Career Services: From Career Center to Career Pathways Infrastructure

In higher education, Career Services is often treated as a place students go when they are ready to write a resume, search for internships, or prepare for interviews. However, that model is too late, too optional, and too disconnected from how students actually make academic and career decisions. Students begin forming ideas about work, income, identity, and opportunity long before they reach graduation. If Career Services only appears at the end of that process, institutions miss one of the strongest opportunities to improve student persistence, completion, and employment outcomes.

In a recent study we conducted with a large community college serving an urban population, students described career decision-making as a complex process shaped by interests, academic strengths, prior work experience, family expectations, job availability, earning potential, and cultural background. Survey results reinforced this complexity: students rated their own strengths and academic abilities as highly influential, but they also placed strong weight on job availability and earning potential. In other words, students were not choosing programs in a vacuum. They were trying to make sense of who they were, what they could afford, what their families expected, and what the labor market might offer.

The same study also showed that career information reaches students through multiple channels. Students did not rely only on formal Career Services. They turned to faculty, advisors, college websites, family members, peers, and prior work experiences. Faculty were especially important because students often saw them as credible contacts: people who could explain what a job actually involved, what employers expected, what coursework mattered, and what pathways were realistic. If Career Services is confined to one office, it cannot fully support the way students actually navigate the career decision-making process.

A more promising model is to treat Career Services as institutional infrastructure. In this model, central career planning and advising services remain important, but they are not the only way career development happens. Instead, career planning should be embedded across the student journey through predictable touchpoints with Career Services, faculty and staff referrals, employment-based learning opportunities, and student support services. Students should encounter career development repeatedly, not only when they are preparing to leave.

This is where a Career Services journey model becomes useful. A journey model defines how students move from early exploration to informed decision-making, employer-connected learning, skill development, and employment or continued education. It asks: What should students understand in their first year? When should they connect their academic program planning to labor-market information? How and when will they encounter internships, work-based learning, or applied projects? Who helps them interpret employer expectations? How are career conversations documented and followed up? The point is not to add more disconnected services. The point is to make career development a routine part of academic progression.

The model also requires a broader view of who provides career guidance. Faculty, advisors, coaches, program staff, and student support personnel often serve as the first point of contact when students ask whether a program is worth the investment, whether a career is realistic, or what they can do with a credential. Institutions should not expect these staff to become career counselors, but they can equip them with career road maps, referral protocols, labor-market summaries, and clear guidance on when to connect students with Career Services. This turns informal advice into a more consistent institutional system.

The journal approach to Career Services is especially important for applied, technical, and workforce-oriented programs. Students in these pathways may need specialized advising that connects program requirements, credentials, labor-market information, employer expectations, work-based learning, and next-step employment or continued education. Traditional advising models can overemphasize transfer pathways and underemphasize immediate workforce goals. Specialized technical/workforce-oriented career advising protocols can close that gap by creating common intake, referral, advising, and follow-up procedures providing students with the Career Services they need for success.

Employer partnerships are another essential part of Career Services infrastructure. In a stronger model, employers are not engaged only at the point of hiring. They help students understand fields of work, clarify skill expectations, test career interests, build professional networks, and see how academic programs connect to real jobs. Employers can serve as mentors, classroom speakers, mock interviewers, project sponsors, internship and apprenticeship hosts, advisory committee members, curriculum informants, and partners in identifying emerging skills. They can also help faculty and Career Services staff interpret labor-market changes in practical terms: what entry-level roles look like, which credentials matter, what experiences strengthen employability, and how students can move from a first job to career advancement.

The larger lesson is that Career Services should not be viewed as a peripheral student support. It is a student success strategy, a workforce strategy, and an institutional capacity strategy. When Career Services is embedded across the student journey, students are more likely to see the purpose of their academic choices. When faculty and staff have tools to support career conversations, students receive more consistent guidance. When employers are engaged with faculty, staff, and students, more students gain access to sector expertise and applied learning and employment opportunities. When labor-market information is translated into advising, students can make better-informed decisions.

Evaluating for Sustainability: Evaluation of Title III Strengthening Institutions Grants

Many colleges and universities approach Title III grants as a way to launch new programs, improve student services, or modernize campus systems. Those goals matter. But the strongest Title III projects do something larger: they help institutions build lasting capacity.

That is why evaluation should be viewed as more than a reporting requirement. A well-designed evaluation helps institutions determine whether project changes are actually becoming part of the institution’s long-term operations.

In our work evaluating Title III grants, one issue consistently emerges: sustainability cannot be treated as a final-year discussion. Institutions that wait until Year 4 or Year 5 to think about sustainability are often too late.

The most successful projects begin planning for institutionalization at the start of the grant.

This distinction matters because many Title III initiatives begin as “special projects.” They may depend on temporary staff positions, grant-funded technology, or a small group of highly committed faculty and administrators. Early implementation may look successful, but if the work is not integrated into institutional structures, it can disappear once funding ends.

We have seen this challenge across many types of Title III activities, including advising reform, developmental education redesign, online learning expansion, student success initiatives, and workforce-focused program development.

For example, a college may hire grant-funded advisors who significantly improve student support services. But the long-term question is whether the institution eventually adopts those positions within its regular operating budget and advising structure. Similarly, faculty may redesign courses or pilot new instructional practices during the grant period, but those improvements are far more likely to continue when they become embedded into ongoing faculty development systems and academic planning processes. There is where evaluation becomes important.

Strong Title III evaluation goes beyond tracking outputs such as the number of workshops held, students served, or courses redesigned. Those metrics are necessary, but they are not enough. Evaluation should also examine whether the institution is building the systems, leadership support, policies, and internal ownership needed to sustain the work over time.

