“You get a skill! And you get a skill!” If only developing skills in future graduates was as easy as doling out prizes on the old Oprah Winfrey Show. In this week’s issue, we look at one side of the debate about whether higher education institutions can truly teach durable skills to students. After that, we discuss the first report about the labor perceptions and expectations of the 2025 graduating class. Finally, we close with a look at the recently debuted Carnegie Classifications.   

After reading today’s issue, share in the comments whether you think higher education institutions can teach skills. 

Teaching Skills? 

From The Edge: Can colleges truly teach ‘skills’ to students? | The Chronicle of Higher Education  

Scott Carlson discusses the idea of teaching skills with Matthew Hora, an associate professor of adult and higher education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.   

Our Thoughts 

Yes, I’m talking about skills again. And yes, I know I’ve brought it up on numerous occasions. But I keep returning to this topic because it matters, and the debate about it is only going to intensify as institutions increasingly promise “job-ready” graduates.   

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m not a fan of the factory-based education model. Learning is hard and education is harder, and, for decades, we’ve tried to Frederick Taylor our way to efficiency. Teaching “skills” often feels like the latest iteration of that impulse. That’s why I appreciate Matthew Hora’s central argument so much. Skills aren’t some free-floating checklist of abstract concepts, but instead is the ability to apply disciplinary knowledge in real-world settings. If we ignore that nuance, we risk equipping students with hollow verbs on a résumé instead of genuine capabilities employers value.  

Hora’s historical perspective, tracing the roots of our “soft versus hard skills” taxonomy to a 1972 Army conference, was a particular eye-opener. The very categories we rely on today were questioned from the start, yet they continue to dominate how we think and talk about workforce readiness.  

I’m not suggesting that institutions stop helping their graduates understand how to articulate their skills to employers or that we abandon teaching these concepts. Instead, we should focus on ensuring students have enough opportunities to practice those skills in authentic settings. If we trade deep learning for checkbox exercises, our graduates may end up paying the price in confused employers, underdeveloped potential, and missed opportunities. 

Thoughts About the Labor Market 

From College grads say they are confident about jobs but cautious about economy | Higher Ed Dive  

According to Monster’s annual State of the Graduate Report, upcoming college graduates express both optimism and concern about their job prospects.   

Our Thoughts 

You’ll want to share this snapshot of the 2025 graduate mindset with your career-services team and academic departments because it highlights the very real anxiety and shifting priorities of the students we’re sending into the workforce. While more than four-fifths of new graduates feel confident they’ll land a job, over a third expect their search to stretch out for months, and nearly three-quarters worry that the broader economy will hamper their prospects. This mix of optimism and unease helps explain why graduates are casting wider nets across industries, scrutinizing company culture signals like remote-work policies or recent layoffs, and placing an unprecedented premium on job security.   

As enrollment pressures grow and questions about the value of a degree persist, reports like this underscore the urgency facing institutions. With the prospect of AI encroaching on entry-level roles, colleges and universities must double down on helping students articulate the durable skills, such as critical thinking and collaboration, they’ve developed through their degree programs. By actively equipping students to navigate an uncertain labor market, we can ensure students are prepared.   

Whether we’re advising students or designing capstone experiences, we need to intentionally embed resilience training, networking support, and sharper preparation around how to identify employers whose values align with students’ own. This kind of guidance won’t just help students land jobs. It will help them launch careers with confidence and purpose. 

New Carnegie Classifications 

From Beyond ‘Prestige’: New Carnegie Classification Focuses on Student Success | Inside Higher Ed  

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education (ACE) debut a new classification system focused on student success.  

Our Thoughts  

With growing public scrutiny about the value of a degree, this update to the Carnegie Classification system feels both timely and appropriate. By introducing the new Student Access and Earnings Classification, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation are placing a long-overdue emphasis on economic mobility and equitable access to counterbalance decades of prestige-driven rankings that disproportionately rewarded exclusionary practices. This new framework reflects a strategic effort to elevate higher education’s role as a driver of socioeconomic advancement, and not just academic prestige.  

More broadly, this new classification system challenges the sector to rethink what success looks like. It recognizes institutions that have been historically overlooked despite their transformative impact on students. These include community colleges and regional public universities that serve large numbers of first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students and have actively worked to expand opportunities for these students.   

Institutions that earn the new “opportunity” designation could serve as models for how student support services, affordability, and workforce alignment can be prioritized without sacrificing quality. For higher education leaders committed to access and inclusion, this article makes it clear: the national conversation is shifting, and it’s time our strategies follow.