The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education

This time, we’re turning the tables and putting Jeremy in the hot seat. Monique Frost sits down with Career Leadership Collective CEO and founder Jeremy Podany to explore what he is seeing across higher education as colleges and universities move from talking about career ecosystems to actually building them.

Drawing from his recent work with university cabinets, councils of deans, faculty leaders, career teams, and institutional task forces in the U.S. and internationally, Jeremy reflects on why this moment feels quite different from previous periods of heightened attention on career readiness.

Jeremy unpacks four barriers that can keep institutions from changing, why understanding a campus’s motivation matters, and three ingredients he believes are essential to getting career ecosystem development off the ground. The conversation then turns from building to strengthening, where Jeremy discusses the danger of remaining in an endless cycle of pilots, the growing importance of measurement and storytelling, and how institutions can begin assessing how career learning relates to future outcomes.

What role should career readiness play in the future of the liberal arts?

In this episode, Jeremy Podany sits down with Dr. Milton Moreland, the 21st President of Centre College, to explore how a highly residential liberal arts institution is building a more intentional career ecosystem while staying deeply rooted in its academic mission.

President Moreland discusses how career readiness and the liberal arts are not competing priorities. In an increasingly AI- and technology-driven world, the durable skills developed through a liberal arts education may be more valuable than ever. The conversation explores Centre’s evolving approach, including faculty serving as career ecosystem champions, career connections among faculty and alumni with students, mapping durable skills across the curriculum, and creating clearer milestones that help students understand what they should experience throughout their four years.

In this episode, Monique Frost is joined by Dr. Amy Hodges Hamilton, Professor of English, Director of Undergraduate Core Curriculum, and Mary Claire Dismukes, Director, Career and Professional Development of Belmont University, to discuss how Belmont has successfully integrated career readiness into their undergraduate curriculum. The discussion explores how Belmont moved beyond traditional career services to embed career learning across the entire student experience, starting with a cohort-based model that began with senior capstone courses and expanded to include vocational discernment throughout the general education curriculum. The conversation also touches on Belmont's approach to building faculty champions slowly rather than attempting rapid scaling, and how they address faculty concerns about diluting academic rigor by positioning career readiness as an enhancement rather than an addition to the curriculum.

What should a career ecosystem look like? How might your career ecosystem look different from others? Why?

In this episode we explore how Tulane University is thoughtfully building a career ecosystem around the distinctive characteristics of its institution and its students. Tulane brings their own unique combination of assets to this work: a major research university where undergraduate students enter through a single academic college point of entry, an institutional culture deeply connected to New Orleans, a belief that internships should not be optional, and and opportunities for students to engage in research, service, and professional development throughout their education. Rather than importing someone else’s model, Tulane is designing to intentionally connect all of these assets into a coherent system that helps every student navigate their education and prepare for what comes next.

In the third installment of our three-part series exploring the making of a career ecosystem at The University of Texas at Austin, Jeremy Podany is joined by Anneke Chy, Assistant Dean for Advising and Student Support, and Dr. Jessica (Jessie) Wandelt, Associate Professor of Instruction, Faculty Director for Career Education from the College of Natural Sciences to discuss how they are transforming career services to reach the college's 11,000 students across diverse majors including math, physics, life sciences, computer science, and human ecology.

The conversation covers their shift from a one-on-one destination model to a collaborative "village approach" involving career services, advising, faculty, and experiential learning teams working together to embed career readiness into the academic experience.

In the second installment of our three-part series exploring the making of a career ecosystem at The University of Texas at Austin, we offer an inside look at how UT Austin’s College of Fine Arts is integrating life design and career learning directly into the academic experience of its students. Rather than treating career preparation as a service students seek near graduation, the college is introducing students to reflection, experimentation, relationship-building, resilience, and creative problem-solving from the beginning of their university journey. The episode discusses why life design is such a natural fit for students in the creative disciplines, how collaboration with faculty has enabled career learning to become part of the curriculum, and what it takes to scale the work across a college encompassing numerous artistic fields and degree pathways.

This episode kicks off our three-part series exploring The University of Texas at Austin's journey to build a campus-wide career ecosystem. Jeremy Podany sits down with Michael Drew, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and Daniel Liu, Assistant Vice Provost for Career Success, to discuss how one of the nation's largest and most selective public universities is sparking change in colleges, among faculty, and with career professionals around a shared vision for student career success for all students. Together, they explore the challenges of leading change across a highly federated institution, why clarity of purpose and structure shape an ecosystem, and how intentional collaboration is creating a stronger value proposition for every Longhorn.

In today’s episode, Nikki Marzano and Drew Poppleton from John Carroll University will discuss the creation of a required four-year professional development program designed to ensure every student receives structured career support throughout their college journey. They share how they built campus-wide buy-in, aligned leadership around a common vision, and redesigned advising and career development systems to create a more equitable, scalable, and career-connected student experience. The episode offers a practical blueprint for institutions seeking to make career readiness a shared institutional responsibility rather than an optional service.

