Advise NC is a statewide network of college and career advisers, run through North Carolina’s universities, that puts full-time advisers in high schools to help students figure out what comes next after graduation. It came together in 2025, pulling several long-running university programs under one name.
Near-peer advising is not new to North Carolina. Recent college graduates have worked as advisers in the state’s high schools since the late 2000s. The programs began as affiliates of the national College Advising Corps, starting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. North Carolina State University and Duke University joined in 2014-15, Appalachian State University in 2019-20, and UNC Wilmington in 2021. In 2025-26, those programs relaunched together as Advise NC.
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Advise NC now operates as a distinct, North Carolina-based initiative. It no longer runs under the national organization, though it is built on the near-peer model that organization helped establish here.
The new name also signals a wider scope. Advise NC now supports students across every postsecondary path, whether that means college enrollment, the workforce, or military service. Advisers are now called Next Step Advisers, and every student they work with develops a next step plan built on the Career Development Plan (CDP) that students are required to create in eighth grade and revise in 10th grade.
Advise NC works through five university partners:
Gloria Medina, who directs the program at Appalachian State University, said Advise NC “is tailor-made to best meet the needs of North Carolina’s students and communities, from Murphy to Manteo.”
“Next Step Advisers empower and support students as they plan for life after high school,” Medina said. “Advise NC drives economic prosperity by ensuring high school students are equipped to pursue one or more of the three E’s — enrollment, employment, or enlistment — after graduation.”
Advise NC defines a next step broadly. It could mean enrolling in a university or a community college, earning a workforce credential, taking a job or an apprenticeship, or enlisting in the military — whatever fits the student. Advisers don’t push one path; the work is helping each student land on the one that fits and figuring out how to get there.
Next Step Advisers are recent college graduates who work full-time in high-need high schools, alongside the counselors already there. Advise NC says advisers:
- Meet with students one-on-one and build postsecondary plans, tied to the Career Development Plans the state requires;
- Walk students through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and their college and job applications;
- Bring families into the process and help them make sense of financial aid; and
- Start college and career exploration early, as far back as ninth grade.
The work goes back nearly 20 years. Today, the five programs reach more than 30,000 students a year, in over 160 high schools across 85 of the state’s 100 counties.
Advise NC says the impact shows up in the numbers. In schools with these advisers, financial aid and application rates climb 7 to 10 percent, and more than nine in 10 students they work with enroll in a North Carolina community college or in a public or private college or university.
In 2019, the state set a goal, later written into law and pushed by myFutureNC: That by 2030, 2 million North Carolinians ages 25 to 44 will hold a degree or workforce credential. So far, North Carolina is about 1.72 million of the way there.
The state’s high schools average one counselor for every 340 students, against a recommended 250, so plenty of students never get much one-on-one help. If the goal is the “what,” Medina says, Advise NC is the “how.”
Advise NC is still being built. Across the collective, partners are developing a multiyear model to give the work more scale and consistency. That includes streamlining how advisers are trained and aligning each student’s next step plan with the CDP that North Carolina already requires students to complete.
Looking further ahead, the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA) has joined as a committed partner, and Advise NC is discussing how the agency will help coordinate the work statewide, along with CFNC, College for North Carolina, which has guided North Carolina students through college and career planning for more than 25 years.
The state has now put real money behind the effort. The budget Gov. Josh Stein signed into law last week includes a $2.5 million provision for Advise NC, recurring year to year, along with $2.5 million in nonrecurring funds. The budget matches private philanthropy from the John M. Belk Endowment and Anonymous Trust.
Advise NC’s leaders say the steady support puts the program in a stronger position to reach the counties and high schools that need advising most. Few college-access efforts in the country can point to this kind of dedicated, ongoing state investment.
“With the state now investing alongside private partners, we can plan for the long-term vision instead of year to year,” said Mary Shuping, executive director of NCSEAA. “Our goal is simple: make sure every North Carolina student, in every county, has someone to help them find a next step, and the means to take it.”
To learn more, or to ask about getting an adviser into a school, start with any of the five university programs linked above. For the bigger picture on advising across the state, EdNC’s June 2026 survey of district leaders is a good place to go.
Editor’s note: The John M. Belk Endowment and Anonymous Trust support the work of EdNC.
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