SALT LAKE CITY—The Utah Legislature has renewed its investment in education technology company YouScience Brightpath for the seventh year in a row making it possible for more than 375,000 middle and high school students throughout Utah to have access to the tools needed for skill development, career exploration and post-secondary planning. 

YouScience uses science-backed aptitude data to match students’ natural talents to real-world careers then guides them with the tools and certifications to get there, according to the company’s website https://www.youscience.com/. It has been used in more than 13,400 schools and organizations.

“I wasn’t personally a good student,” said Edson Barton, CEO of YouScience. “So going back in time the genesis of it really came because I wasn’t a good student and I didn't find a whole lot of value in my secondary education, meaning middle school and high school and so I was that student who just kind of got by, by the skin of my teeth.”

Looking back it wasn’t because of intelligence or anything like that, which it almost never is, he said. “It’s about whether you find value in what you’re doing. So years later this concept just kept nagging at me, that this is a problem that can be solved, that I was living proof of that. I wanted to learn, I was desperate to learn, I wanted to accomplish things but just didn’t feel like it was working.”

Barton said he started working for a certification company years and years ago and it was based out of Utah. “It was called Certiport and they're now owned by Pearson, which is one of the largest education companies in the world. We were effectively Microsoft to the outside world. We represented Microsoft and I had the opportunity to work with Microsoft on some really neat education projects. What we did as a company was we ran a certification division for them, so helping people certify on products and Microsoft wanted to study what the value was of having a certification in a classroom setting.”

One of the remarkable things they found was that by just doing one intervention, which was placing a certification as part of the outcome of the class and students had the opportunity to earn a certification, almost everything in their academic life improved and their GPAs went up, he said. “In my mind I thought ‘why is that happening? Why are we getting those types of outcomes by doing that one small intervention.’”

Over the years, Barton said he started to dive into it. “What it really came down to was a simple concept, if we could connect a student to their future career that improved everything about a student’s outcomes. I decided I wanted to help, really start to make the changes in education through this means of connecting students better to careers.”

Barton said he started really thinking about what was necessary to create sustainable change throughout the education system, to really improve outcomes for every student. “To do that you had to help every student find their way into career pathways.”

Only about 12% of young ladies will guide themselves toward careers in STEM fields like construction management, computer science, technology, all of which are the hottest, highest paying jobs in the market today, he said. “Thirty plus percent of females will guide themselves to nursing which is very stereotypical for a female. It’s incredibly sad because they’re moving themselves out of the future of jobs.”

Barton said he came across a company called YouScience which is now his company. “I sat down with them and used their guidance tool and immediately knew they were different. They’d learned a way to take aptitude assessments, which are not asking you about your opinion of yourself, they're actually testing you through a series of simple brain games to discover what your inherent, natural talents are. Based on those natural talents, then we’re able to connect the person to career opportunities based on whatever they are.”

The legislature funded the program to be implemented in junior highs and high schools in the state, he said. “It is available to every student.” Adults can also use the tool for a small fee.

It’s a constant struggle for employers to find the right employees, said Barton. “There is a skill gap shortage. We’re encouraging businesses and communities to step up and participate with us and help the schools to solve this problem.”

Brightpath is built to help businesses come into its ecosystem and participate in supporting students toward their careers. “It’s a powerful mechanism,” said Barton. “The better we can connect a student’s education today to what the possibilities are, the real, personal, tangible possibilities that they have tomorrow, the better that student is going to do in their education. The faster they’re going to grow, they’re going to push themselves to learn the skill which then benefits the entire workforce.”