This paper addresses families’ perceptions of corporate influence in career and technical education (CTE) through market-driven policies that enable data extraction for student profiling and seek to align K-12 education with business-driven needs. Aligning education with business needs can offer early employment, however, accelerating technological developments risk subjecting hyper-specialised individuals to highly unpredictable labour markets and ultimately job insecurity. Using grounded theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with families across the United States, to obtain their views on the hyper-specialisation in CTE. The emerging discourse is that powerful corporations offer makeshift hyper-specialisation curricula that fit their business needs and do not necessarily reflect, or indeed, consider children’s best interests. This research contributes to scholarship by elucidating the views of families affected by the corporate influence in CTE. The collected stakeholder accounts suggest the need for more in-depth research on individuals who rely on CTE for future employment. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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