June 26, 2026 | By Miya Warner
As graduation season comes to a close, high school seniors across the country are making decisions about what comes next. For decades, educators and policymakers largely evaluated the success of that transition through a single lens: college enrollment.
College enrollment remains important. By 2031, nearly three quarters of American jobs are projected to require some form of postsecondary education.1 But the field has moved beyond the rigidity of “college for all” toward a broader principle: informed choice.2
Students today face a wider range of postsecondary options than previous generations, along with tougher questions of cost, debt, and a rapidly evolving labor market. Just as important is the growing recognition that there is no single path that is right for every student.
With informed choice, the idea is not simply to help students choose a path. It’s to help them understand their options, think through the trade-offs, and make decisions that align with their goals, interests, strengths, and circumstances. A student who chooses a four-year college after careful planning is making an informed choice. So is a student who decides that a community college, apprenticeship, certificate program, military service, or direct entry into the workforce is the better fit.
If informed choice is the goal, then we need to rethink how we support postsecondary planning and define success.
Many states have already moved in that direction by adopting individual learning plans (ILPs), which are mandated for all students in 34 states and strongly encouraged in 10 others.3 Also called personal career and academic plans, ILPs are student-directed plans developed in collaboration with teachers, counselors, and parents. They document students’ academic goals, career interests, and postsecondary plans, often through electronic portfolios.
Measuring Informed Choice
As more states adopt ILPs and similar advising frameworks, educators need better ways to assess the quality of students’ postsecondary planning.
The rubric organizes postsecondary planning into four domains:
- Ground: Help students identify their values, interests, strengths, and fit factors.
- Inform: Support students to research careers and pathways through exploration and experiential learning.
- Select: Guide students to identify a preliminary career goal and an immediate next step after graduation.
- Prepare: Ensure students complete the concrete action steps needed to transition successfully after high school.
To support this effort, SRI’s Education Division developed a postsecondary planning portfolio rubric as part of an evaluation of the Engage New England Initiative. The rubric was created with funding from the Barr Foundation and with input from Springpoint, the initiative’s technical assistance provider. It draws on research, state policy, and leading postsecondary advising frameworks, including Springpoint’s Informed Choice Framework.
The rubric recognizes that informed choice involves more than completing applications or meeting deadlines. Students also need opportunities to explore careers, understand different postsecondary pathways, and consider practical realities such as cost, housing, transportation, and available support systems.
Designed as a formative tool, the rubric can help schools identify strengths and gaps in their advising systems and strengthen support for students as they prepare for life after high school.
Graduation is a pivotal moment of transition for students. As we help students navigate it, we should pay attention to not only where students go next, but also how prepared they are to make that choice in the first place.
Check out the full Postsecondary Planning Portfolio Rubric to learn more about how schools can support and assess postsecondary planning.
1 Carnevale, A. P., Smith, N., Van Der Werf, M., & Quinn, M. C. (2023). After everything: Projections of jobs, education, and training requirements through 2031 [National report]. Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/projections2031/
2 Can cite Springpoint when they post their framework
3 Duffy, H. (2020, January 10). Individual learning plans: Students creating their pathways to postsecondary success. Institute of Education Sciences Blog. https://ies.ed.gov/learn/blog/individual-learning-plans-students-creating-their-pathways-postsecondary-success
Topics: Transition to postsecondary