Career aspiration plays a critical role in shaping students’ learning engagement, professional development, and career-related decision-making in higher education, particularly in practice-oriented disciplines such as product design. Despite growing attention to employability and career outcomes, existing studies often examine teaching quality, industry engagement, and career aspiration as separate constructs, providing limited insight into the cognitive mechanisms through which educational experiences are translated into students’ career aspirations. Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), this study proposes a conceptual framework that explains how perceived teaching quality and industry cognition influence career aspiration among product design students through the mediating role of self-efficacy. Within this framework, perceived teaching quality and industry cognition are conceptualized as contextual educational inputs that shape students’ self-evaluative beliefs regarding their professional competence, while self-efficacy functions as a central cognitive mechanism linking contextual experiences to career aspiration. The proposed framework contributes to the literature by contextualizing SCCT within product design education and introducing industry cognition as a domain-specific contextual learning construct. In addition, this study aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) by emphasizing the role of quality and inclusive educational processes in fostering students’ career aspirations and long-term employability. By clarifying the cognitive–contextual pathways underlying career aspiration formation, this conceptual framework provides a theoretically grounded foundation for future empirical research and offers practical implications for enhancing teaching quality and industry-oriented learning in practice-based higher education.