Beyond the Diploma: Creating the Path to Economic Mobility

For decades, the "Path to Adulthood" was a standardized highway: finish high school, get a degree, find a job.

Entrepreneurship

Alumni spotlight

Innovation

For decades, the "Path to Adulthood" was a standardized highway: finish high school, get a degree, find a job. But for today's learners navigating a gig economy, a housing crisis, and a rapidly shifting tech landscape, that highway is full of roadblocks.

The numbers bear this out. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the underemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 42.5% in Q4 2025, its highest level since 2020.

Nearly half of recent degree holders are working in jobs that don't require their education.

And research from the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work shows this isn't a temporary detour: even a decade after graduation, 45% of underemployed graduates remain stuck in roles beneath their credentials.

The standardized highway has stopped delivering on its promise.

In our 2025 Year in Ideas Report, Trend 2: Reimagining the Path to Adulthood emerged as a critical frontier for innovation.

Representing a significant share of our community's "small bets," this trend goes well beyond career exploration. It centers on providing the technical scaffolding and professional networks students need to build generational wealth.

From Access to Mastery

The pilots in Trend 2 are proving that when we move beyond generic "readiness" and toward specialized, high-demand skills, students don't just participate. They lead.

Technical Fluency as a Career Catalyst. Naquan Braswell (Fly High Droning) tested a 6-week model for drone piloting and FAA certification. The result: 80% of participants, Black and Brown youth from Brooklyn, successfully passed a mock FAA Part 107 exam.

By introducing students to aerial innovation, Braswell demonstrated what happens when underrepresented youth get access to the right tools and the right context in high-wage tech industries.

The ROI of Financial Literacy. The 2025 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index, a joint initiative with Stanford University, found that Gen Z scored just 38% on basic financial literacy questions, the lowest of any generation studied. Kelli Morgan (DonutED) saw this gap firsthand: her pilot revealed that 90% of students were hungry to use personal finance to reach their goals.

That insight prompted a pivot toward teaching sustainable finance principles, confirming that financial autonomy is a prerequisite for the modern path to adulthood.

Networking as a Core Competency. Lisa Bryant (Taking the Dream to the Next Level) addressed the social capital gap head-on. Her networking pilot achieved 100% efficacy, with all 27 participants reporting they had acquired at least three key professional skills.

Professional etiquette and self-presentation proved to be essential infrastructure for career advancement.

Results from the Field

The 2025 Graduation Applications show how founders are building parallel systems that bypass traditional bureaucratic friction to deliver immediate, measurable results.

Strengths-Based Action Plans. Cedric J. Nelms (I.M.A.G.E. Makers) achieved 100% completion in his leadership pilot. Every participant walked away with a personalized strengths assessment and a mentorship-driven roadmap, the kind of individualized attention that massive school systems rarely provide.

Culturally Rooted Entrepreneurship. Amber Hamilton (Hairitage) proved that identity is a business asset. Her community-based barbering and braiding workshops saw 92% of attendees report feeling more inspired and connected to their cultural identity. By framing a craft as a legacy, she is building an entrepreneurial pipeline rooted in community pride.

Closing the College-to-Career "Melt." Jonathan Muruako (Fitalyst/Dash) developed an AI browser extension to help first-generation students manage the overwhelming transitions of higher education. It's a technical fix for a structural problem, ensuring that students who make it onto the path have the productivity tools to stay on it.

Agility in a Changing Economy

Trend 2 founders are the R&D lab for the future workforce. They aren't waiting for a district-wide curriculum overhaul to teach cybersecurity or sustainable finance.

They are testing solutions in real time, like CyberBridge's foundations in cybersecurity and Dream Speakers Academy's focus on purpose-driven public speaking.

These small bets offer a diversified portfolio for anyone looking to invest in the future of economic mobility. When we empower founders to build permissionless pathways, the results speak for themselves: students graduating with high-wage credentials, professional networks, and the financial literacy to put both to work.