Are We Preparing Students Before They Make Life-Changing Decisions?

Postsecondary education has the power to create opportunities, increase economic mobility, strengthen careers, and change the trajectory of a person’s life. Whether someone chooses a university, community college, career school, apprenticeship, military pathway, workforce-training program, or another option, education can serve as a bridge between where someone is today and where they hope to go tomorrow.

However, opportunity alone is not enough.

After working in higher education, workforce development, and career readiness—and after navigating the postsecondary system myself—I believe we need to have a deeper conversation about what happens before students make these life-changing decisions.

Students are being asked to choose institutions, select career pathways, complete financial-aid applications, evaluate programs, and potentially borrow thousands—or tens of thousands—of dollars. These decisions can influence their finances and career opportunities for years after they leave school.

Yet many students are making these decisions while they are still learning how the system works.

This raises an important question:

Are we giving students enough information, early enough, to make informed and confident decisions about their futures?

The FAFSA Dependency System Can Be Difficult for Young Adults to Navigate

One of the first places students encounter the complexity of postsecondary education is financial aid.

For many families, completing the FAFSA is one of their first major steps toward determining whether postsecondary education is financially possible. However, understanding who is considered a dependent student can be confusing.

There is a common misconception that once a student turns 18, moves away from home, begins working, or starts supporting themselves financially, they automatically become independent for federal financial-aid purposes.

That is not necessarily the case.

Federal Student Aid uses specific criteria established by law to determine whether a student is considered dependent or independent. Dependency status is not based solely on whether a student lives with their parents, receives financial support from them, or files their own tax return.

For many traditional undergraduate students, parental information may continue to be required on the FAFSA until they meet one of the federal criteria for independent status. Age is one of those criteria, with the commonly discussed threshold being 24, although students may qualify as independent earlier under other circumstances.

Consider what this can mean in practice.

A 21-year-old student could live independently, work full time, pay rent, purchase groceries, cover transportation expenses, and manage their own household. Yet that student may still be considered dependent for federal student-aid purposes.

There are provisions for certain unusual circumstances and other situations, but students first have to know those options exist before they can ask the right questions or seek additional assistance.

This is where the larger challenge begins to emerge.

Financial-aid education should not begin when a student is already sitting in front of a FAFSA application.

Students should be learning how financial aid works before they are expected to navigate it.

And if the system is complicated for students and families, we must also examine the preparation of the professionals responsible for helping them understand it.

The People Advising Students Carry Enormous Responsibility

Admissions professionals are often among the first people students interact with when exploring a postsecondary institution.

Their role can extend far beyond explaining an application.

An admissions advisor may be speaking with a 17-year-old making one of the first major decisions of their adult life. They may be working with a first-generation college student whose family has never navigated higher education. They may speak with an adult learner trying to rebuild a career after a layoff, a parent concerned about affordability, or a student unsure whether a particular program will actually lead to the career they want.

These conversations are not simply transactional.

They are human conversations involving finances, family circumstances, career aspirations, fear, uncertainty, confidence, and sometimes significant personal barriers.

For that reason, I believe we should have a broader conversation about the professional preparation expected of admissions advisors.

In my opinion, admissions professionals could benefit significantly from educational backgrounds or formal training related to counseling, social services, psychology, student development, education, or other human-service disciplines.

This does not mean admissions professionals should function as therapists or social workers.

Instead, it recognizes the reality that admissions is fundamentally a people-centered profession.

Listening carefully, identifying barriers, understanding different life circumstances, communicating options objectively, recognizing when someone may need additional resources, and helping students make informed decisions require interpersonal skills that extend beyond enrollment goals.

When the decisions being discussed can affect a student's finances and future career, the preparation of the people facilitating those conversations matters.

The same principle applies even more directly when the conversation moves from enrollment to money.

Financial-Aid Professionals Are Managing Complex Financial Decisions

Financial-aid professionals operate within one of the most complicated areas of postsecondary education.

Their responsibilities can include helping students understand grants, federal student loans, institutional aid, eligibility requirements, cost of attendance, satisfactory academic progress, verification requirements, Return of Title IV calculations, and numerous federal and institutional regulations.

Federal Student Aid does provide training resources for financial-aid professionals, including training for new staff and specialized training on federal student-aid requirements.

However, the existence of training does not eliminate a larger question:

Should the professional preparation associated with financial-aid positions more closely reflect the complexity and financial responsibility of the work?

I believe it should.

Financial-aid professionals may help a student understand a financial decision involving tens of thousands of dollars.

That is an enormous responsibility.

In my opinion, stronger foundations in areas such as personal finance, financial literacy, accounting, economics, or related financial disciplines could add significant value to the profession.

A student should not simply understand that they qualify for a loan.

They should understand what borrowing means.

What is the interest rate?

When does repayment begin?

How much could the loan ultimately cost?

What happens if the student leaves school before completing the program?

