What Does It Mean to Be Career Ready?

Restoring the Dignity of Work – Recommendation #4: Redefine What It Means to Be Career Ready

Is a college degree the only path to a successful career? Less than half of students who start high school end up earning a bachelor’s degree within 150% of the standard timeframe. That means that for a lot of people, college is not their pathway to success, or to a career.

With many other viable options for high school graduates to find, learn and thrive in a job, college enrollment is not a complete way to measure a high school’s ability to prepare students for the workforce. For a more well-rounded education system, we need to expand the ways we evaluate our educational insitiutions.

NCCER makes the following workforce development policy recommendation in its 2026 report, Restoring the Dignity of Work:

• Redefine how we measure the quality of our nation’s secondary education system: The nation’s secondary education system must be provided with stronger incentives to ensure the career-readiness of all high school graduates.

To learn more about this and other recommendations to realign education, industry and government workforce initiatives, download Restoring the Dignity of Work: Revitalizing the U.S. Workforce Development System to Build the Future.