Imagine a world where every high school junior has walked a factory floor, sat in a boardroom, taken college courses, and earned credentials valued by employers before graduation. Even before they’re legal adults, these students will have cracked open the door to a career by blurring the lines between school and work. While this might seem like a provocative thought experiment, it’s already happening in innovative school districts across the U.S. Jobs for the Future (JFF) first called for this “Big Blur” in 2021, arguing for the erasure of outdated boundaries between school, college, and career so that every young person has access to meaningful work experience and further education. This isn’t just good for high school students—it’s also good for the economy.
The labor market is changing faster and more unpredictably than governments, school districts, and higher education can handle. AI is rewriting the rules overnight. Credentials and degrees are necessary but increasingly insufficient to employers looking for proof of skills and agility, including prior work experience. States that manage to blur the sharp separation between K12 schooling, higher education, and workforce training will flip the script. Instead of students stumbling blindly into the job market when they graduate, they’ll hit the ground running with qualifications, work experience, and a clear path to a fair wage and quality jobs.
We already have policy precedents for how to “blur” effectively. Lawmakers in Colorado launched a Postsecondary and Work-Based Learning Integration Task Force to expand access to work-based learning, early college credit earning, and industry-recognized credentials. Texas created the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative to foster cooperation among its K–12, higher ed, and workforce agencies. Tennessee launched the SySTEM grant to support the design and spread of work-based dual enrollment courses for high school students. Reducing bureaucracy can go a long way toward advancing the Big Blur, even in the absence of funding. Mandating that dual-enrollment credits are accepted at state colleges and universities, for example, doesn’t mean new spending. It just means shifting state policy to favor flexibility.
Conditions have never been more conducive to reform. Parents and students are increasingly skeptical of traditional college pathways. Employers are impatient for skilled talent. Taxpayers are reluctant to continue backing postsecondary institutions with dubious outcomes, as the debate over student debt and the demand for institutional accountability make clear. Meanwhile, the population of high school students is expected to reach a demographic peak and then begin a sharp and sustained decline over the next fifteen years. We simply can’t afford to waste human talent and expect to maintain our country’s growth and prosperity.
So, what should state governments do to accelerate the Big Blur and connect learning with real life?
1. Revamp state funding to treat grades 11–14 as a continuum.
States should pilot and implement funding models that follow high school students and provide strong incentives for definable college and career outcomes. Instead of bluntly funding enrollment, states should tie school dollars directly to student performance in areas like credential attainment, completion of work-based learning experiences, and successful transitions to further education or fair-wage jobs; the latter is possible in states that have longitudinal data systems linking education and employment data. This is not far-fetched: As of 2019, Texas rewards school districts with an “outcomes bonus” of up to $5,000 per student who earns markers of college and career success, including approved industry-recognized credentials. Schools should get credit for moving students along to the next phase of their lives and careers, not just keeping them enrolled through graduation.
Idaho’s Advanced Opportunities program gives scholarship funding directly to students (starting in seventh grade) to pay for AP and IB exams, professional certifications, career and technical courses, and apprenticeships. Texas adopted an outcomes-based funding model for community colleges that rewards institutions for producing graduates with credentials of value and incentivizes them to use dual enrollment toward this end. And in Colorado, the Path4Ward program awarded extra funding for college, apprenticeships, or internships to students who finish high school early. Without financial realignment, districts and colleges will continue to optimize for institutional survival, not student success.
2. Align governance and accountability toward shared outcomes.
States must build governance arrangements that allow K–12 districts, community colleges, and workforce agencies to own outcomes for young adults. Metrics should transcend a single institution, and states must share data systems across their K–12, higher education, and labor or workforce divisions. State authorizing bodies should be empowered to sign off on new models that blur the lines between high school, college, and workforce training and experience.
Tennessee created a Ready Graduate Indicator that emphasizes early postsecondary opportunities, like dual enrollment and Advanced Placement, alongside industry certifications and WorkKeys Career Readiness Certificates. Michigan’s Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential comprises agencies and non-government organizations to help more people from birth through postsecondary earn a skill certificate or degree to help them get a good, paying job.
3. Scale up promising models of work-based learning.
States should set quality standards for youth apprenticeships, paid internships, and employer partnerships, provide seed funding for nonprofits and local government agencies that broker partnerships, and remove regulatory barriers that make employers reluctant to take on young trainees. The District of Columbia’s Ward 8 Advanced Technical Center gives high schoolers opportunities to earn dual credit and industry credentials, participate in paid internships, and gain clinical experience in fields like nursing, medical assisting, and emergency medical response, preparing them for employment with the DC Health Care Employment and Apprenticeship Link (DC HEAL) program after they graduate.
The Manufacturers Association of Central New York partners with community colleges across Upstate New York to provide a free 12-week course for women interested in advanced manufacturing, giving them on-site experience with local employers and the chance to earn industry certifications alongside their academic credit. Successful programs like these are closely tailored to local workforce needs and opportunities for further education.
4. Encourage teachers and faculty to experiment with new forms of learning.
Integrating college, career, and high school learning requires new approaches to teaching and learning. A wealth of research shows that making real-world connections across curricula helps drive student motivation and deepen learning, but that few instructors have the experience or the authority to make curricular changes on their own.
In Hawaii, industry experts can become certified teachers through an accelerated community college program. Tennessee supports a special category of teacher licensure for occupational experts, making it easier for industry-experienced professionals to transition into the classroom.
Life doesn’t happen in discrete, neatly packaged chapters, and we’re already living in a blurrier time. The Big Blur is a bold, actionable agenda that befits this reality. For students, it promises earlier, stronger access to meaningful careers; for employers, a more diverse and skilled pipeline; and for states, a better return on investments in education and training. The political and economic moment to blur has come. Will state policymakers act, or will they stand by and watch the opportunity slip away?
