Navigation & Guidance in the Age of AI: 5 Trends to Watch

Could college and career navigation & guidance become more relational in the age of AI? How much social-emotional support should bots provide to young people? When are chatbots expanding access, and when are they making isolation more convenient and comfortable? 

These are the questions we started to ask as we lifted the hood on how navigation and guidance will evolve in the age of AI. 

In the coming years, we predict that bots will scale fastest in areas where human help is hard to access. College and career advising and student support, long plagued by punishing student-to-staff ratios, is primed for AI support tools. To understand the implications of that, we interviewed leaders and advisors at over 30 tech companies and hybrid advising organizations spanning the education-to-career continuum. Through structured interviews, we gathered their insights on the market forces shaping navigation & guidance technologies, the ideal division of labor between humans and bots, and whether AI can and will be built to help or hinder students’ access to human connections. 

Our research revealed five key trends: 

1. The lines between human- and bot-driven support are getting blurrier.
2. Both logistical and psychological factors are driving student-bot engagement.
3. Leaders are hopeful that with AI, advisors will take on more relational work as both coaches and connectors.
4. Today’s navigation & guidance market doesn’t treat relationships as a core outcome. 
5. Despite limited demand for building relationships, innovators are spearheading creative ways to scale human connections. 

Based on these findings, we predict that in the near term, bots will lend breakthrough efficiencies to the lowest tiers of the navigation & guidance market, providing more on-demand information and reminders, and are unlikely to displace already scarce human resources. However, they won’t necessarily be built to promote more human connections unless schools and programs specifically prioritize connection alongside other outcomes.

Long term, without explicit metrics and goals to offer higher tiers of support, deepen relationships, and expand students’ networks, bots will be on a path to disrupting relationships rather than enabling them.

This should be cause for concern for anyone advocating for navigation and guidance models that promote equity and mobility. If we want a navigation & guidance system that levels the playing field, it must address network gaps, not just information and support gaps. 

The market doesn’t reflect our ambitions–and AI won’t fix that

In recent years, myriad research and advocacy organizations have looked at what information, support, and guidance students need to better equip them to make progress in school and work.

For example, The Harvard Project on Workforce identified five factors of a career navigation system that lead to job mobility.¹ Bellwether offered a three-part framework highlighting three choice enablers–information, social capital, and pathways options–that would transform postsecondary systems.² Getting Smart highlighted ten functions of advisory systems, such as career exploration and “pathway authoring.”³ Researchers at the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) studied the multitude of factors informing what students themselves consider “the good life” post-graduation—and what schools need to do more of to deliver on that promise.⁴ The research and design team at Teach for America Reinvention Lab published an ethnographic study detailing the lack of supports “canyon” high school graduates must navigate post-high school and recommendations to build better bridges into adulthood.⁵

At the same time, researchers and advocates have continued to drive for high-quality advising structures that deliver transformational, beyond merely transactional, support.⁶ 

With each unique contribution, this growing body of research reflects a larger shift afoot in the field: navigation and guidance is emerging as a vital backbone to a more personalized, flexible, and equitable set of postsecondary and career pathways. 

At the same time, these thorough and ambitious frameworks also reflect outsized hopes being placed on a chronically fragmented and woefully underfunded system.

Enter Generative AI. With breakthroughs in backend analytics, personalized support, and conversational intelligence, AI could help more systems offer the many supports and resources that researchers call for. But while delivering all of their recommendations is possible, it’s not inevitable. 

The market, not just new technological advancements, will shape what gets built and scaled. While schools and colleges are currently hunting for tools supporting career exposure, postsecondary planning, and postsecondary progress, they are not fully optimized for career success. As a result, while AI is likely to revolutionize some forms of support, it won’t realize its full transformative potential. Worse yet, with bots providing increasingly human-like support to students, AI-enabled navigation could scale access while shrinking human-to-human interactions. 

Human connection is becoming more valuable and more vulnerable in the age of AI

Access to networks is particularly vulnerable with the rise of these new technologies. An advisor, Samuel Kennedy, who works in the hybrid advising division of college success nonprofit Bottom Line, described the dynamics of this new era well: “On one hand, students could have access to timely information that they might not otherwise have. I think the flip side of that is, if everyone has access, it will raise the importance of the people that have human access and have those networks and connections.”

Although some leaders we interviewed are hopeful that more advisors can step into a network connector role on behalf of their students, that has yet to play out. At the same time, the market for network-building technologies is weak.⁷ While analysts at JFF cite this gap as a market “opportunity,” our research suggests it’s a market failure—and one with potentially dire consequences, as bots can take on more and more coaching and support roles. If schools or employers are unwilling to pay for students’ access to networks, whole swaths of students will have fewer opportunities and inroads into the labor market.

With the advent of Gen AI, we’re entering a time when human connection is more valuable and more vulnerable. Although many argue that “human skills” will command a greater premium, there’s been limited research on the short- and long-term impact of bot-driven advising on students’ social capital—connections that can provide students with valuable resources like support, advice, and, ultimately, job referrals.

An estimated half of internships and jobs come through personal connections. Students with access to mentors are significantly more likely to graduate feeling prepared for life after school. Young people who have an adult encouraging them to pursue their goals are more than twice as likely as those without to have a promising future. 

Based on our interviews, however, the market has not caught up to that research. Navigation and guidance tools are largely optimized around delivering information and supports that lead students through school and toward jobs. But it’s harder to build a sustainable business model around technology that scales the opportunities and connections that actually get students jobs or support job mobility.

That is risky, especially looking ahead to the new premium connections will likely command. 

Luckily, there’s hope: a number of the entrepreneurs we interviewed are seeking to make sure human connection is a byproduct, rather than a casualty, of their product design. You can read about their approaches and more in our full report.

1. Unlocking economic prosperity: career navigation in a time of rapid change, Harvard Project on Workforce ↩︎
2. An Investment not a Gamble, Bellwether ↩︎
3. Support and Guidance For All New Pathways Journeys, Getting Smart ↩︎
4. A “good life” for every student: High schools embrace many pathways to success, CRPE ↩︎
5. Crossing the Canyon: Reinventing Life after High School, Teach For America Reinvention Lab ↩︎
6. Transactional Advising vs. Transformational Advising, NACADA ↩︎
7. Use Cases for Generative AI in Workforce Development, JFF ↩︎