Professional Standards
for College & University Career Services
Appendix A: HISTORY OF PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR CAREER SERVICES
The National Association of College and Employers (NACE), then known as the College Placement Council (CPC), formulated a statement of ethical guidelines for recruiter organizations, college career services practitioners, and students as early as 1957, just a year after the establishment of the organization. (That publication has undergone a number of revisions and is today’s Principles for Professional Conduct for Career Services & Employment Professionals.) It was much later, however, that the question of standards was addressed. In Career Counseling and Placement, published by CPC in 1970, Everett W. Stephens argued for the establishment of national standards for the profession. Subsequently, a CPC Committee on Professional Standards crafted Professional Standards for Career Counseling and Placement, which was published in 1975.
Beginning in 1980, members of 22 professional associations in higher education student services and student development, under the aegis of the Council for the Advancement of Standards, began work on the development of standards. This resulted in the publication of the CAS Standards and Guidelines for Student Services/Student Development in 1986. That publication included general standards, applicable across all areas, as well as functional area standards, which included standards and guidelines for career planning and placement.
By the 1990s, career services practitioners recognized that the profession had evolved into one with many new dimensions that the CAS standards had not addressed. In 1992, the CPC Board of Governors appointed a task force to study the issues of standards for measuring and reporting the quality of services offered by career services offices and to develop a method for selfassessment. The work of that task force culminated in The NACE Sourcebook for Conducting Evaluations and Measurements of Career Services, which was published in 1995.
Later in 1995, another task force was constituted to develop professional standards for career services and their work resulted in The Professional Standards for College and University Career Services, which was approved by the NACE Board of Governors in 1998. Through the efforts of the NACE representatives to the CAS board, most of the 1998 NACE standards were incorporated into the 2001 and 2003 revisions of the CAS standards.
In 2004, a NACE task force was appointed to review and revise The Professional Standards for College and University Career Services and The Professional Standards Evaluation Workbook. The work of that task force is reflected in this publication.
The 2006 edition of The Professional Standards for College and University Career Services was approved by the NACE Board of Directors in 2006.
