Students deserve an education that connects their aspirations to meaningful careers, providing stability and long-term success. They need information and support to identify and achieve goals and opportunities to gain professional skills, experience, and a network before graduation.
However, students often miss out on critical experiences like education-to-career guidance and work-based learning while in college—key drivers of stronger outcomes such as higher earnings, career satisfaction, and overall goal fulfillment.
The inaugural State Opportunity Index report found that fewer than one in four recent college graduates received coaching and guidance on connecting their education to a career, and only about a quarter of graduates had participated in a paid internship experience. These findings indicate too few students are accessing these critical opportunities.
We are committed to helping address this gap by equipping institutional leaders with actionable insights and a strong case for investment in these areas.
Strada Education Foundation has partnered with Trellis Strategies to invite public institutions to participate in the free State Opportunity Index survey. This survey offers a unique opportunity to better understand and improve students’ experiences with career coaching and work-based learning. Participation is confidential, free of charge, and designed to provide actionable insights tailored to each participating campus. This information is intended to provide campus leaders with a foundational understanding of their students’ experiences, enabling them to build strategies for improving post-graduation outcomes and advocating for critical investments with state partners, donors, and campus stakeholders.
By participating in this Trellis Strategies program, your campus will receive:
- A custom report comparing your results to peer and national benchmarks, helping you understand where your institution stands.
- A one-page infographic highlighting key findings that can be shared with internal and external stakeholders.
- A de-identified data file to support evaluation and inform program improvement.
- Access to leading experts at Strada to support your strategy and maximize the benefits of your survey results.
If you want to gain insights into your students’ experiences and how they compare to their peers nationally and within your state, we hope you will join the 2025 State Opportunity Index survey. Please get in touch with surveys@trellisstrategies.org for more information or to schedule a discovery meeting.
Nichole Torpey-Saboe is Vice President of Research at Strada Education Foundation, where she leads the State Opportunity Index and original research related to work-based learning and career outcomes. Prior to joining Strada in 2018, Dr. Torpey-Saboe worked as an independent consultant for state government and local non-profit organizations and in academia where she taught courses on evaluation, quantitative methods, political science, and economics and published on inequality and access to public goods. She is the author of the book Measuring Education Inequality in Developing Countries.
Allyson Cornett is Director of Research at Trellis Strategies, where she oversees the Student Financial Wellness Survey, one of the nation’s largest web-based surveys of college students. In her role, Allyson leads high-impact mixed-methods research projects that explore college students’ basic needs, security, financial fragility, mental health, and other key factors affecting their success. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Inside Higher Ed, Diverse Issues, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.