded applicant pool.
Unfortunately, access to networks isn’t evenly distributed. Elite universities often help students cultivate social capital simply by having students engage in so many activities — a cappella clubs, dance, secret societies, dorm life, parties, group projects; these are all ways peers build meaningful relationships that open doors for life.
Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are at a severe disadvantage because these kinds of activities are not always available or accessible. Time is our most precious commodity, and students who need to work to make ends meet have far fewer opportunities to build relationships.
Here’s the encouraging news: Research shows that “weak ties,” or casual acquaintances, can be just as valuable as close friends in securing job referrals. This means students don’t need years of deep connections — they can build a powerful network by honing their relationship-building skills.
Community colleges, vocational programs and even high schools can become social capital incubators, leading the way to unlocking social capital by teaching their students to build professional relationships and then broker access to alumni from their institutions. Imagine students learning the art of conversation: asking insightful questions, actively listening and crafting compelling requests. They can then practice these skills by connecting with industry professionals and/or alumni. This targeted approach, less time-intensive than building deep friendships, equips students to navigate the professional landscape with confidence.
Educational institutions can help students build social capital and improve their job prospects through several strategies:
Assemble a dedicated team: Engage stakeholders across leadership, faculty, staff and career services to develop and implement a social capital building strategy. This team can reach out to alumni and associated professionals, inviting them to participate in a program that helps graduating students with their job search. As the program grows, it can expand to multiple educational and professional tracks.
Offer targeted classes: Institutions should provide courses that teach students how to build and leverage social capital effectively. The curriculum can cover topics such as developing personal narratives, self-advocacy, discovering connections, LinkedIn engagement, crafting effective emails, follow-up techniques, and the art of conversation. Hands-on practice is crucial for students to gain confidence in engaging professionals and making asks for introductions or referrals.
Facilitate connections: After assessing learner readiness, institutions can match job seekers with alumni and other connectors. This facilitates the formation of new relationships and broadens job referral opportunities. Recognizing that relationship-building and job-searching are skills that need to be learned, institutions should provide guidance and support throughout the process.
By helping students broker access to professionals, higher education will also be able to address a growing concern: student disillusionment about attending college. Students invest in education expecting career opportunities, but recent graduates (especially those of color or from low-income backgrounds) face higher unemployment rates than before the pandemic. New grads have consistently fared worse than other job seekers since January 2021, and that gap has only widened. The latest unemployment rate for recent graduates, at 4.4%, is higher than the overall joblessness rate and nearly double the rate for all workers with a college degree.
These numbers are even lower for students of color and students from low income backgrounds. This disconnect highlights a need to bridge the gap between academic preparation and real-world employment.
This paradigm shift in how institutions prepare students for the workforce creates a win-win: Students gain valuable connections, alumni stay engaged with their alma mater, and institutions see higher graduation rates and lower loan defaults.
Our education system needs a refresh. It’s time to recognize that preparing students for the future workforce goes beyond just technical skills. By prioritizing social capital development, schools and workforce programs can level the playing field, creating a more diverse and skilled talent pool for businesses.
Let’s empower all students to navigate their career paths, not get lost in the application maze. They hold the key — the social capital key — to unlocking their full potential.
•••
Nitzan Pelman is the CEO of Climb Together, a nonprofit working with schools and workforce programs to teach students the art of building social capital and developing relationships and the founder of Climb Hire, a national nonprofit that blends relationships and social capital with in-demand skills to help overlooked working adults break into new careers.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Monday during an event with NCAA college athletes. This is her first public appearance since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.
Credit: AP Photo / Susan Walsh
The likelihood that Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president is inviting scrutiny of her positions on every public policy issue, including education.
By her own accounting, those views have been profoundly shaped by her experiences as a beneficiary of public education, as a student at Thousand Oaks Elementary School in Berkeley and later at the Hastings College of Law (now called UC Law San Francisco).
Just three months ago, in remarks about college student debt in Philadelphia, she paid tribute to her late first grade teacher Frances Wilson, who also attended her graduation from law school. “I wouldn’t be here except for the strength of our teachers, and of course, the family in which I was raised,” she said.
The most memorable moment in Harris’ unsuccessful 2019 campaign for president was in the first candidates’ debate when she sharply criticized then-Vice President Joe Biden for opposing school busing programs in the 1970s and 1980s.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me,” Harris said in the debate.
She was referring to Berkeley’s voluntary busing program set up in 1968, the first such voluntary program in a sizable city. Biden was apparently able to put the exchange aside when he selected her to be his running mate several months later.
At age 12, her family moved to Montreal where she attended a public high school, and then went to Howard University, the Historically Black College and University in Washington D.C. for her undergraduate education.
It is impossible to anticipate what if any of the positions Harris took earlier in her career, or as a presidential candidate five years ago, will be revived should she win the Democratic nomination, or even become president.
But they certainly offer clues as to positions she might take in either role.
