The Workforce Is Going Back to School—For Good

Cut the Roles, or Support the People?

When generative AI began fielding most of IKEA’s customer service questions, the company faced a choice familiar to any employer navigating fast-moving technology: cut the affected roles, or retrain the people in them. IKEA retrained them. The retailer built a program that moved 8,500 customer service employees into new work as remote interior design consultants and digital sales specialists, training them on room-planning tools and the judgment calls that come with a live customer conversation. The company reports zero layoffs tied to the shift, and by its own account, more than a billion dollars in added sales from a workforce that learned its way into new value. IKEA is now extending its commitment to workforce readiness, with a goal of providing AI-literacy training to approximately 70,000 employees by the end of 2026.

If we are to manage the disruption from AI, that story needs to become the norm, not the exception. The World Economic Forum projects that 39 percent of core workplace skills will change by 2030, and that 59 percent of today’s workforce will need meaningful retraining to keep up. For employers, learning can no longer live on the margins of the business, reserved for onboarding week or a handful of high performers. It has to be a standing capability, built into how a company plans for its own future.

Higher education has an important role to play in meeting this need. As technological and economic change reshapes careers, learners will require access to education at more points throughout their lives—not only before entering the workforce. Serving these learners is consistent with higher education’s educational mission and its commitment to economic mobility, while also creating new opportunities for institutions as the traditional undergraduate population declines.

Despite the apparent alignment between employer demand and university supply, higher education is losing ground. Between 2022 and 2023, the share of companies partnering with four-year colleges on employee training and professional development fell by nearly 10 percent, and partnerships with community colleges dropped 7 percent, according to a Collegis Education and UPCEA employer survey.

Nearly 40 percent of company leaders cited cost as the main barrier to partnering with a college or university. For higher education to win that ground back, institutions will need to offer more than access to courses or credentials. The opportunity is to become a long-term learning partner—combining academic expertise, contextualized learning, technology-enabled personalization, and evidence of impact to help organizations and their employees continually adapt. The value of these partnerships must be clear on both sides resulting in meaningful and transferable career benefits for employees and measurable and lasting results for employers.

What Does a Real Learning Partnership Look Like?

The traditional models of collaboration between employers and higher education are no longer sufficient. Executive education has often concentrated high-touch, cohort-based learning among a relatively small group of senior leaders. Elsewhere in the organization, employees may receive access to enormous catalogs of largely asynchronous courses, but little guidance about what to learn, how it connects to their work, or where it might lead.

Technology platforms have dramatically expanded access to workforce learning, but access to content is not the same as an effective workforce-development strategy. The strongest models will combine the reach and personalization enabled by technology with academic expertise, applied learning, human support, and sustained measurement.

A long-term learning partnership begins with an employer’s strategy and workforce needs, then connects those priorities to the goals and aspirations of individual employees. It may combine online learning with live engagement, opportunities to practice and apply new skills, personalized guidance, and recognized credentials. Rather than offering a one-time program or an undifferentiated catalog, the university and employer build a coherent portfolio of learning experiences that can evolve as organizational priorities, technologies, and career pathways change.

Realizing this opportunity will require more than asking employers to rediscover higher education. Colleges and universities must become easier to navigate, faster to respond, more flexible in how they design and price learning, and more disciplined about measuring results. That means creating clear points of entry for organizational partners, developing learning experiences on timelines that reflect workforce needs, and working across institutional boundaries to bring the right capabilities to each partnership.

Colleges and universities bring distinctive strengths to this work: trusted expertise, evidence-based learning design, recognized credentials, research capabilities, and deep connections to regional and national communities. They can also connect workforce learning to a broader educational ecosystem—from short-form experiences and professional credentials to degree pathways, alumni engagement, and lifelong learning. Their greatest advantage, however, may be their capacity to sustain relationships across changes in technologies, business models, and labor-market needs.

