How 6 cities reimagined the path from school to career
A message from: JPMorganChase
Across the U.S., young people are struggling to transition from high school to meaningful careers.
Here's why: This transition requires coordinated guidance, work-based learning and aligned coursework. But many students are left to navigate fragmented systems that don't sufficiently support employers' requirements.
- Key numbers: 70% of U.S. jobs require some postsecondary education — but only half of students earn a credential beyond high school within six years of graduation.
Why it's important: Fixing career pathways not only helps prepare students for careers, but it also helps build a skilled workforce that supports sustainable local and national economic growth.
As a global employer with more than 300,000 employees across a wide range of occupations, JPMorganChase leveraged its business expertise and decade of experience with youth employment programs to work toward a solution.
Get up to date: Between 2014 and 2019, the firm invested $53 million in youth workforce preparation to increase access to job training, summer employment opportunities and other programs.
- This led to the creation of several initiatives, including the development of the $42 million New Skills Ready Network (NSRN) in 2020.
- Collaborating with national partners, JPMorganChase invested $7 million each in six cities — Boston, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis and Nashville — to develop programs that give students access to higher education and real-world work experiences.
The impact: By 2024, across the six cities, the NSRN…
⬆️ Enrolled 39,174 students in programs aligned with employer needs.
⬆️ Helped 3,899 students earn high-value, industry-recognized credentials.
⬆️ Offered 274 more high-quality career pathways.
➕ Enacted new policies at the institutional, local and state levels to strengthen career guidance, dual-enrollment, data systems, and the alignment of career pathways to employer needs.
The takeaways: The NSRN provides a blueprint for transforming education and workforce systems to expand high-quality pathways that prepare young people to enter the workforce.
- A new JPMorganChase What Works report explores key takeaways from the NSRN that can be scaled in communities across the U.S.
1️⃣ Invest in local leadership.
Successful career pathways require dedicated local leaders who can navigate complex stakeholder relationships and build lasting workforce infrastructure.
How it's done:
✅ Prioritize staffing for essential roles like pathway coordinators, employee liaisons and data specialists.
✅ Develop infrastructure, such as data systems, communication mechanisms and professional development to help execute plans.
✅ Build a community that prioritizes trust, flexibility, shared vision and goals, clear roles, buy-in, accountability and results.
An example: Denver built a shared data system to measure the impact of career pathways and track learners' progress into careers, which allows them to identify access gaps and develop targeted outreach strategies.
2️⃣ Involve employers as strategic partners.
Meaningful business engagement requires clear roles, accountability and investments in building effective partnerships that support local talent development strategies.
How it's done:
✅ Include employers as collaborative members, not external participants, from inception.
✅ Establish dedicated staffing and organizational structures to manage employer engagement and work-based learning.
✅ Create comprehensive toolkits that outline employer roles, student matching processes, quality experience definitions, and expectations between districts and employer partners.
An example: In the Columbus collaborative, One Columbus serves as the central point of contact for organizations and employers. The economic development organization created an emerging talent manager role to help coordinate partnerships.
3️⃣ Create seamless and accessible student pathways.
High-quality programs emphasize seamless and accessible transitions from high school to postsecondary education, allowing students to earn dual credits, reduce costs, and align learning with both their interests and employer needs.
How it's done:
✅ Expand dual enrollment opportunities to offer early college and career experiences.
✅ Establish higher education partnerships that allow students to earn transferable college credit.
✅ Create plans that seamlessly integrate education, workforce training and employer needs.
✅ Address student barriers, like transportation, awareness and financial issues, to enhance participation.
An example: Denver established Memorandums of Understanding with several higher education institutions, which allows students to earn transferable college credit.
- Metropolitan State University in Denver, for instance, created agreements allowing students to transfer 45 credits from registered apprenticeship programs directly into bachelor's degree programs.
4️⃣ Scale through peer learning.
A national community of practice can accelerate innovation by facilitating learning exchanges that contribute to replicating promising approaches.
How it's done:
✅ Provide targeted leadership support that reflects shared priorities.
✅ Host issue-specific convenings to bring together stakeholders.
✅ Share evidence-based learning and decision-making discussions to identify solutions to local challenges, like siloed information and lack of systems coordination.
An example: Boston began hosting the annual Seamless Advising Summit in 2023, which brings together student support professionals across K-12 and postsecondary institutions. The focus is to help students make seamless transitions across the education system and into careers.
5️⃣ Institutionalize change through policy.
Local experiences must shape state and federal policies to create lasting, scalable change beyond individual districts or cities. The work of NSRN cities informed policies to strengthen career guidance, dual-enrollment, data systems, and the alignment of career pathways to employer needs.
How it's done:
- Leverage local experiences to drive work with state-level leadership.
An example: Indianapolis developed a comprehensive career advising framework that informed state-level legislation enacted in May 2023, including the addition of more career specific advising language.
- The bill requires annual career fairs and for high school students to have career-focused conversations.
Next steps: Over the past five years, the six NSRN cities have transformed education systems to prepare students for careers.
- While progress has been made, innovating career education continues to be a focus for regions across the U.S. The solutions developed and tested through NSRN are ripe for additional investment and tailoring to other markets.