About What's Next
What's Next is here to help young people navigate one of their first big decisions.
Our mission is to help teenagers throughout Switzerland understand their options after compulsory school, explore apprenticeships and further education routes, discover what might suit them, and turn that decision into practical next steps.
Our aim is to make career and education guidance easier to understand, more engaging and more useful — especially at the moment when students are asking: “What do I do next?”
Providing a map and a compass
Switzerland offers young people an extraordinary number of education and training routes. That's a strength — but at 13, 14 or 15, it can also feel overwhelming.
Information and support exists across schools, cantonal services, career guidance organisations, employers and other platforms. What's Next doesn't aim to replace those resources, but to complement them. We want to enable young people to explore their options and understand their choices, work out what steps to take and what questions to ask, and ultimately find their way to the right information and support.
What the platform actually does
We don't tell students what they should become.
We give them tools to independently explore, question, compare and make a decision that's right for them.
Information young people can trust
Our principles when it comes to accuracy, sources, advertising and sponsorship, privacy and AI:
Official sources first — We have used AI to pull data from official government sources, and wherever possible, education requirements, deadlines and pathways link back to the relevant official Swiss or cantonal source.
Clear about what varies — Switzerland's education system differs between cantons, so we don't present canton-specific rules as universal. In the future, we hope to collaborate with cantonal departments to include accurate and up-to-date information on each educational region.
Independent guidance — Commercial relationships never determine which school, profession or apprenticeship is presented as “best”. We aim to present the facts and provide links to allow independent research.
Teen-friendly, not dumbed down — Our goal is to translate complicated systems into understandable language for teens without removing important nuance.
Privacy by design — Accounts only ask for what's needed: a name to greet you, an email address and password to log in, and your year of birth and canton for statistical purposes only. Your email is used only as your login and for password resets, never for marketing. In the app, only you can see your saved information, our statistics show anonymous totals only, and individual data will never be shared.
Responsible use of AI — We use AI tools to collect, collate and summarise complex topics. We always prioritise primary and authoritative sources, and wherever possible provide links so the source information can be accessed.
Main sources
How to use the information on What's Next
What's Next should be a starting point, not the final word.
Students and their parents should use it to understand the options, discover possibilities and work out what to investigate next. When the student is ready to take an important step — such as applying to a school or apprenticeship — they can follow the source links and check the current requirements directly with the responsible organisation.
Our commitment
AI helps us make information accessible. It does not replace reliable sources, professional expertise or human judgement.
As What's Next develops, we will continue to review how we use AI and update our AI policy as our technology and services change.
Last updated: October 2026
Who's behind What's Next
What's Next began with a simple observation: navigating life after compulsory school is complicated, and good information is often spread among multiple websites. The idea came from Richard McKinley in 2025 — a medical imaging AI researcher at the Inselspital in Bern — who saw firsthand how overwhelming the options could seem, both for young people and for their parents.
Mary McKinley, the site's lead developer, took that idea and built it into something much bigger. Working with AI tools including Lovable and Claude, Mary designed a platform with a clear purpose: to give teens the tools to take charge of their own decision-making, and to help parents — including those, like Richard and Mary, who didn't grow up in Switzerland — understand all the paths available to their children.
Mary grew up in California and moved to Switzerland in 2006 with her English husband, Richard. Twenty years on, the family proudly became Swiss citizens in 2026. Their son Benjamin is now facing exactly the kind of decision this site was built for, which means the McKinleys know from the inside just how much is at stake — and how confusing it can feel when you haven't grown up with the Swiss system.
Built with young people, not just for them
What's Next started life as a student’s creative project during a taster apprenticeship. In spring 2025, Benjamin McKinley spent a few days with an IT team at the Inselspital in Bern and found them actively debating how much of their work could be done using AI. His father, a member of the team, suggested creating a website and Benjamin decided to tackle that project himself.
Using Lovable, the AI website builder, he built the original site: a single resource pulling together apprenticeship information from official government and educational sources, complete with comparable data for each profession. He even included a rating for how “future-proof” each career might be with the continued development of AI — something very much on the minds of today's teens.
Since then, the site has expanded to cover every route available after compulsory school, with a growing library of tools and resources to support students at every stage of their journey. Quizzes, account pages and other features were tested and refined with students aged 13–15 at Benjamin's school in Bremgarten bei Bern — shaped by the people it's actually meant to help.
For schools, organisations & partners
What's Next is designed to complement the current curriculum and the vital work already being done by teachers, careers counsellors, schools, cantonal services, employers and youth organisations.
We hope to partner and collaborate with official offices to grow this website and make it a useful tool for teens, parents and schools across the country.
Schools & careers counsellors
Please use What's Next with students and then suggest resources or give us feedback.
Education & public organisations
We would greatly appreciate it if you could help us verify information, improve coverage and connect students with authoritative resources.
Employers & apprenticeship organisations
Contact us with info and resources to help young people better understand various professions and apprenticeship routes. Of course, support by employers and organisations is valuable for accurate information but it will never influence the guidance or analysis we provide our users.
Sponsors & supporters
Sponsorship of this platform would help support wider access to independent, high-quality career and education guidance for young people.
Note: Information is carefully researched but does not replace professional career counselling. Please also visit your canton's official career service.
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