As businesses balk at the cost of training graduates whom they deem unprepared and schools offer too many credentials with no value to employers, a respected organization is stepping into the fray to offer high-school courses designed to make students more workforce-ready.
The College Board — the non-profit behind the Advanced Placement classes taken by 7 million students annually to gain college credit — will begin offering courses in cybersecurity and business operations during the 2026-27 school year. These Career Kickstart courses will offer students not only high-school and college credit but industry-recognized credentials, better preparing learners who choose paths other than four-year universities with skills they need to launch their careers.
Already in pilot across the country, the courses aim to answer increasing concerns from business leaders that employees coming out of various levels of schooling have neither the durable skills needed to succeed, nor the technical skills sought by in-demand industries. College Board leaders worked closely with more than 900 hiring managers and more than 300 school-district leaders to ensure the pathways they are designing go beyond business and tech basics and focus on problem-solving and professional skills.
“While students want more career-connected, relevant courses, we also know there are challenges that persist when it comes to connecting education and business,” said Danny McCormick, College Board’s director of strategic reach and workforce partnerships. “Employers are exhausted and want credentials they can trust — and that colleges can trust.”
Teaching students how to run a business
The AP Business with Personal Finance course will have four units, each designed to teach students how business operates so that they can enter most any profession with a skill set allowing them to work with a team to make a venture succeed. The units will focus on how businesses develop new products and seek competitive advantages, how they market to customers, how they manage their finances and find sources of capital, and how they develop strategies and manage workforces to achieve goals.
This course, McCormick explained during a July 24 webinar organized by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, will use project-based learning to teach business skills like entrepreneurship and concept application. But it also will drill down on durable skills like decision-making, communication and collaboration — skills that employers from many industries said during the recently completed Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summits that they struggle to find in new graduates.
“We have a lot of candidates who come into the workforce without the right business skills and business knowledge,” said Sara Amstrong, the vice president of coalition partnerships at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has worked closely with the College Board.
Focus on cybersecurity in courses
The AP Career Kickstart Cybersecurity and Networking courses, meanwhile, are meant to address, like traditional AP college courses, a specific skill and knowledge set that’s increasingly in demand. But while learners who complete the course can apply credits to college work, they also will get an industry-required credential that they can use to show proficiency to potential employers — a credential mirroring highly accepted certificates currently in use.
These courses are hands-on lessons that balance classroom learning and activities simulating network architecture and network security, allowing students to identify vulnerabilities on computers and networks and suggest controls to mitigate risks. Cybersecurity is a field of particular demand in Colorado, but many employers in the sector say they are finding too few applicants with needed skills within the state.
“We have heard time and time again that employers need students with specific skill sets,” Colorado Chamber President/CEO Loren Furman said.
Many high schools now attempt to answer such industry demand by offering career and technical education courses that result in students getting credentials in areas ranging from mechanical competency to computer programming that they can show employers. But, citing several different studies, the Colorado Board estimates that only 18% of the credentials earned by K-12 students are demanded by employers, leaving employers without a way to verify skills and students without an entry point to a well-paid job.
Plea for business leaders to be involved
College Board is ready to launch the new courses nationwide by August 2026, and it will provide support to teachers ranging from a summer institute where they can learn course materials to dedicated teacher resources and community opportunities, McCormick said. But before that happens, the organization needs business leaders to step up, he added.
Employers wanting to see local high schools offer these courses need to reach out to educational leaders to signal their support for them, and some will be needed to serve on councils that will ensure the materials are up to date to train for the most pressing needs. But employers also must work with the schools to create case studies for students and to share materials that can be useful in the courses, and they must be ready to bring students into their workplaces to host visits and offer project-based experiences, McCormick said.
At the heart of these career-focused courses — which the College Board likely will add to in the coming years by creating a healthcare class — is the idea that students need learning and credentials to enter the workforce but need it in a space where they already are. They will not just be rote learning, McCormick emphasized, but will be — much like the business world itself — focused on applied learning, the gaining of knowledge through productive struggle, collaboration and critical thinking.
“(School) counselors are getting on board. Employers are on board,” he said. “I think everybody sees the need.”