What grants or scholarships might reduce the amount borrowed?

What is the difference between federal and private student loans?

What could the monthly payment look like after graduation?

These are not minor administrative questions. They can shape someone's financial life for years.

And when we consider the level of responsibility carried by both admissions and financial-aid professionals, another issue becomes impossible to ignore:

How are we valuing the people doing this work?

Compensation Should Reflect the Responsibility

Postsecondary education represents an enormous economic sector. Institutions manage substantial amounts of tuition, public funding, financial aid, grants, and other revenue every year.

Behind those numbers are people.

Admissions advisors may be responsible for recruiting students, managing prospective-student pipelines, conducting outreach, explaining programs, communicating with families, meeting enrollment expectations, maintaining documentation, and helping students move from initial interest to enrollment.

Admissions directors carry even broader responsibilities. They may manage teams, develop enrollment strategies, forecast enrollment, monitor performance, establish processes, and help institutions maintain the student populations necessary to sustain their operations.

Enrollment has financial consequences for institutions.

At the same time, enrollment has financial consequences for students.

That places admissions professionals in a unique position between institutional sustainability and student decision-making.

Financial-aid professionals carry a different but equally significant responsibility. They must interpret regulations, administer aid accurately, support institutional compliance, communicate complicated financial information, and help families understand financial commitments that may follow students for years.

These should not be viewed simply as administrative positions.

They are skilled professions operating within a massive education system and carrying responsibilities that can directly affect both institutional operations and individual lives.

If institutions expect admissions and financial-aid professionals to carry increasing responsibility, then their training, professional development, staffing, career pathways, resources, and compensation should reflect the importance and complexity of that work.

Investing in the people guiding students is ultimately an investment in students themselves.

However, improving the training, support, and compensation of admissions and financial-aid professionals addresses only one part of the challenge.

By the time many students reach these professionals, they are already making decisions about where to enroll, how much they can afford, and what they may be willing to borrow.

That means we also have to look further upstream—at how students are being prepared before they ever enter the admissions process.

That preparation should begin much earlier.

Postsecondary Planning Often Starts Too Late

Some of the largest gaps in postsecondary education do not begin inside colleges or career schools.

They begin before students ever arrive.

High school is one of the most important environments for postsecondary preparation because students are already making decisions that will influence what happens after graduation.

For high school seniors in particular, the beginning of October should represent more than simply another month on the school calendar. October 1 can serve as an important postsecondary planning milestone—a reminder that financial-aid preparation, scholarship searches, applications, institutional deadlines, and conversations about how to pay for education should already be underway.

FAFSA timelines have changed in recent years, so students and families should confirm the opening date for their specific award year rather than assuming the federal application will always become available on October 1. But the broader lesson remains the same: by the beginning of October, seniors should understand their postsecondary options and be actively preparing for the financial decisions ahead.

They should not be learning for the first time in the spring that financial aid exists, that scholarships have deadlines, or that different institutions can have different priority dates.

October should be a checkpoint.

Do I know what pathways I am considering?

Have I researched the institutions or programs?

Do I understand what they cost?

Have I discussed FAFSA with my parent or contributor, if their information will be required?

Do I know which scholarships I am eligible for?

Do I know my application and financial-aid deadlines?

Have I compared options beyond four-year colleges?

These conversations should already be happening.

Yet postsecondary preparation should involve much more than asking a student:

“What college are you going to?”

Students should understand the full range of postsecondary pathways available to them.

That includes universities, community colleges, career and technical education, licensed career schools, apprenticeships, military opportunities, workforce-development programs, fellowships, and other legitimate education and training options.

No single pathway is automatically superior to another.

The better question is whether the pathway aligns with the student's goals, finances, learning needs, and intended career.

Students should also understand how to evaluate the institution itself.

Is the institution licensed?

Is it accredited?

Does the student's intended career require a specific type of accreditation or licensing?

What is the total cost of completing the program—not simply the advertised tuition?

What percentage of students complete the program?

What career services are available?

What support systems exist if the student begins struggling academically or personally?

What are the employment outcomes associated with the program?

These are questions students should learn to ask before enrolling, not after problems arise.

But knowing what questions to ask is only one part of postsecondary readiness.

Students also need to know when to act.

Even a well-informed student can lose access to an opportunity if critical information reaches them after a deadline has passed.

Critical Dates Are Part of Postsecondary Readiness

Information is only useful when students receive it in time to act on it.

That is why critical dates should be treated as a fundamental part of postsecondary education planning.

The beginning of October is a perfect example.

For high school seniors, October should be treated as a major planning checkpoint each year. Families should be reviewing the current FAFSA timeline, financial-aid requirements, scholarship opportunities, admissions deadlines, institutional priority dates, and the true costs of the programs students are considering.

But October 1 should not be the day the conversation begins.

It should be the point at which earlier preparation turns into action.

