The Pulse of Higher Ed

Now, possibly more than ever, it is critically important for colleges and universities to engage with employers for the benefit of our students. Higher education is facing an unprecedented time. The demographic cliff is upon us, the current political environment has led to policy whiplash and has upended funding sources for research. Our campuses have long appreciated and sought to develop further employer partnerships but now it is imperative for sustained student success.

The question for most is not why to partner but how, however, let us briefly touch upon the benefits of university to business relationships. Institutions must be proactive in helping students to transition from academia to successful careers by providing relevant skills and practical experiences. Employer partnerships offer a strategic opportunity to enhance career readiness in many ways, explored further in this blog. Employer partnerships are an opportunity to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem that supports student success, enhances workforce development, and fosters innovation and economic growth.

Benefits of Employer Partnerships for Higher Education Institutions
Enhanced Student Employability

Institutions have employer relationships today, in areas such as career services and institutional advancement offices as examples. However, employer partnerships can offer many more opportunities for students. Specifically, internships and co-op programs with employers allow students to gain practical experience in the work environment. Students can develop industry-relevant skills, explore career opportunities, and build their professional network through these experiences. Employers benefit from having student talent and perspectives in their workplace and students gain skills to increase their employability upon graduation.

Workforce Development

Employers often engage with institutions to offer workforce development for their employees. Continuing and professional education units have been collaborating with companies for decades to offer targeted, skills-based training to help employers to increase retention, develop their pipeline of talent, and address skills gaps. With the jobs of the future changing so rapidly, this just-in-time skills-based training is a necessity to help employers to remain competitive. Partnerships between employers and institutions allow for collaboration to develop and design targeted training programs for the workforce that can be delivered in flexible formats for the employer.

Innovation and Knowledge Exchange

Academic departments benefit from collaboration with industry partners to foster innovation. Often the various colleges on our campuses will have targeted advisory boards made up of representatives from key corporate partners and targeted potential partners. These advisory boards help to inform and support knowledge exchange and research. In some cases, research is conducted both at the institution and at the partner’s location, leveraging the strengths and resources available at each. This research can lead to the discovery of novel solutions that can be commercialized.

Driving Local Economic Growth Through Community Partnerships

Institutional and employer partnerships benefit the local community as well. These partnerships often lead to programming that is open to the community, such as youth events and education fairs. These relationships can also take the form of public private partnerships, with the potential to spur economic development in various ways. For example, an institution in central Massachusetts worked with the city as well as corporate partners to develop and build a new mixed-use building on the school’s campus. This provided space for expansion for several larger companies into the region and led to the creation of new job opportunities for the local community.

Strategies for Building Effective Employer Partnerships

Identifying Potential Partners

It is important for institutions to develop a strategy for employer engagement. There will be industries that align well with the institution and others that do not. Developing a strategy for targeting those companies that align with the institutional mission, values, student’s career aspirations, and programs is critical to long-term success. It also helps the institution to target outreach and best utilize their resources for maximum impact. Colleges and Universities must be careful not to try to be all things to all partners and focus on their core strengths.

Building Relationships

The work of building lasting, collaborative relationships with employers is often underestimated by institutions. A 2023 snap poll conducted with UPCEA members identified that 53% of respondents had staff members that dedicated at least 50% of the time to developing and cultivating employer/corporate relationships. That same poll identified that 65% of respondents had increased the number of employer partnerships over the past fiscal year. While these are great statistics to see, the average FTE responsible for cultivating employer relationships was only 2.1.

It takes a significant amount of time and focus to nurture these relationships. This is a critical point where partnerships can often fail to meet expectations. Employers will need regular engagement, including opportunities for feedback loops. Often institutions meet with employers, gather valuable input, and then fail to follow up on the actions identified or move too slowly to respond to employer needs. The institution’s employer engagement strategy must include regular mechanisms for collecting feedback and provide status updates on initiatives. Employers will also want opportunities to engage with students and faculty through networking events. Regular communication around joint initiatives must be a priority and structured. Relationships are built on trust and strengthened over time through regular collaboration.

Understanding Employer Needs

The first step to building relationships with employers is to take the time to understand their needs by asking questions such as:

• What are the pain points that they are facing?
• What skills gaps are they seeing with their team members?
• Are they struggling to find the right talent?
• What will help them to move the needle in their organization?

This requires institutions to ask questions and listen rather than start by offering existing programs and courses. This is known as a solution selling approach, which is a concept that is common in industry but less so in academia. Colleges and Universities must invest in dedicated staff who can explore employer needs in depth. These individuals should be empowered to collaborate across departments to identify solutions tailored to employer priorities.

Types of Employer Partnerships

Partnerships with employers can take several forms. One of the most common is through the career services center on campuses, with employers participating in career fairs and hiring graduating students.

Internships, Co-ops, and Apprenticeships

Internships, co-ops, and apprenticeship programs are another very common way for employers to engage. These offer employers an opportunity to provide students with firsthand experience and mentorship opportunities while giving them exposure to real-world work experience. The added benefit for employers is that they have the opportunity to work with future talent and this often leads to employment opportunities for the student upon graduation.

