Learning in Action.
Strategy that Delivers Results.

Higher education is under pressure to prove its economic relevance, yet employers remain frustrated, graduates struggle to translate credentials into opportunity, and learners bear the cost of misalignment. The problem is not a lack of skills. It is a failure of coordination, incentives, and governance. This piece examines why the handshake between higher education and the labor market has broken, and what it will take to rebuild it.

Higher education is at a strategic inflection point. As learner demographics shift, workforce expectations evolve, and public trust in institutions erodes, colleges and universities face a choice: optimize legacy models or fundamentally redesign how learning is delivered, supported, and valued. This piece explores why moving from institution-centric models to learner-centered ecosystems is no longer optional, and what it will take to do so responsibly.

Education systems are under unprecedented pressure. Demographic decline, increasingly diverse student needs, and constrained public budgets are destabilizing assumptions about demand. At the same time, stakeholders expect measurable outcomes and efficient use of resources. The question for leaders is no longer whether to control costs. It is whether institutions are structurally capable of making coherent tradeoffs under sustained stress. Those who cannot risk strategic drift, operational inefficiency, and diminished impact.