Careers provision in colleges is shrinking fast, and our own data shows exactly what that costs students in confidence, clarity and readiness for what comes next, along with where marketers have a genuine opportunity to step in.
Career advisers are the single best source of guidance a student can get.
Our own research shows they outperform every other source, teachers, parents, friends, on every outcome that matters: 86% of students who use one know what qualifications they need, versus 78% for those who rely on teachers. They're more likely to end up in a course that's actually aligned with their career goals. They're better prepared financially for what comes after.
And fewer than one in four students ever speak to one.
This isn't a quality problem. It's an access problem. The thing that works best is the thing students are least likely to get, and the cost of missing it shows up starkly later in our data: a 24-point gap in course confidence between students who had good career context and those who didn't.
Access is getting worse, not better
You'd hope that access gap was closing. It isn't.
New data from the 2025 Youth Voice Census, commissioned by the Association of Colleges and produced by Youth Employment UK, shows careers provision in colleges has fallen sharply since 2023.
Careers lessons dropped from 80% of students receiving them to just 32%. Face-to-face careers advice fell from 75% to 49%. Mentoring more than halved, from 45% to 22%. Employer visits fell from 63% of students to one in three. Work experience has thinned out too: just 26% of students in education undertook any in the past year, despite 74% saying they value it and it helps them understand work.
Funding pressure is the obvious culprit, and colleges are doing what they can within it. But the practical result is that the exact intervention our data shows works best is retreating at scale, right when it's needed most. Youth Employment UK's own conclusion from the census is blunt: careers education has the power to close this gap, connecting young people to the information and opportunities they need to succeed. The provision needed to deliver that is exactly what's being cut.
Students are telling us exactly what's missing
They're not vague about it either. As HE marketing consultant Kyle Campbell put it when reflecting on the same census data, students are asking for clearer information about apprenticeships, routes into employment, and a stronger understanding of how their course actually connects to a career.
That's a specific, answerable ask. And it points at a gap that higher education, in particular, isn't currently built to fill.
Employability data and career context answer different questions
Universities are fluent in employability messaging: placement rates, graduate destinations, employment statistics. This is genuinely valuable evidence, and it answers a question prospective students care about: will this course lead to a job.
But our data shows there's a second question sitting underneath that one, and it needs answering earlier. Before "will I get a job," students are asking "what job, and how do I actually get there." Employability outcomes are the proof point once that route is clear. Career context, the specific jobs a course connects to and the path into them, is what makes that proof point land in the first place.
Institutions that pair strong employability evidence with clear course-to-career context are answering both questions, not just one.
What the information gap actually costs students
Career awareness at the point of choosing a course turns out to be the single strongest predictor in our entire dataset, ahead of parental influence, ahead of childhood aspiration, ahead of anything else we measured.
Students who knew about lots of related jobs when they picked their course are 57% very confident it aligns with their career goals. Students who only knew a few, just 33%. That's a 24-point swing, and it's driven entirely by how much career context a student had before they made the decision, not after.
Course confidence, by career awareness at choice
% very confident course aligns with career goalsIt shows up again in apprenticeships. 39% of students planning an apprenticeship route don't actually know what apprenticeships exist in their chosen field. They've committed to the route without knowing what's inside it. Students with a family member already working in that field are miles ahead on both awareness and confidence, which tells you plainly this is an information problem, not a motivation one. Most students don't have that family shortcut. Marketing and guidance are the only thing that can stand in for it.
The opportunity this creates
Here's the part worth sitting with: every institution in the sector is currently competing on the same handful of employability claims. Most employability messaging is converging on the same handful of claims. That's a crowded, noisy fight for a shrinking sliver of attention.
Nobody's competing to actually close the information gap. Kyle's framing is the right one: you can fight for the "most employable degree" headline alongside everyone else, or you can solve a different, less contested problem, help students see exactly how a course leads somewhere specific.
Given careers provision is shrinking in colleges, that gap isn't going to close on its own. It's sitting there, wide open, for whichever institution decides to be the one that actually fills it.
What this means for marketing, practically
- Lead with outcomes, not features. Specific job titles, realistic salary ranges, named employer partners, and clear course-to-career maps will land harder than generic employability claims right now.
- Make apprenticeship and vocational routes concrete. If 39% of intending apprentices don't know what's out there, simply naming the roles and routes is a genuine point of difference.
- Don't wait for others to fix this. Provision is retreating, not improving. Institutions that step into that gap directly, through content, events, and one-to-one contact, will be the ones students remember when it's decision time.
- Be audience-first. Solve the problem students are actually telling us they have, rather than the one that's easiest for us to talk about.
Students are more likely to turn to whoever helps them see the whole picture, not just the destination. Right now, that's a genuinely open door.
Get in touch to see how we can help.
