When we ask young people how they’re making decisions about their futures, the answers are revealing. They say they aren’t waiting passively for direction. They’re searching, comparing, watching, asking, and piecing things together. They’re scrolling TikTok for day-in-the-life videos, messaging older friends about internships, combing through Reddit threads, browsing job boards, and trying to decode what a college website really means when it lists “career outcomes.”
And increasingly, they’re turning to AI chatbots for answers. According to the New York Times, high school students and their parents are using AI tools to interpret the Common App, the standardized college application form, and to compare colleges, estimate admissions odds, and research majors. Compared to working with human guidance counselors, the experience of consulting chatbots is more reassuring, in part because they’re always available, parents and students said. At the same time, stretched-thin school counselors are experimenting with AI platforms to manage caseloads that can exceed 500 students, even as many question whether a chatbot can replicate the human work of reflection and mentorship.
This isn’t a story about young people choosing machines over mentors. It’s a story about young people navigating complexity with the tools available to them. So then it’s essential that these AI-driven tools deliver accurate and trustworthy answers based on comprehensive and up-to-date information. At the Britebound Center for Career Navigation at Jobs for the Future, we believe the CareerNet initiative represents a promising step toward developing AI systems that are capable of providing reliable guidance to people who are navigating transitions in their career and education journeys.
The Career Navigation Problem: A Lack of Access to Trusted Information
We’ve spent several years studying how young people make education and career decisions. We’ve interviewed and surveyed hundreds of students, worked closely with our Youth Advisory Council and conducted research on how students use social media to explore careers and how they interpret the signals they receive from colleges and employers. Young people have consistently told us that they want tools that are transparent about earnings and outcomes, clear about required credentials, and honest about tradeoffs. They want to understand not just what a job pays, but what the day-to-day looks like. They want to see pathways, not isolated job titles. They want next steps that feel concrete rather than abstract.
Yet an April 2025 JFF, Gallup, and Walton Family Foundation survey of Gen Z high school students (aged 16-18) and parents revealed a stark information gap. Only one third of high school students polled said they know “a lot” about earning a bachelor’s degree. Of those who are interested in postsecondary pathways, fewer than 15 percent reported feeling “very prepared” for the options they were considering.
The problem isn’t a lack of aspiration. It’s a lack of access to clear, trusted information.
Young people have consistently told us that they want tools that are transparent about earnings and outcomes, clear about required credentials, and honest about tradeoffs. They want to understand not just what a job pays, but what the day-to-day looks like.
The information landscape is vast but fragmented. AI tools can synthesize information from many sources quickly, but without strong guardrails and high-quality data, they can confidently generate incomplete or misleading guidance. And as the labor market itself is shifting, new credentials and certifications proliferate. The number of choices available to students has expanded, but the coherence of the system has not improved.
Young people are left to assemble a coherent plan from scattered pieces. For students with strong networks, that may be manageable. For those without social capital or consistent institutional support, it is much harder. Gaps in access to career navigation tools and services persist. The consequences are real. Delayed completion, unnecessary debt, underemployment, and missed opportunities compound over time.
Infrastructure matters. If technology is increasingly shaping how young people seek guidance, then we must ensure that the data underlying those tools is rigorous, transparent, and aligned to real outcomes. We need stronger tools, but we also need shared standards for what high-quality career guidance looks like.
A Potential Solution: CareerNet
That’s why CareerNet is so important. The product of an initiative led by Renaissance Philanthropy in partnership with The Learning Agency, CareerNet is a benchmark dataset specifically designed for use in the development of AI models and applications that help people navigate their career and education journeys. Drawing on data from thousands of real career questions and professionally evaluated responses, it creates a structured foundation for understanding what effective, accurate, and actionable career guidance entails. By annotating questions and responses based on quality, context, and user goals, CareerNet enables developers to fine-tune tools so they can recognize whether a user is exploring broadly, seeking reassurance, or ready to take action. It creates a benchmark for evaluating whether AI-based career guidance tools are accurate, coherent, and complete. It also supports research that deepens our understanding of how people ask questions about their careers and what kinds of responses actually help them move forward.
CareerNet isn’t intended to drive the development of AI chatbots that replace counselors or mentors. High-quality career navigation depends on trusted relationships. But we must acknowledge the reality that many young people will use digital tools to explore career and education options before they ever sit down with an advisor. If those tools are going to influence decisions about credentials, debt, and pathways into the workforce, they should be grounded in evidence rather than guesswork.
CareerNet represents an important step toward treating career navigation as infrastructure rather than an afterthought. It signals that we can build shared datasets, shared benchmarks, and shared expectations for what students deserve when they seek guidance.
An Infrastructure, Not an Afterthought
Artificial intelligence has expanded what is technologically possible in delivering personalized support. But AI’s responses are only as strong as the standards behind them. Career navigation requires shared definitions of quality and mechanisms for evaluating whether digital tools are truly helping young people move forward.
CareerNet represents an important step toward treating career navigation as infrastructure rather than an afterthought. It signals that we can build shared datasets, shared benchmarks, and shared expectations for what students deserve when they seek guidance.
At the Center for Career Navigation, we see this as part of a broader effort to make career clarity universal. If AI is going to help guide decisions about the future of work, it must be built on a trustworthy foundation.
Young people are already doing the hard work of navigating a complex economy. It’s time for technology to meet them there.