When she kicked off her campaign for president at a boisterous rally in downtown Oakland in January 2019, she made access to education a major issue. “I am running to declare education is a fundamental right, and we will guarantee that right with universal pre-K and debt-free college,” she said, referring to pre-kindergarten.
By saying education is a fundamental right, Harris addressed directly an issue that has been a major obstacle for advocates trying to create a more equitable education system.
While education is a core function of government — even “perhaps the most important function,” as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling — it is not a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. That has meant relying much more on state constitutions.
During her term as vice-president, she has played a prominent role in promoting a range of President Biden’s education programs, from cutting child care costs to student loan relief.
Last year she flew to Florida especially to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis over his attacks on what he dismissed as “woke indoctrination” in schools. In particular, she was incensed by the state’s middle school standards that argued that enslaved people “developed skills that could, in some instances, be applied for their personal benefit.”
DeSantis challenged her to debate him on the issue — an offer she scathingly rejected. “There is no roundtable, lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeemable qualities to slavery,” she declared at a convention of Black missionary women in Orlando.
Earlier in her career, she was best known on the education front for her interest in combating school truancy — an interest that could be extremely relevant as schools in California and nationally grapple with a huge post-pandemic surge in chronic absenteeism.
Students are classified as chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of school days in the school year.
Nearly two decades ago, while district attorney in San Francisco, she launched a student attendance initiative focused on elementary school children. Each year, she sent letters to all parents advising them that truancy was against the law. Prosecutors from her office would meet with parents with chronically absent children. If they did not rectify the situation, they could be prosecuted in a special truancy court — and face a fine of up to $2,500 or a year in county jail.
By 2009, she said she had prosecuted about 20 parents. “Our groundbreaking strategy worked,” she wrote in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, citing a 20% increase in attendance at the elementary level.
When she ran for California attorney general in 2010, she backed a bill that enacted a similar program into state law. The law also subjected parents to fines and imprisonment for up to a year, but only after they had been offered “support services” to address the pupil’s truancy.
As attorney-general, she used the clout of her office to go after for-profit colleges she accused of false and predatory advertising, and intentionally misrepresenting to students the benefits they could provide. She was able to get a $1 billion judgment against the California-based Corinthians Colleges Inc. which eventually declared bankruptcy. ““For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people – now they have to pay,” she said at the time.
During her presidential campaign five years ago, she made a major issue of what she labeled “the teacher pay crisis.” She said as president she would increase the average teacher’s salary by $13,500 — representing an average 23% increase in base pay. Almost certainly the most ambitious proposal of its kind made by any presidential candidate, the cost to the federal government would be enormous: $315 billion over 10 years.
To pay for it, she proposed increasing the estate tax on the top 1% of taxpayers and eliminating loopholes that “let the very wealthiest, with estates worth multiple millions or billions of dollars, avoid paying their fair share,” she wrote in The Washington Post.
Also on the campaign trail, she proposed a massive increase in funding to historically Black colleges and universities — one of which (Howard University in Washington, D.C.) she graduated from. In fact, she proposed investing $2 trillion in these colleges, especially to train Black teachers. She contended that if a child has had two Black teachers before the end of third grade, they’re one-third more likely to go to college.
Biden was able to push through a big increase in support for such institutions totaling $19 billion — far short of her goal of $2 trillion.
Many of her positions on education — including a push for universal pre-school, and making college debt-free — were aligned with those proposed by Biden, or ultimately implemented by him as president.
For that reason, there is likely to be continuity in her candidacy with much of the education agenda proposed by Biden.
But mainly as a result of lack of action in Congress and Republican-initiated lawsuits blocking his proposals, many of the administrations’s aspirations, like making community colleges free, doubling the size of Pell Grants, and student debt refiled, remain unfulfilled.
It will now be up to Harris — and the American voter — whether she will have the opportunity to advance that unfinished education agenda.
This story has been updated to include details about Harris’ education after her parents moved from Berkeley to Canada when she was 12.
The 12th board results are out, and for lakhs of students across India, it’s time to make one of the biggest decisions of their life: choosing the right career path.
But here’s the truth — the job market in 2025 isn’t just about degrees or what’s popular. It’s about long-term growth, job security, and staying relevant in a fast-changing world.
With AI and automation reshaping industries, the “safe” career options of the past may no longer guarantee success. That’s why it’s more important than ever to explore career options that are future-proof, high in demand, and offer global opportunities.
In this guide, we’ve curated the best career paths after 12th that will not only survive the wave of change but thrive in it. Whether you’re from Science, Commerce, or Arts, your roadmap starts here.
Let’s dive in.
Future-Proof Careers for Science Students (2025)
Choosing a science stream opens doors to some of the most AI-resilient, in-demand, and globally relevant career paths. These fields offer not just high salaries, but long-term growth and security in an evolving job market.
1. AI & Machine Learning Specialist
Why It’s Future-Proof: AI is no longer the future — it’s the present. From healthcare to finance, AI is revolutionising industries. India’s AI market alone is expected to add over $400 billion to GDP by 2030.
