Looking at the future of employability and higher education, it’s increasingly apparent that what lies ahead is not what came before. With the scale and scope of technological and economic change increasing exponentially, a parallel need exists for skill and competency development among students, faculty, and staff. Students are facing a job market that is shifting from a focus on hiring decisions based on data points such as majors, connections, or previous employment to an emphasis on skills you have and skills you’ll need. Simultaneously, faculty and staff are experiencing the most demanding shifts in decades in the ways we can collaborate, research, and educate. To meet the challenges of the future, Villanova University, in partnership with LinkedIn Learning, is developing flexible and always-accessible paths for students, faculty, and staff to connect to learning and opportunity. A unique and collaborative approach between the provost’s division and the human resources team proactively responds by creating an environment where institutional opportunities align around shared understandings and opportunities to learn new skills and competencies; helping students, faculty, and staff gain and demonstrate skills through expert-led instruction, flexibly available and customizable to the audience; enabling students, faculty, and staff to identify skills and sought-after competencies aligned with institutional and personal goals, enabling individualized career success at scale.
