As we review our courses, their currency, relevance and value, it is a good time to connect with those employers who hire our graduates and review the literature from the field that shows how prepared our graduates are for jobs in this emerging era of artificial intelligence. The Digital Education Council, in a report last year in collaboration with the Global Finance & Technology Network, released their report “AI at Work” which found “a significant disconnect between industry and higher education: only 3% of employers believe that higher education adequately prepares graduates for an AI-driven future.”
As Louise Nicol suggests University World News“If universities do not guarantee what they offer in the future through deeper and more honest collaboration with employers and industry, what is really stopping employers from educating and training people themselves?”
With this in mind, now is a good time to reach out to our placement partners to create more relevant learning outcomes for our classes and degrees as a whole. The basis for this may involve taking time this summer to visit HR departments with company leaders to discuss what shortcomings they see in recent graduates. This can and should be done in collaboration with the department and college leaders and committees.
According to the recently released “State of Higher Education” report from Gallup and the nonprofit Lumina Foundation, only 54 percent of employers surveyed in the fall believe that colleges “produce successful graduates with the skills their businesses need.” The survey found that public confidence in the number of college graduates dropped from 57 percent in 2015 to 42 percent last year.
While a century ago college was about filling students’ minds with “industry facts,” one key aspect of curriculum renewal is the recognition that rote memorization is no longer the basis of a college education. Teaching and learning is now much less with a list of historical facts available instantly anywhere and anytime using ever-advancing technology. Instead, our studies should be more about the skills to access the relevant facts and information and the refinement of our ideas, ethics, philosophies and techniques in interpreting and using the data obtained through new technologies. Reviewing our course materials and assessments we have this is a very useful step in updating courses to current workplace realities. This requires connecting students with industry before they graduate.
Mary Moreland, senior vice president of human affairs at Abbott Laboratories, wrote Good luck earlier this year, “By building bridges between classrooms and workplaces, they give students the opportunity to build hard and soft skills. An engineering student who designs a prototype for a company gains not only technical skills, but also the kinds of judgment and teamwork skills that textbooks can’t teach.”
One obvious solution is to increase internship opportunities for high-achieving students as they prepare to enter the workforce. However, internships seem to be decreasing at the same time that applications for internships are increasing. Government Technology recently reported that internship experience with the employer’s organization or industry is among the most influential factors when employers choose between equally qualified candidates.
Microcredentials are one way to complement these types of experiences in degree programs. Building such skills-based programs locally at your institution can create a hands-on experience for students. Microcredentials can also involve faculty members and other professionals in updating skills and knowledge. In the form of targeted short courses, microcredentials may be a suitable way to respond to the changes between rapidly changing technologies and sophisticated strategies.
Meanwhile, the realities of recruitment and retention in our higher education sector are changing rapidly. Almost every day we read about layoffs and cutbacks at colleges and universities large and small. Academicjobs.com reported that the downsizing trend is real: “Higher education layoffs [in] February 2026 marked a major wave, following 9,000 job losses in 2025 and more than 100 cuts in January alone. “
Within Higher EdJosh Moody followed up this month: “Colleges across the country cut a number of jobs and programs last month as many sought to make up for expected shortfalls before the start of the new financial year.” Moody detailed the layoffs at many institutions, adding that cost-saving strategies include “buybacks, leasing of refrigerators, furloughs and other cost-cutting measures. In addition to the factors often cited in the cuts, several universities point to financial problems exacerbated by the Trump administration’s actions, which have included uncertainty and international research enrollment.”
These situations should motivate each of us to do our own personal investigation this summer to examine the possibilities of layoffs or diminishing opportunities for advancement in our specialties. Artificial intelligence in the form of current applications can be a useful tool to identify employment data and trends in your field by specifying institutional, geographic and other criteria. I recommend that we all consider developing detailed information that addresses our specific career interests. This can be done in AI applications at the border and repeated every few months, for example every summer and every semester, to capture changes over time. Use these results to plan your career, identify new career paths, evaluate relevant qualifications and explore opportunities for long-term job security.
Will you take the time this summer to review, evaluate and revise your course materials? Will you use the time before the fall season begins to consider how your career plan may be affected by the major changes affecting higher education now and expected in the next few years? Those who take these actions will benefit from improving their studies and find new career challenges and opportunities that did not exist in the past.
