The future of students entrusted to coaches
By Anna Franchin | May 6, 2026
This article was originally published in Italian by Internazionale. The English translation may differ slightly from the original text.
Seventeen years ago, Apple thought one of the most cited advertisements of its history. “If you want to know how much snow there is in the mountains”, said a voiceover, “there’s an app for that. If you want to calculate your lunch calories, there’s an app for that. And if you don’t remember where you parked your car, there’s an app for that, too. Yes, there is an app for pretty much everything, just on your iPhone”.
“There’s an app for that” became a catchphrase. It made “app” a household word, but more importantly, it reinforced the idea that the smartphone was a useful tool for everything from hailing a cab to monitoring your health.
Today, a variation of that slogan might be “there’s a coach for that.” These figures—part consultant, part guide, part mentor—cover a wide range of areas: there’s the life coach (to help you figure out what you want from life and how to achieve it), the coach for new parents, for those going through a divorce, for those needing to integrate into a new country, the coach for those who’ve had a nervous breakdown, for those in a midlife crisis, for sports teams, for children of elderly parents, and for those with a serious illness.
Career coaches are particularly popular in the United States, even among college students. Faced with bleak job market prospects, explains Bloomberg Businessweek in this week’s cover story, families who can afford it are spending thousands of dollars—in some cases tens of thousands—to entrust their twenty-something sons and daughters to these career mentors, years before their careers even begin.
This may seem like a stretch, because career coaching usually targets people who have already been working for several years and want to change the direction of their professional path, not those who don’t yet have a job. In 2019, according to data cited by Bloomberg, services primarily aimed at college students or recent graduates accounted for just 5 percent of the total. In other words, they were a niche market. Today, however, more than a quarter of firms consider this group a key segment, and the percentage continues to grow.
How does it work? Coaches—or the agencies they partner with—combine the expertise of traditional consultants with a motivational approach. They offer personalized programs for individuals or small groups, teaching participants how to secure the right internships and build a resume, transforming a daunting process into something that feels manageable.
Typically, an hour of consulting—for example, to practice for interviews—costs a few hundred dollars, but there are more comprehensive packages ranging from three thousand to ten thousand dollars. These services aren’t that different from those provided (for free) by university career counseling offices, except that many students aren’t aware of them.
Clients often come to the coaches through college consultants—other private tutors who have worked with the students before, when they were in high school and had to navigate the complicated college admissions process. “We invest so much in tutors and test prep to get young people into college. Our goal is to get them out,” Beth Handler-Grunt told Bloomberg. Her agency, Next Great Step, in New Jersey, offers six-month plans costing between $4,000 and $15,000. According to her, the results justify the prices: more than 80 percent of the young people she assists are hired.
For those aiming for a career on Wall Street, it’s helpful to have the resources of a financial heavyweight. Agencies specializing in this field charge anywhere from $30,000 to six-figure sums. For that amount, they promise to help you join the most exclusive college clubs, ace interviews, and build a network of contacts. The founder of Command Education, Christopher Rim (who charges $750,000 to assist high school students seeking admission to Harvard or Yale), offers customized plans ranging from a few months to a year, starting at $50,000. Some turn to him as early as the summer after graduation.
Such early planning is justified by the agencies and their clients by citing statistics: the National Association of Colleges and Employers, for example, has predicted that the job market in 2026 will be the worst for recent graduates in recent years. And then there are the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence, weak or absent public policies, and one international crisis after another.
The young men and women who will graduate from college in the coming months (more than two million in the United States) feel enormous pressure. But don’t worry—there’s a coach for that.
Originally published on Internazionale on May 6, 2026
