As higher education in China shifts from extensive expansion to connotative development, career planning education for college students has gained increasing importance within the overall talent cultivation system. In the context of a rapidly changing employment landscape and the growing diversity of students’ individual development needs, reliance on a single, traditional employment guidance model is no longer sufficient to meet practical demands. As the backbone of ideological and political education and daily student management in universities, counselors possess unique and irreplaceable advantages in guiding students’ career planning. On the basis of a review of relevant theories of career planning for college students and an analysis of counselors’ role positioning, this study examines the current situation of counselors’ participation in career planning education in higher education institutions. It systematically elaborates on the positive roles counselors play in value guidance, career cognition facilitation, and personalized development support. At the same time, in response to existing challenges—such as insufficient professional expertise, heavy work pressure, and imperfect coordination mechanisms—this paper proposes corresponding improvement strategies, including enhancing counselors’ professional competence, strengthening support systems, and improving collaborative education mechanisms. The study concludes that giving full play to the guiding role of counselors in college students’ career planning education is of significant practical value for promoting the effective alignment between students’ self-awareness and social demands, as well as for improving the overall quality of talent cultivation in higher education.

Luo Zongbao. A Study on the Guiding Role of Counselors in College Students' Career Planning Education. Frontiers in Educational Research (2026), Vol. 9, Issue 1: 61-66. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2026.090109.

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