At the University of Michigan, the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) is applying this model through Michigan Online. Working with organizational partners, the center combines a broad portfolio of online learning with experiences tailored to particular workforce needs. The aim is not simply to provide employees with access to more content, but to create coherent learning experiences that draw on faculty expertise, respond to organizational priorities, and generate evidence about what employees learn and how they apply it.

What’s In It for the Employee?

The pressure on individual workers to keep up with new technology, while also anticipating which skills will matter next, is constant. For employees to engage meaningfully in a learning program, they need to understand how it can benefit their careers. That might mean becoming more effective in a current role, preparing for a promotion, moving into a new area of work, earning a recognized credential, or building capabilities that will remain valuable throughout their careers.

Designing around the employee requires more than offering access to content. Learners need clear pathways, opportunities to apply what they are learning, and support in connecting new capabilities to real career possibilities. Employers must also provide the time, encouragement, and organizational conditions that allow employees to participate and put new skills into practice.

Higher education brings decades of research and experience in how people learn, engage, and retain new knowledge. Faculty expertise and evidence-based learning design can be adapted to the context of a particular organization without being reinvented for every program.

Noodle Partners is one firm using AI to make that contextualized learner support more personalized and scalable. When informed by an organization’s goals, skills needs, and career pathways, AI-enabled tools can help employees identify relevant learning opportunities, receive timely guidance, and understand possible next steps. Technology is most valuable here not as a substitute for thoughtful program design or human support, but as a way to help each employee navigate a learning journey that feels customized, relevant, and actionable.

How Do You Prove Learning Paid Off?

Engaged and capable employees create real value, but employers weighing an investment in education want that value demonstrated, not assumed. A strong measurement strategy should examine results at three levels:

• Learning: Did employees complete the experience and demonstrate new knowledge or skills?
• Application: Are employees using those capabilities in their work, and are managers observing changes in performance?
• Organizational impact: Is the employer seeing progress in outcomes such as retention, internal mobility, productivity, collaboration, or time to proficiency?

These outcomes require different forms of evidence. Baseline and follow-up assessments can demonstrate what employees learned, while workplace projects, manager feedback, and organizational data can help show whether that learning translated into changed behavior or business results. Not every outcome can be attributed to a single program, but a thoughtful evaluation strategy can produce a much more credible picture of value than participation and completion rates alone.

At the University of Michigan, CAI integrates learning analytics and educational research into the experiences it develops. This kind of infrastructure makes it possible to examine what employees learned, how they applied it, and where the partnership is producing value. No single learning experience will produce sustained organizational change on its own, but a committed partnership—measured and refined over time—can help move the outcomes that matter to both employers and employees.

What Happens If Higher Ed Sits This Out?

The coming wave of workforce transformation creates a significant opportunity for higher education—but institutions are not entitled to it. Employers and employees will choose learning partners that are responsive, relevant, flexible, and able to demonstrate value. Colleges and universities that build those capabilities can become more than content providers. They can become enduring learning partners, helping people and organizations navigate not only the current transition, but the many transitions still to come.

The strongest partnerships will grow more valuable with time. Learning in the workplace can inform what universities teach and study, while academic expertise and research can help organizations anticipate and respond to emerging needs. When higher education and employers build that kind of reciprocal relationship, they create better pathways for employees, stronger organizations, and new ways for colleges and universities to fulfill their educational missions across a lifetime.

About University of Michigan – Center for Academic Innovation

Academic Innovation is a strategic priority for the University of Michigan. Through curricular innovation, educational data and research, and tools for learning, the Center for Academic Innovation aims to shape the future of learning and redefine public residential education at a 21st-century research university by unlocking new opportunities for the University of Michigan community and learners around the world.

By James DeVaney, Founding Executive Director, Center for Academic Innovation, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Innovation, University of Michigan; and Alan Mlynek, Chief Product Officer, Noodle.

About Noodle

Noodle delivers the people, process, and technology for universities to grow and innovate. From first inquiry to completion, Noodle connects your systems, simplifies workflows, and delivers 24/7 support and insights that empower your teams and strengthen the learner journey.