Career Guidance and Higher Education: A European Union Policy Perspective
EU guidelines on lifelong guidance, bologna process follow-up group, and principles of the social dimension of the European area of Higher Education
On a daily basis, we all need the competence to visualise, plan, and implement our futures. Students who participate in higher education institution programs are no different, particularly with reference to their futures in learning and work. Many have not learned or developed this competence due to the lack of career learning/services in second-level education, as is evident from high university drop-out rates, academic failure rates, and program switches. The personal and financial costs of such setbacks to students, their families, and taxpayers is enormous. Students’ own career thinking and designing evolves during their higher education experiences. Hence, an essential part of the educational mission of higher education institutions is to develop this student competence, in essence a preparation for life.
Higher education institutions differ significantly in how they visualise, plan, finance, organise, and implement career learning for students. Such career learning has to be aligned with the mission and strategic goals of the institution: teaching, learning, and research and their metrics; engagement with learning and its metrics; transitions to employment/further learning and their metrics; and address issues of diversity and inclusion. Such complexities do not make it easy to position careers services within an institution (e.g. student affairs; academic affairs; admissions; president’s office; international affairs; student success) and/or to brand itself (e.g. Job/Employment and Progression Centre; Futures Planning Centre; Imagine Centre; Career Development Centre) and/or to align academic and career learning objectives (enabling students to articulate the academic skills they have learned in careers/employment language). In some countries (e.g. UK, Ireland), higher education institutions pool their resources to have a national careers website for all higher education graduates in addition to an institution careers website.
AI powered career learning platforms and online career learning tools can assist higher education students. OECD PISA research shows that the occupational and labour market opportunity knowledge of young people is very limited (as indeed their self-knowledge, Khurumova and Pinto, 2023). Hence, in order to fulfil their mission, higher education institutions must invest in and provide structured career learning opportunities for students. Career services act as an education service for students, a recruitment service for employers, and can be a revenue-generating unit for universities.
From a policy perspective, higher education providers are autonomous bodies. In most countries, there are no statutory requirements for the provision of careers services in HE institutions. However, due to a range of political, economic, and social factors, universities are increasingly expected by government, students, and employers to produce highly skilled graduates ready for the graduate labour market. As a result, many higher education providers are investing more resources into their employability and careers services. However, EHEA (Bologna Process) deliberations show a lack of awareness of these economic and social dimensions of higher education.
At an EU level, the strongest policy statement for career services in higher education can be found in Guideline 12 of EU Guidelines for Policy and Systems Development for Lifelong Guidance (ELGPN, 2015). By contrast, the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process) produced a very weak reference to careers services in its Indicators and Descriptors for the Principles of the Social Dimension of EHEA (2024), unaware, apparently, of other EU and OECD policy precedents.
The following are some useful references and links:
https://www.gouconnect.com/career-everywhere/why-higher-ed-should-invest-in-career-services-not-abolish-it/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/06/07/bigger-budgets-and-higher-profile-college-career-centers
www.agcas.org.uk
www.naceweb.org
www.prospects.ac.uk
www.gradireland.com
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7236/
Wishing parity of esteem for Palestinian and Israeli lives and courage, safety, freedom, self-determination, and independence to the people of Ukraine and all of its territory.
John McCarthy, Director, ICCDPP
29 July 2025
Sharing developments and progress in our field benefits everyone
ICCDPP wishes to acknowledge the support of the Ministry of Children and Education, Denmark, and the Canadian Career Development Foundation
