For years, a loud and growing chorus of employers and students have demanded that higher ed institutions come down out of their ivory tower to do a better job building their programs around workforce needs. Now they have forced these hallowed halls to change their thinking, creating new opportunities for industry collaboration.
Jonathan R. Alger, president of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia reflects on recent times and its impact on institutions like his. “When you think about the age of the pandemic,” he says. “One of the things that we’ve learned is that we can’t be an isolated ivory tower, that we are all more connected than we ever could have imagined.”
Facing political and demographic headwinds and Covid-19, colleges have learned not only that they can pivot quickly, but it’s essential to their survival. These intense pressures make many colleges more eager and open to new forms of cooperation with industry, potentially kicking off a new Renaissance era of industry-university collaboration.
When a corporation invests in a university, it invests in its own goals and future outcomes
Thomas K. Hudson, President, Jackson State University
“We want to hear from corporations,” says Dr. Eric W. Fulcomer, President of Rockford University in Rockford, Illinois. “We want to hear from employers about what they need and we want to be nimble.” The acceleration toward that need to be nimble has been fueled by the pandemic, and the sudden need for online learning.
A Pandemic Positive
The pandemic accelerated the recent mass migration to online learning, and the transition could hold powerful benefits for employers. Colleges are expected to keep building on this fast transformation, moving fundraising and resources away from expensive brick-and-mortar education to accessible virtual learning.
“I think there will be many consequences as universities thoughtfully reevaluate what they were doing [before the pandemic],” says David Dooley, president of University of Rhode Island. “We’ve known for a long time that technology enabled and enhanced learning can be a big asset— A very important learning tool allowing a student to sit in front of a computer or a smartphone and engage in a way that makes learning a 24/7 endeavor.”
This shift provides relatively cost-effective, easy-to-update and flexible options for companies that want to partner with these colleges to train both current and future employees. It also gives colleges more ways to expand educational access to a broader, more diverse group of students, including working adults, international students, and those from marginalized groups. A successful continuation of the online shift that began with the pandemic could bring back some students who dropped out during the Covid enrollment fallout and turbocharge a more diverse and educated workforce.
Peering Past the Ivies
With all the partnership advantages of the current moment many experts say corporations need to look past the elite, Ivy Leagues and look more at local educational institutions. These elite schools may not be the best places to look for collaboration opportunities. Eric Skipper, the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, in an article for Inside Higher Ed explains some of the advantages of regional colleges:
Regional institutions offer fertile ground for cooperation with companies. They can include public universities, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities and other public and private institutions that primarily draw regionally for students. These organizations have been hard hit by recent events, making them hungrier than the well-known and well-funded names that have not had to fight to survive.
Necessity Breeds Invention
Susan Poser, president of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York sees meaningful partnerships as beneficial to both sides. “The business community wants to be supportive of universities because it’s their workforce that we’re training, so they have a vested interest in helping us,” she says. “I don’t think we ask for [their] help enough. And it must be a real and deep sort of equal partnership.”
With this mutual desire, companies and colleges are finding myriad ways to tackle educational needs.
Joint degree programs allow companies to fulfill their need for grads to fill industry niches. To produce more data analysts, Microsoft partnered with Eastern Washington University to launch a new data analytics degree program using off-the-shelf course materials already developed by Microsoft.
Appalachian State University and Mars Veterinary Health are creating a rigorous, four-year online program for licensed veterinary technicians. The partnership aims to address the need for qualified technicians, especially in rural areas.
Long-Term Cooperation
While industry has a long history of robust research and development cooperation with higher ed, these pairings traditionally focused on one-off research projects. However, a new trend is emerging in which corporations forge longer-term ventures encompassing both research and education. Companies fund PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers studying problems or technologies that benefit their overall mission. Company professionals, often senior scientists or engineers, pair up with university faculty members to co-mentor researchers. If something promising emerges, the company provides more funding or teams up on a proposal to obtain government grants. Some of these PhDs go on to work for the company.
Arizona State University (ASU) has developed another kind of education-research venture. ASU built a research facility with Starbucks to design more sustainable ways to run its stores and hone employee’s decision-making skills.
Universities and companies are also sharing resources and equipment. SSC Labs, a company specializing in electromagnetic interference, opened a research facility on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. SSC Labs utilizes the university’s laboratory equipment while making its own equipment available to students for learning. Many of those students go on to work for SSC Labs.
Recruiting for interns with the help of higher ed institutions is nothing new, but now companies are seeing the advantages of virtualized internships popularized by the pandemic. With virtual access, employers can draw from a global pool of talent and also boost diversity. Colleges are happy to work with them as they try to bridge the gap between education and employment, integrating hands-on, experiential learning with traditional coursework.
Inspired by the free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) kicked off by MIT around 2008, a growing number of companies are producing their own education and training programs by partnering with platforms like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda), Coursera, Skillshare and many others. One example is Microsoft, Linux and others teaming up with EdX, a collaboration started by Harvard and MIT to provide online education that is relatively easy to keep up to date and disseminate broadly. Companies are using these to teach hard skills and soft workplace skills like critical thinking and collaboration.
For employees pursuing degrees, certifications, and other forms of professional development, companies like Apple, Amazon and Walmart offer tuition assistance with stipulations on what can be studied and where. Some companies are taking it a step further however, by offering education debt relief from education completed prior to employment. This can be a great way to help attract and retain younger Gen Z employees, a generation awash in debt and stressed about money who in turn value financial security and professional development.
Leaning Back In
But with all these new and fruitful collaborations, how does one jump into this 21st Century Renaissance like a modern-day Leonardo DaVinci?: Executives are urged to start a conversation with college and university presidents.
“The conversation must be robust. It must be intentional,” says Dr. Christine McPhail, president of St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina. “That is the reason why university presidents are so valuable to corporations. We have a pulse on what’s happening in our communities all over America. We can be that chief navigator of that experience between the university and corporate America.”
Despite recent challenges, America still has one of the best if not the best higher education system in the world. The sector may come out of this period even stronger than before, presenting new mutually beneficial opportunities for collaboration.
Daniel G. Lugo, president of Queens University of Charlotte, says it this way: “…[W]e need to lean back into American higher education.”
