The Future of Employer-Higher Education Partnerships
Nearly 40% of the core skills people use at work are expected to change by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum. LinkedIn estimates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change over the same period. The pace of change has become so significant that even the most forward-thinking employers struggle to define what today's jobs will look like just a few years from now.
For higher education, these statistics should force us to reconsider a long-standing assumption.
For years, we've asked how colleges and universities can prepare graduates for the workforce. But I believe a better question focuses on collaboration.
How Can Employers and Educators Design the Future Workforce Together?
That may sound like a subtle distinction, but it fundamentally changes where workforce development begins.
Traditionally, higher education has designed academic programs, employers have hired graduates, and the relationship between the two has largely consisted of advisory boards, internships and periodic conversations about workforce needs. Those partnerships have created meaningful opportunities for learners but they often begin after the educational experience has already been designed.
As work evolves more rapidly, employers possess real-time insight into how roles are changing, what new capabilities are emerging and where human judgment remains indispensable. Higher education brings expertise in learning science, assessment and helping people develop over time.
Neither can solve today's workforce challenges alone.
The Most Effective Partnerships Begin Before a Curriculum Is Written
Last month, I had the opportunity to join leaders from the Jobs for the Future, U.S. Department of Labor, The Council Foundation, and The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers as we launched a new registered apprenticeship in insurance brokerage. While the signing ceremony represented an important milestone, the real work happened months earlier.
The conversations weren't about course catalogs or credit hours. They were about capability.
Together, employers and educators asked a different set of questions. What should someone be able to do in their first year on the job? What decisions will they need to make? How will technology change their work? Where will professional judgment, communication and relationship-building matter most?
Only after answering those questions did we begin discussing how learning should be designed. That sequence matters.
Too often, higher education begins with curriculum and hopes capability follows. I believe we should begin with capability and allow curriculum to support it.
This Shift Is Important Because Work Is Changing
Consider the insurance industry. It employs nearly three million Americans, yet nearly half of today's workforce is expected to retire by 2035. This is more than a hiring challenge. It is a talent development challenge. Employers need new ways to prepare people for meaningful careers, continuously build new capabilities, and create pathways that evolve alongside both technology and the workplace.
Preparing someone for that future requires more than teaching technical knowledge.
It means helping learners develop the ability to solve unfamiliar problems, communicate effectively, collaborate with others, exercise sound judgment and continue learning as their profession changes around them. Those are durable capabilities that transcend any single technology or job description.
This is why work-based learning matters so much.
Whether through apprenticeships, internships, clinical experiences, employer-sponsored projects, or other models, work-based learning allows learners to develop capability where it ultimately matters—in authentic professional settings. It also gives employers an opportunity to participate directly in developing the workforce they need rather than simply competing for talent after graduation.
The apprenticeship we recently launched is one example of that philosophy in practice. It isn't significant because it represents another apprenticeship. It is significant because it reflects a different relationship between employers and higher education—one built around shared responsibility for developing talent.
I believe that model will become increasingly important over the next decade.
The future of workforce development will not be defined by institutions working harder or employers recruiting differently. It will be defined by how effectively we work together from the beginning.
The question is no longer whether employers should influence education. The question is whether we're ready to invite them to help design it.
