We have been asking work-based learning to do the wrong job

Work-based learning programming was meant for more. Kristy Volesky, national strategist, author, and founder of Volesky Consulting, explains why.

What happens when you give a powerful strategy the wrong job description? Eventually, you build an entire system around accomplishing the wrong things.

Work-based learning (WBL) was never intended to simply get students out of the building, accumulate hours, or satisfy a state reporting requirement. Its purpose is much bigger. WBL connects academic and technical learning to authentic experience while giving students intentional access to professionals, environments, and opportunities beyond what they can reach on their own. WBL provides a connection between what students learn in school and the world beyond it that no academic program can provide on its own. 

We have confused evidence that WBL happened with evidence that WBL worked.

As WBL became institutionalized, its mechanics began to overshadow its purpose. Programs became requirements, requirements created definitions, and definitions led to reporting systems that inevitably needed things that could be counted. Before long, participation became a measure of success, and completing an experience became enough to demonstrate it. 

Participation doesn’t make it WBL

When systems reward participation, participation becomes the goal. A student has a part-time job, completes the required hours, or spends time with an employer, and suddenly the experience can be added to a report. Those numbers may tell us how many students are working or how many have spent time in a workplace, but they tell us remarkably little about what changed for students because of the experience.

More importantly, employment does not become WBL simply because a school can count it. Students with part-time jobs are working. That work has value, but WBL requires intentionality around what the student is learning, experiencing, and gaining.

We need to ask different questions. What happened as a result of the experience? What did the student gain beyond what was already available to them? And once we have those answers, was it enough?

A part-time job can be an incredibly valuable experience for a student. But employment does not automatically become WBL because we identify skills the student is developing or add reflection after the fact. WBL requires intentional design around what the student is learning, exploring, experiencing, and gaining.

Consider a student interested in a business career who works as a cashier. We can stretch the definition and claim that handling money is somehow giving the student experience in accounting. The student may certainly be developing valuable skills such as communication, dependability, and customer service, but let’s not confuse employment with WBL simply because we can make it fit a definition. 

Compare that with the same student interning with the marketing or human resources team within that company. The experience is intentionally designed around what the student is learning. They contribute to authentic projects, receive feedback from professionals, learn how decisions are made, and develop relationships with people working in careers they are considering. The student and company haven’t changed, but the purpose and design of the experience have, creating a completely different outcome. 

Now put yourself in the position of the student working the part-time job. You are interested in business and looking to the school to help you understand where that interest could take you. Instead, you are told that the job you already have is enough. Another student gets access to professionals, meaningful projects, career knowledge, and relationships while actually testing whether this is a career they want to pursue. You get to keep working the cash register.

And then both experiences are counted as WBL.

One student gained access to something new and information that could shape their next decision. The other was given credit for something they already had. If we count both as success, the inequity disappears in the data even though the student experiences it in real life. 

This is the job we should be asking WBL to do: use learning and authentic experience to create access to professionals, environments, and opportunities students could not reach on their own. What matters is not simply that students had an experience, but what became possible because of it.  

If schools don’t create access, who will?

Not every student has a professional network to draw from, and even students who do may not have connections to the careers they want to explore. More importantly, a personal introduction is not the same as an intentionally designed learning experience.

WBL gives students the opportunity to test what they are learning in authentic environments, understand what a career actually looks like, build relationships with professionals, and make better-informed decisions about what comes next. A student may discover a career they want to pursue, realize the path they had planned is not right for them, or identify the education and experiences they need to take the next step. 

If schools do not intentionally create those opportunities, we are leaving access to chance, relying on what students can find for themselves or the connections they happen to encounter along the way. That is a remarkably low bar for a strategy with the potential to do so much more.

Protect the purpose of WBL

None of this is easy. Building partnerships, creating meaningful experiences, and providing the coordination and oversight that WBL requires takes time and resources. As budgets tighten, everything is understandably under review.

But this is exactly the wrong time to lose sight of what WBL is intended to do. At a time when education is under pressure to demonstrate its relevance, why would we eliminate the very experiences that allow students to connect what they are learning to the world beyond school?

Counting students’ existing jobs or relying on them to find their own experiences may require fewer resources and keep participation numbers intact. But those savings come at the student’s expense, replacing intentional access to new experiences and opportunities with whatever they were already able to find on their own.

WBL should be designed around what students gain, not the minimum we can do and still count it. Students should be gaining access to authentic experiences that allow them to test their learning, explore careers, build professional relationships, and make informed decisions about what comes next.

WBL has done its job when education intentionally creates an experience that expands what students know and who they know, allows them to experience a career they are considering, and gives them a clearer understanding of what their next step should be.