From Classroom to Career
Embedding Workforce Readiness into Academic Pathways
By: Alexia Carrillo Villalobos, Emily Labandera, and Deborah A. Santiago, Excelencia in Education
Students and families want to know whether higher education is delivering on its promise: preparing graduates not just to complete a credential but to succeed beyond college. For Latino students, college degrees can shift life trajectories — not just for individuals, but for entire communities. At a time when the value of a college degree is questioned, institutions that take responsibility for graduates’ long-term educational and career success are reimagining how academic preparation aligns with workforce demands by embedding career development into academic pathways. By integrating career-aligned learning experiences throughout the student journey, institutions ensure students graduate not only with a degree but with meaningful skills, professional experience, and confidence in their next steps post-graduation.
Why Preparing Students for the Workforce Matters — Especially for Latino Students
Latino students are more likely to take multiple paths through higher education, often balancing work, family, and financial responsibilities. Too often, students navigate their coursework without clear guidance on how their degree translates into career opportunities. This challenge is especially faced by first-generation students, who may have limited access to professional networks, paid internships, or career guidance. Latinos are more likely to be first-generation college students than other racial/ethnic groups. In fact, half of Latinos (51%) were the first in their family to attend college, compared to African American (38%), Asian (30%), and White (22%) students.¹
Excelencia’s recent brief emphasizes that when institutions intentionally connect academic experiences to workforce outcomes through career-aligned coursework and applied learning opportunities, students are more likely to see the relevance of their education. This helps students persist and graduate prepared to navigate the workforce with clarity and confidence.
Embedding Career Development into the Curriculum
Embedding career development into the academic pathway helps close this gap. Career-aligned High-Impact Practices (HIPs) such as undergraduate research, service learning (hands-on projects with community partners), cohort-based support, and project-based coursework allow students to apply what they are learning in experiences within their chosen field or career.² These opportunities help students build transferable skills such as communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving while developing a professional identity aligned with their career goals.
Challenges: Engagement, Scale, and Sustainability
Despite growing recognition of the importance of career preparation, institutions face persistent challenges when embedding career development into the curriculum. Career development efforts often occur late in the student journey, limiting their impact. In many cases, HIPs are concentrated in specific disciplines such as business or engineering, leaving students in other fields without opportunities to connect their learning to career outcomes.
Institutions also struggle with sustaining these efforts. Scaling career-integrated coursework requires sustained funding, staff capacity, and faculty engagement. Too often, successful programs depend on short-term grants or individual champions, making them difficult to institutionalize. Balancing investments in HIPs alongside competing institutional priorities remains an ongoing challenge. Despite these barriers, some institutions demonstrate what is possible when academic preparation and workforce success are intentionally aligned.
Putting Career Development into Action
Institutions that prepare students for workforce success make career development a shared responsibility across the institution, not just within career services, and embed career readiness directly into academic pathways. In 2025, Excelencia introduced the new Intentionally Thriving Institution (ITI) certification through the Seal of Excelencia framework, recognizing institutions intentionally serving Latino, and all, students, and emphasizing their impact in preparing students for the workforce.
The following examples of ITIs show what is possible when academics and workforce preparation are aligned:
Arizona State University (ASU): Embedding Career Readiness into the Curriculum
At Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, career preparation is embedded through a four-year career curriculum grounded in encouraging students to actively design their professional paths. Students progress through guided milestones from career exploration to lifelong career management, ensuring intentional preparation for professional success. The proven effectiveness of this model has driven adoption in other colleges across ASU, advancing system-level transformation and scaling best practices university-wide. In the past three years, over 88% of W. P. Carey undergraduates reported full-time employment or continued education within six months of graduation.
Hartnell College: Creating Clear Pathways to Workforce Success
Hartnell College’s Computer Science in 3 (CSin3) program is a partnership between CSU Monterey Bay and Hartnell College, and part of a larger statewide Computing Talent Initiative designed to increase the number of computer science graduates. The program offers a pre-defined course pathway that provides students with a roadmap to earn a B.S. degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Software Engineering in 3 years. CSin3 is recognized for its cohort-based model and integrated academic, financial, and career support. This model has led to strong outcomes: 85% of students transfer to CSU Monterey Bay within 1.5 years, and 68% graduate within three years. Since its inception in 2013, 80% of the students have been Latino and 80% of those Latino students graduated within 3 years. Additionally, 86% of graduates secure gainful employment within a year of completing the program.
These examples show what’s possible when institutions intentionally align academics with career preparation.
Key Steps Institutions Can Take to Embed Career Development into Academics
Institutions preparing students for workforce success intentionally integrate career development throughout the academic experience. When institutions transform to serve Latino students well, they increase their capacity to serve all students effectively.
Key steps institutions can take include:
- Embed career preparation into academic pathways, rather than siloing it within career services offices.
- Align high-impact practices (HIPs) with career outcomes so students build skills, gain experience, and develop confidence throughout their college journey.
- Foster collaboration among faculty, advisors, and career services to ensure career readiness is integrated across the student experience and can scale institution-wide.
Looking Ahead: From Strategy to Action
Preparing students for the workforce is about designing academic experiences that intentionally prepare students for life after graduation. Institutions committed to post-completion success must treat workforce outcomes as a shared responsibility across campus by investing in career-aligned HIPs, supporting faculty engagement, and using data to connect academic experiences to long-term outcomes. When career development is embedded into academics, institutions move closer to fulfilling the promise of higher education, not just access and completion, but meaningful opportunity beyond the degree.
Through the brief and the Seal of Excelencia framework, Excelencia will continue elevating institutions that bridge education to career. By identifying what works and sharing these practices nationally, Excelencia makes the case that intentionally serving Latino, and all, students strengthens higher education, drives economic growth, and ensures the nation’s global competitiveness.
To learn more about Excelencia’s workforce efforts, explore our research here.
Sources:
- Santiago, D., Arroyo, C., & Cuellarsola, L. (April 2024). Latinos in Higher Education: 2024 Compilation of Fast Facts. Washington, D.C: Excelencia in Education.
- Association of American Colleges & Universities. (n.d.). High-Impact Practices. https://www.aacu.org/trending-topics/high-impact
