How to Build Successful College-Employer Partnerships

The headline of a recent CNBC article caught my attention: "Why the current job market has been such a bad match for the college degree and recent grads." In the article, journalist Kevin Williams talks to a broad cross section of experts and outlines a concerning and widening gap between the skillsets of college graduates and the hiring needs of employers.

The disconnect between college curricula and workplace expectations isn't new problem, nor is the notion that universities and employers need to work together more closely to fix it. Fundamentally, partnerships between higher education and employers are an executional challenge. How do we get all the pieces of the puzzle - the urgency of the employer, the needs of the learner, and the design constraints of the higher education institution - to fit together?

While the dynamics of successful college-employer partnerships are complex and always evolving, I'm optimistic about models like the one we're building at Accelerate U at NLU.

Launched in 2021, Accelerate U at National Louis University is a job-first higher education model. We help learners get a job immediately so they can then focus on obtaining a degree in a way, and at a time, that makes sense for them. We offer affordable training experiences that come with college credit, industry-recognized credentials, and an open door to a full-time, living-wage job in about six months.

So far, 77% of Accelerate U learners complete the program and 79% have a full-time job making approximately $40,000 a year with benefits. Learners see an average increase of just over $13,000 in immediate earnings upon program completion.

Our model starts with employers. NLU works with employer partners to understand what they need most, and then we build programs to train and prepare individuals who will eventually become exceptional employees. We're betting big on finding and building strong working relationships with the right employer partners.

As Accelerate U enters its fourth year and prepares to serve its 1,000th learner, here are some of the lessons we've learned in our employer engagement work:

1. Hire someone on your team to lead all employer engagement.

You have to have someone waking up every morning thinking about how to find, foster, and grow strong employer relationships. Their job is to sell the value of a higher education-employer partnership and execute flawlessly with each employer.

2. ID and work with employer contacts across teams.

With each employer partner, it's critical to work across three levels of their organization and have dependable contacts in each: the C-suite (strategic leadership), the talent/HR teams (hiring priorities and processes), and individual hiring managers (the people on the ground working with new hires).

3. Design specific training pathways for success.

Seek to understand what the top 5% performers in the specific role do now, and then build training pathways designed to teach new learners the skills and mindsets they exemplify. Build the "owner's manual" for the job so that learners aren't just competitive, but have a guide for how to do the work exceptionally well.

4. Speed is paramount.

Employers generally need talent now. From agreeing to partner with an employer, we try to have learners in training within six months. We're always on the lookout for ways to speed that process up even more.

5. Build in mechanisms for collecting feedback.

Surveys from hiring managers, regular touchpoints with talent teams, and in-person events and gatherings with employers are all necessary to understand what's going well and where you can get stronger, from design to implementation. Each interaction is a way to learn from and build trust with employers. Direct feedback - especially on learner performance in the field - is gold.

The mismatch between the skills of job applicants and the needs of employers is a complicated Gordian knot of a problem. It calls for innovative solutions across a spectrum of sectors and institutions dedicated to building effective career pathways for learners looking to catapult themselves into better economic opportunities now. While it's early at Accelerate U at NLU, we see the promise of this model every day as our learners get ready to become medical assistants, behavior techs, and IT support specialists. I hope there are many more models like ours to come. I would bet that, like with our work, productive, long-term employer partnerships will almost always sit at the center of them.

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