Assessing Barriers to Education

The Assessing Barriers to Education test assesses clients for situational, emotional, attitudinal, and material barriers to continuing education, helps dispel myths and identifies the most accessible options available to them. 

Identify Barriers to Furthering Your Education and Career

Ninety percent of the fastest-growing and best-paying jobs require some kind of post-secondary education or training. Yet only half of all high school graduates go to college, and only half of them ever earn a degree. Something stands in their way.

This new assessment Assessing Barriers to Education (ABE) helps academic counselors, career counselors, and job coaches identify the primary barriers preventing people from continuing their education. ABE ensures that today’s job seekers and career managers develop strategies for overcoming those barriers, honestly assess the options available to them, and understand the value of further education.

What It Was Best Used For

• Identifying Educational Roadblocks: Assessing a client’s specific situational, emotional, attitudinal, and material barriers that are actively preventing them from pursuing post-secondary education or professional training.
• Debunking Common Academic Myths: Eliminating psychological barriers and deep-seated misconceptions about advanced learning (such as the belief that college is completely unaffordable).
• Mapping Accessible Educational Paths: Helping job seekers and career managers identify the specific post-secondary options most readily available to them, ranging from physical trade apprenticeships to traditional graduate degrees.
• Optimizing Counseling Resources: Enabling academic advisors, career counselors, and job coaches to better allocate their corporate time, tools, and counseling resources toward a client’s exact problem areas.
• Developing Workforce Strategies: Assisting today’s job seekers in creating concrete, actionable strategies to overcome their personal obstacles and understand the long-term economic value of further education.

Assessing Barriers to Education helps individuals:

• Assess the situational, emotional, attitudinal, and material barriers preventing them from getting some form of post-secondary education.
• Identify the post-secondary options most readily accessible to them, from apprenticeships to graduate degrees.
• Eliminate myths about the process of furthering one’s education, such as, I can’t afford to go to college.

In addition, this unique tool helps counselors, coaches, and administrators to better allocate their time and resources to deal with each client’s specific barriers.