Recommended Degree: B.Tech in AI / CSE (AI) – IITs, IIIT-Hyderabad, VIT
Entrance Exams: JEE Main / Advanced
Boost With: Google AI Certs, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kaggle Projects
2. Data Scientist & Analyst
Why It’s Future-Proof: We live in the era of data. From YouTube algorithms to medical research, data is everywhere. Skilled analysts and data scientists are in short supply globally.
Recommended Degree: B.Tech in Data Science / B.Sc in Statistics or Mathematics
Entrance Exams: CUET / Institute-Specific Tests
Boost With: IBM Data Science Cert, SQL, Power BI, Python
3. Cybersecurity Expert
Why It’s Future-Proof: As everything goes digital, cyber attacks are rising sharply. Every company — from startups to governments, needs protection.
Why It’s Future-Proof: Automation is replacing routine jobs, and someone has to build and maintain those machines. That someone could be you.
Recommended Degree: B.Tech in Robotics / Mechatronics – IIT Kanpur, SRM, UPES
Entrance Exams: JEE
Boost With: Arduino, SCADA/PLC, ROS, AI Integration Skills
5. Sustainable Energy & Environmental Specialist
Why It’s Future-Proof: Climate change is real, and it’s forcing companies and countries to go green. That’s creating a wave of high-paying jobs in renewable energy and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).
Recommended Degree: B.Tech in Renewable Energy / Environmental Engineering – TERI, DTU
Entrance Exams: JEE / CUET
Boost With: Solar System Design, Energy Auditing, ESG Fundamentals
6. Healthcare & Biotech Innovator
Why It’s Future-Proof: The pandemic showed us that health tech and biotech are critical. From genetic engineering to clinical research, this field is exploding with innovation.
Recommended Degree: MBBS / B.Tech in Biotechnology / B.Sc Life Sciences – AIIMS, IISc, IITs
Entrance Exams: NEET / JEE / CUET
Boost With: CRISPR Courses, Bioinformatics, Clinical Research Certifications
Future-Proof Careers for Non-Science Students (2025)
If you’re from a commerce or Arts background, the good news is this: the future isn’t only for coders. With the right blend of human creativity, emotional intelligence, and digital adaptability, you can build a high-demand, AI-resilient career that grows with time, not against it.
1. UX/UI Designer
Why It’s Future-Proof: Every digital product — app, website, or platform — needs great design. And while AI can generate interfaces, it can’t replace human creativity and empathy, which are core to UX.
Recommended Degree: B.Des in UX / Any degree + UX Diploma – NID, Pearl, MIT Pune
Entrance Exams: NID DAT / CUET
Boost With: Google UX Certificate, Figma, Adobe XD, a strong design portfolio
2. Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Strategist
Why It’s Future-Proof: With brands going fully digital, companies need marketers who understand people, not just platforms. Digital marketing roles are growing across industries — and they’re here to stay.
Recommended Degree: BBA/BMS in Marketing, B.Com – DU, Christ, NMIMS
Entrance Exams: CUET / NPAT
Boost With: Google Ads, Meta Blueprint, HubSpot, SEO, Influencer Campaign Strategy
3. Mental Health Professional
Why It’s Future-Proof: AI can detect stress, but it can’t heal trauma or offer empathy. India faces a massive shortage of trained psychologists and counselors, making this one of the most meaningful and growing careers.
Recommended Degree: B.A./B.Sc in Psychology + M.A. / M.Phil – TISS, Delhi University
Why It’s Future-Proof: From Instagram reels to YouTube videos, audiences crave authentic human stories, not AI scripts. If you can inform, entertain, or inspire, this career is a goldmine.
Boost With: Storytelling Mastery, Video Editing (Premiere Pro), Social Media Strategy
5. FinTech & Tech-Driven Finance Roles
Why It’s Future-Proof: Finance is no longer just about ledgers — it’s about tech. India is one of the top adopters of FinTech globally, and the industry needs professionals who understand money and machines.
Boost With: Python for Finance, Blockchain Courses, CFA Level 1, FinTech Certifications
Why Communication Skills Still Matter — In Every Career
No matter which future-proof path you choose — whether it’s AI, design, psychology, or finance — your ability to communicate clearly and confidently will set you apart.
In a world full of automation, your voice is your value.
From cracking interviews and writing SOPs for global universities to leading teams and closing deals, employers don’t just look for degrees — they look for confident communicators.
And when English is the global language of business, your fluency becomes a career advantage.
The best time to prepare for your future is today.
Now that you’ve explored the top career options after 12th that offer job security, long-term growth, and real-world relevance, you’re not just dreaming — you’re planning.
✅ Choose the career that matches your strengths ✅ Start building the skills that matter ✅ Practice the one skill that ties it all together — communication
Because in the age of AI, your edge isn’t just technical. It’s human.
So go ahead — take the first step toward a future you won’t just survive in but lead.