Financial-aid applications, scholarship opportunities, admissions deadlines, state programs, institutional aid, housing applications, registration requirements, and other opportunities all operate according to timelines.

Missing a deadline can have financial consequences.

A student may learn that a scholarship exists only after applications have closed. Another student may discover an institutional grant after available funds have already been distributed. A family may begin discussing financial aid only when an acceptance letter arrives.

By that point, some opportunities may already be limited.

This is why high schools should not simply provide information about postsecondary education.

They should help students develop a timeline for navigating it.

Students and families should know what needs to happen during junior year, what needs to happen during the summer before senior year, what should be ready by October, which applications should be prioritized, which deadlines are approaching, and where they can go when they have questions.

Learning about an opportunity after its deadline has passed is not meaningful access.

Information has the greatest value when students receive it before they need to make the decision.

And that responsibility cannot belong to one person or institution alone.

When students are navigating education, careers, financial aid, deadlines, borrowing, and major life decisions simultaneously, preparing them requires coordination across the systems surrounding them.

Postsecondary Readiness Must Become More Proactive

When we examine FAFSA dependency requirements, admissions advising, financial-aid counseling, professional preparation, compensation, high-school education, and critical deadlines together, a larger pattern emerges.

We often expect students to navigate complicated systems before anyone has systematically taught them how those systems work.

We cannot reasonably expect a 17- or 18-year-old student to understand a postsecondary system they have never been taught to navigate.

We also cannot place the entire responsibility on parents.

Many parents are navigating FAFSA, financial aid, scholarships, accreditation, admissions, education costs, and changing career pathways for the first time themselves. Even parents who attended college may be helping their children navigate a system that looks very different from the one they experienced years ago.

Postsecondary readiness therefore needs to become a shared responsibility among high schools, colleges, career schools, counselors, community organizations, policymakers, families, and the professionals working directly with students.

The goal should be to move from a reactive system to a proactive one.

Students need education before recruitment.

They need financial literacy before borrowing.

They need career exploration before selecting a program.

They need critical dates before deadlines arrive.

They need cost comparisons before signing enrollment agreements.

And they need professionals who are adequately trained, supported, and compensated to help them navigate these decisions.

For me, this is more than a professional observation about postsecondary education.

It is a challenge I understand personally.

Information Before Obligation

I graduated from college with more than $80,000 in student loan debt.

Looking back, there were questions I did not know to ask, resources I did not know existed, and alternative pathways I did not fully understand.

I cannot change the decisions I made then, but I can use what I learned to help someone else ask better questions today.

My experience taught me that students do not simply need more information.

They need a framework for understanding what information matters, where to find it, and what questions to ask before making a commitment.

That realization became part of the foundation for NextGen Ready.

My goal is not to convince students that college is good or bad. It is not to suggest that a four-year university is better than an apprenticeship, or that career education is better than community college.

No single pathway is superior for everyone.

Instead, my goal is to help students and families understand their options before they commit their time, money, and future earnings to them.

Through the framework I introduce in Chapter 4 of my book, Navigating Career Success: Strategies for Growth, Resilience, and Advancement, I encourage students and families to evaluate five core areas when considering postsecondary education:

Licensing vs. Accreditation

Understand the difference and determine what matters for the student's intended career.

Education Cost

Look beyond tuition and understand the total financial commitment required to complete the education.

Program & Specialization

Determine whether the program actually provides the education, training, credentials, and specialization needed for the student's career goals.

Career Services & Placement

Examine what support exists to help students transition from education into employment.

Campus Support & Culture

Consider whether the learning environment, academic resources, student services, and overall culture will support the student's ability to succeed.

These five principles encourage students to move beyond simply asking:

“Can I get into this school?”

Instead, I want them to ask:

“Is this the right school, program, financial commitment, and environment for the future I am trying to build?”

That is a very different conversation.

We Have an Opportunity to Prepare Students Differently

Postsecondary education will continue to be an important pathway to economic mobility and career advancement for millions of people.

But access to education should also include access to information.

A student should not have to accumulate significant debt before understanding how student loans work.

A student should not have to enroll before learning the difference between licensing and accreditation.

A family should not have to miss a deadline before realizing how important postsecondary planning timelines are.

And a student should not have to experience a problem before discovering the resources that could have helped prevent it.

If we want students to make better postsecondary decisions, we have to give them better information before those decisions are made.

Because the question should not simply be:

“Where are you going after high school?”

We should also be asking:

“Do you understand what you are choosing, why you are choosing it, what it will cost, how you will pay for it, and where that decision can take you?”

That is the conversation I believe every student deserves to have before making one of the first major educational and financial decisions of their adult life.

The larger message is simple:

Information should come before obligation. Preparation should come before borrowing. And guidance should come before a student is expected to make a life-changing decision.

That is the conversation NextGen Ready is working to bring to more students, families, schools, and communities.