What does it take to embed career development learning across an entire university—and prove that it works? In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Julieanne Cutrupi and Eva Chan from the University of Technology Sydney to explore their multi-year journey from an opportunistic, opt-in model to a curriculum-embedded approach spanning 73 degree programs and 135 subjects, reaching approximately 33,500 students. Together, they unpack how a team of just 4.6 equivalent career professionals built this scalable career ecosystem, developed a framework for measuring its impact, and generated compelling evidence that embedded career education significantly improves students’ career understanding, clarity, and confidence.

What if career learning was actually built into the college experience instead of remaining optional? In this episode, Jeremy Podany, Monique Frost, and Nick Cattin explore the growing movement toward embedded career learning and the strategic integration of career milestones across the student journey. Together, they unpack what meaningful career milestones look like, where colleges should embed them for maximum impact, and why the future of career readiness depends less on optional programming and more on intentional institutional design.

What does it actually look like to build a career ecosystem at a small liberal arts college — and how do you bring faculty, staff, alumni, and students along for the ride? In this episode, Jeremy Podany sits down with Jen Guyer-Wood, Associate Vice President of Life Design and Innovation at Macalester College, to explore how a 2,000-student campus in St. Paul, Minnesota has spent the last three years intentionally weaving career learning into the fabric of student life. Jen shares how a newly launched strategic plan, a realignment of Student Affairs under Academic Affairs, and a culture of deep relationships created the perfect conditions for systemic change. From a first-year "Strengths in Action" course to a brand-new "Engage" general education requirement — ensuring every student completes an applied learning experience — Jen unpacks the specific moves her team has made to embed career learning where students already are, rather than waiting for them to walk through the career center door.

This podcast episode featured a conversation between Nick Catton (Career Leadership Collective) and Ball State University leaders Jim McAtee (Assistant Vice President for Career and Professional Development) and David Hua (Associate Professor) about their decade-long journey transforming career services into a comprehensive career ecosystem serving 20,000 students across 7 academic colleges.

This podcast explores career ecosystems in higher education from a board of trustees perspective, featuring David Castagnetti discussing his experience as a trustee at Lake Forest College. Also, how trustees think strategically about career readiness within institutional mission.

In this podcast, Jeremy, Monique, and Nick discuss why and how colleges must define career learning outcomes to create systemic change in career preparation. Without definition, campuses may experience fragmentation, confusion, and uneven student experiences. And now more than ever, both parents and students expect clarity on what career preparation they're receiving.

Career learning is evolving from optional, opt-in services to embedded experiences that reach every student. Dr. Wyatt explains how UTSA developed their "Future Ready Roadrunners" philosophy, which focuses on academic strength, professional preparation, and personal development for all students, and the key focus areas driving the success of this effort.

Bloomberg called The Kogod School of Business at American University the “first AI-first business school”, embedding artificial intelligence across every department, degree, major, and minor. Jeremy and Dean David Marchick discuss why AI innovation is important, how it can be a key component of an integrated career learning ecosystem, and early insights AI infusion is having on student career confidence, enthusiasm, and outcomes.

Sensemaking. Leveraging blank spaces. Navigating the curricular maze. These are among the concepts Scott Carlson unpacks in the book Hacking College with co-author Ned Laff. In this episode, Jeremy and Scott discuss philosophical approaches to systematically helping students make the most of college and practical tips for academic advisors, senior leaders, and career centers to continue finding beauty in their work as they develop their career ecosystem. Hacking College is a must-read for any campus building out a sophisticated career ecosystem.

What aspects of career learning should not be left to chance in the college student experience? President Pescovitz and her campus community have embedded career learning into multiple aspects of the student experience, and have recently launched the OU Pledge, an initiative to ensure that every Oakland University student receives hands-on or experiential learning. They are embracing the career ecosystem era, leaning into career readiness and affordability, and joining college and university leaders across the country who are seeking to institutionalize the career learning that matters most to students and families.

Welcome to 2026! In this no-guest episode, Jeremy Podany elaborates on the five most important career readiness trends shaping higher education in 2026. He explores what the field is moving away from, toward, and doubling down on, as well as the spark that is needed to catalyze it all. The episode highlights why career learning is no longer optional, how ROI pressures are accelerating change, and what senior campus leaders can and must do now to prepare every student for long-term career success. This is a forward-looking conversation for anyone responsible for the future of student career outcomes.

Jeremy is joined by two of his consulting colleagues from The Collective as they openly discuss the dilemma many colleges and universities face when trying to reach more students within their current career center model. They discuss how to refine ecosystem efforts to effectively support students' learning.