11/06/2015
Although the F4K page remains up, the Futures for Kids organization ceased to operate at the end of the 2013-2014 school year. The North Carolina schools that were using our program were given an opportunity to continue using the Career Cruising program that we partnered with on a discounted subscription basis. I stayed on to wind down and retired at the end of May 2014. At our peak, nearly 500,000 of the 720,000+ middle and high school students in the public school system of NC had access to our career exploration program. When we began developing this program in 2002, we committed to making it available at no cost to any public or private school in NC that agreed to implement the program. Through a combination of mostly employer foundation grants and support from the NC General Assembly, we were able to do that for ten years.
I don’t think you’ll find a better career exploration program of any kind and at any cost, but it just became too difficult to raise the money to pay for it. Besides having access to Career Cruising’s very sophisticated yet student friendly online career exploration product, every participating student had a personal account that educators and parents could access to help them with their plans. The career interest data available to educators was very extensive. Our unique Career Coach discussion boards gave students all over NC access to people who actually worked in careers in which they might be interested. No one else dared to connect middle and high school students to real people in the nearly 600 careers in our database. Students in Cherokee or Dare Counties could connect to bankers in Charlotte or biochemists in RTP.
I’m disappointed that we were not able to continue this program. I can tell you for sure that students with a plan will be more successful in school. That’s a no brainer, but data backs that up. I can also tell you that college campuses are a very expensive place to do career research. If students don’t have a career plan before they get to college, they will waste at least a year of college and perhaps even graduate with a degree that doesn’t lead to a job commensurate with their education. Worse yet, many students drop out of college owing student loans that they can not pay back.
I’ve been busy in my retirement rehabbing from two total knee replacements and providing child care for my two grandsons, but I’d be glad to hear your comments about F4K and career planning in general.
John Shaw, Retired