Federal guidance and emerging higher education evaluation literature increasingly emphasize this broader view of institutional change. Current discussions around sustainability in higher education focus on issues such as organizational readiness, cross-department collaboration, leadership alignment, continuous improvement, and institutional ownership of innovation.

In practice, this means evaluators should pay close attention to institutional context. Leadership turnover, staffing shortages, enrollment pressures, and reorganizations can all affect implementation. Even strong projects can lose momentum if they are not connected to institutional priorities and systems.

This is one reason qualitative methods are so valuable in Title III evaluation. Interviews, focus groups, implementation reviews, and sustainability assessments often reveal important issues before they appear in performance data. Faculty and staff may identify gaps in communication, uncertainty about long-term funding, or concerns about workload and institutional support. These conversations can help institutions make mid-course corrections while there is still time to strengthen the project.

Another important lesson is that sustainability is rarely tied to a single activity. Instead, it develops through repeated integration into institutional practice. Projects become sustainable when faculty, staff, and administrators begin to view them not as grant activities, but as part of how the institution operates.

Ultimately, the best Title III evaluations do more than document compliance. They help colleges and universities understand whether they are creating meaningful institutional change. When evaluation is approached this way, it becomes a practical tool for decision-making, strategic planning, and long-term improvement and not simply an annual reporting exercise.

Shaffer Evaluation Group has conducted project evaluations of Title III Strengthening Institutions grants since 2014. Our team has also provided grant writing support for Title III grant applications. If your institution is applying for a Title III grant and looking for an evaluation partner, please reach out to us at seg@shafferevaluation.com.

Federal Grants in Unstable Funding Environments: Maintaining Rigor When Projects Pivot

When grant project budgets shift, hiring stalls, or partnerships change mid-year, the temptation is to treat performance measurement as “on hold until things stabilize.” That’s risky—especially for multi-year discretionary grants where your annual performance report is the basis for continuation funding decisions. The better move is to redesign your performance measure framework so it can absorb change by measuring functions (what the work is meant to accomplish), protecting core components, and documenting adaptations with a simple decision log you can reuse in performance report narratives, continuation requests, and audits.

How project pivots can disrupt performance reporting

Most evaluation and performance frameworks are “activity-locked”: they assume the workplan stays intact (two convenings, one cohort launch, X workshops by month Y). But the federal reporting expectation doesn’t pause when implementation pivots. Most federal performance reporting guidance calls for demonstrating whether substantial progress is being made toward project objectives and program performance measures, since that's what most federal funders use to determine continuation eligibility.

The mismatch between fixed performance measures and implementation pivots creates three common failures in your performance reporting:

• Your indicators no longer map to what was actually delivered, so performance reporting becomes a “variance explanation” instead of evidence of progress.

• Your performance report narrative drifts into qualitative anecdotes, even though most federal guidance emphasizes accurate, valid, reliable data and clear statements about the level of success achieved (and contributing factors when goals aren’t fully met).

• You miss the grants-management side of the pivot: some changes trigger prior written approval requirements, even when you’re not rebudgeting.

Reframe performance measurement around functions and separate core from adaptable components

A pivot-proof performance measurement plan starts with a simple reframing: measure the function of an activity, not the activity itself. For example, instead of “host two employer roundtables,” define the function as “increase access to work-based learning and employer feedback loops.” You can meet that function through roundtables, project sprints, site visits, virtual showcases, or competency-based reviews without blowing up your measurement plan. This aligns with the expectation of federal Uniform Guidance that performance reporting relates accomplishments (and, when required, cost information) to the award’s goals and objectives—and that reports include comparisons against standards and explanations when goals aren’t met.

Then separate core components from what’s adaptable. Core components are your non-negotiables—the population you serve, the essential elements of the service, minimum levels of participation, and any required reporting or quality controls. Adaptable components are how you deliver the work—the sequence, format, tools, and partner roles. When a pivot occurs, be explicit about what is driving the change (e.g., staffing gaps, partner capacity, funding constraints) and document how you are adjusting delivery while protecting the core. This makes your rationale clear, defensible, and much easier to explain in performance reports and to program officers.

Use a decision log for grants management and performance measurement

If you want a single lightweight practice that improves both performance measurement and grant management, use a decision log.

Uniform Guidance requires notifying funders about significant developments that affect milestones/objectives, and documenting corrective action plans when problems or delays arise. And if the pivot touches scope/objectives or key personnel, 2 CFR 200.308 spells out when prior written approval is required.

A decision log (see example below) makes those requirements practical and gives you ready-to-paste language for federal performance reporting.

What this means for APRs, continuation, and audits

For continuation of your federal grant, 34 CFR 75.253 is your north star: you either demonstrate substantial progress or obtain approval for changes that still enable you to meet goals/targets without changing scope/objectives.

For audit-readiness, project pivots raises the stakes on documentation. Records generally must be retained for three years from submission of the final financial report (with extensions for litigation/audit findings). And at closeout, final performance and financial reports are due within 120 calendar days after the period of performance ends. A disciplined decision log plus well-defined measures is one of the easiest ways to make “why we changed course” legible years later.

Decision log template (short example)

Date	What changed	Trigger	What stays core	Eval implication	Approvals / artifacts
2026-01-18	Shift cohort intake from spring to rolling	Navigator hiring delay	Eligibility + required advising touchpoints	Report partial cohort; redefine “served” threshold	Email to PO; revised timeline; hiring record
2026-02-07	Replace 2 convenings with 6 virtual employer sprints	Travel/ partner capacity	Employer engagementfunction + project-based exposure	Use sprint rubric + participationrate as proxy	Agenda, attendance, rubric scores, partner letter

Looking for an evaluation partner who understands federal grants? Contact Shaffer Evaluation Group and request an evaluation proposal for your federal grant.