Maximize Your Career-Connected Learning Investment by Overcoming These 5 K-12 Investment Barriers

We have previously explored the value of sponsoring career-connected learning in K-12 as part of an impactful ESG strategy, and have discussed how ServiceNow, a $7+ billion technology company, has leveraged career-connected learning to operationalize key pillars of its corporate strategy. If you had a chance to read through these, you probably thought that sponsoring career-connected learning is an obvious, cost-effective, and easy way for your company to elevate its ESG profile and achieve important corporate goals.

The reality, of course, is that it’s not always so easy or so cheap. In many cases, investments in career-connected learning don’t yield the results expected¹. Take one of our new partners, a $5+ billion technology company that came to us after spending $50,000 on a K-12 career-connected program. The program reached 2 teachers and slightly under 50 students. The math is pretty straightforward and doesn’t tell a pretty picture. Nobody is going to consistently spend over $1,000 / student to deliver a few lessons.

5 barriers keeping you from creating an impact with your career-connected learning investment

If career-connected learning is such a good idea, why is implementing it effectively and efficiently such a challenge, and what can be done about this? Through our work with industry, government, and school partners we have identified 5 key barriers to successful K-12 investment (see Figure 1).