Tuition Reimbursement and Custom Training Programs

In many cases, employer engagement will lead to custom training programs. These can take the form of an existing degree program or may lead to the development of a unique program targeted at addressing the specific skills gap in the workforce. Employees can often leverage tuition reimbursement programs to support their participation in degree programs. Those degrees can typically be targeted to the employers’ needs by the choice of elective courses that align best. In my experience, employers have “customized” an existing degree program by curating specific courses for their employees to take within the approved curriculum.

When it comes to developing a specific skills-based training program, consider involving the employer as a subject matter expert. Research has shown that employers want to be engaged in the process of developing custom training programs but colleges and universities do not typically offer this. Co-development and the use of the subject matter expertise of the employer partner will strengthen the outcome and further cement the partnership.

Joint Research

Lastly, there is potential for the employer partner to engage in joint research projects, innovation initiatives, and the development of new technologies and solutions. These types of partnerships are beneficial because they provide the institution with resources to explore new solutions while providing the employer partner with shared intellectual property.

Developing Mutually Beneficial Agreements

With the range of potential employer partnerships, it is critically important to establish clear agreements that outline the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of both the institution and the employer. Whether placing students in internships/co-ops/apprenticeships, conducting joint research, or co-development of a program, the details and logistics must be clearly documented. Each of these ways to engage will strengthen the partnership and help to ensure the solution is well aligned to the employer’s need. However, this can create questions about ownership of intellectual property, use of the content for other partners, or coordination of student employment. Clear agreements that benefit both the institution and employer will allow for the most effective collaboration.

Engaging Students and Faculty

Identifying the opportunity and engaging the employer are just the first steps of the partnership. The work then shifts to engaging students and faculty to promote and cultivate the partnership. The success of the relationship is contingent upon the alignment of student and faculty interests and meeting their needs, as well as the employers. A key first step is to highlight the benefits and potential of the relationship for each.

Facilitating Student-Employer Connections

Organize networking events, career fairs, and mentorship programs to connect students with employer partners. This allows each to meet and explore opportunities directly. Each party is essentially interviewing each other, ensuring that each finds the best match.

Faculty Involvement

Several types of partnerships rely on highly engaged faculty. Faculty may be conducting research with the employer or developing custom curriculum. This requires alignment of vision and goals. Provide faculty with ways to engage the employer partner through things such as industry advisory boards and guest lectures. Include the faculty member in key conversations when the details of the project are being discussed. This will help to build that collaboration and alignment.

Alumni Engagement

An often-untapped resource is the institution’s alumni network. Alumni want to be engaged and can be an invaluable resource to identify potential employer partners and provide mentorship and career guidance to current students. Reach out to alumni, invite them to be a part of partnership exploration and working with students and you will be rewarded with loyal, dedicated resources eager to assist.

Measuring and Evaluating Success

How do you ensure that your employer partnerships are yielding the desired results for your students and your institution? What are some of the ways that you can evaluate the results of your efforts? There are several opportunities, some already in place at your institution, to measure success.

Tracking Student Outcomes

The Career Services office on your campus will have key metrics, such as internship and job placement rates, graduate salaries, and employer satisfaction, in place to measure the impact of employer partnerships on student success. These are very common metrics, though they do often rely on students responding to post-graduation surveys, which are captured and reported as a standard. This is a great source of information on the impact of student facing partnerships.

Collecting Feedback

In addition to the Career Services metrics, consider gathering feedback from students, faculty, and employer partners to continuously improve partnership programs and enhance the overall experience. This can be done through an annual or biannual survey, focus group, or listening session with each key stakeholder. In my former institution, we initiated and managed annual satisfaction surveys with all three groups to collect feedback. The questions were different for each group, with the focus for employers on how well our programs met their needs, how responsive they felt we were, and if they would consider partnering again in the future.

Assessing Partnership Effectiveness

It will be important to assess the impact of the partnership honestly and holistically for both your institution and the employer. The surveys used to collect feedback can help to evaluate the effectiveness of employer partnerships, identifying areas for improvement and ensuring alignment with institutional goals. Industry Advisory Boards facilitated by the Deans can also provide an opportunity to meet with employer partners and hear their feedback about the characteristics of an effective partnership for you to conduct an internal assessment. Lastly, it is also important to evaluate the financial impact of the partnership. Is the revenue generated off-setting the costs to develop and implement the partnership? Are there opportunities to generate additional return on investment (ROI) for both parties? We do not consistently evaluate ROI in higher education, but this is an important aspect in assessing partnership effectiveness. We have finite resources and must ensure we utilize those precious resources most effectively.

Share Success Stories

One of the most impactful ways to demonstrate the value of employer partnerships is by showcasing student success stories and tangible partnership outcomes. These help to promote the value of collaboration and attract new employer partners, as well as to reinforce the power of employer partnerships for faculty and students. These success stories can be an excellent tool for student recruitment and retention as well.

Key Takeaways

• There are significant benefits of employer partnerships for supporting student success, enhancing workforce development, and fostering innovation and economic growth.
• The key to unlocking these benefits is to build strong relationships, understand employer needs, and develop mutually beneficial partnerships.
• Institutions must prioritize employer partnerships as a strategic initiative to enhance student outcomes, bridge the gap between education and the workforce, and contribute to a thriving economy.

Stacy Chiaramonte is the Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy for UPCEA’s Research & Consulting division. Prior to joining UPCEA, she spent 13 years at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, most recently as the Associate Vice President of Graduate and Professional Studies.