Reflection on five years of The Skills Agenda

In 2020, I reached out to University Affairs to propose what is now this column. At the time, I saw growing societal and student interest in strengthening the career preparation aspects of university education. Drawing on both my research in the area and my passion for teaching and learning, I saw an opportunity to support faculty and instructors in bringing career skill development into their classrooms and programs. The editor proposed the title “The Skills Agenda” and the column launched in January 2021. In today’s column, to close out 2025, I reflect on where I started and why the topic of skills and higher education continues to have relevance.  

When I started the column, there was emerging interest in sharpening the university-labour market connection. RBC had released a well-publicized report, Humans Wanted, focusing on skill development. Provincial governments were exploring performance-based post-secondary funding options, with attention to career outcomes. The federal government was focused on “future skills” and questioning the ability of universities to deliver; as a 2020 Future Skills Council report noted, “Gaps between the skills [young people] may be gaining through post-secondary education and the jobs they get after graduation raise questions about the return on their investments.” 

While I valued the labour market arguments, my own interest in the topic of career preparation and university education was students. As I wrote about in my first column, as a professor in a non-professional discipline (political science), I found it troubling when students leave degree programs “clearly anxious about their futures and uncertain that their university education prepared them for much of anything.”  

For five years, I have directed my column at faculty and instructors because I believe they have the greatest agency and potential to create meaningful change in how universities equip students for career success. Academic leaders, be they department chairs, deans or provosts, can work to facilitate change, but it is faculty and instructors who will determine if change successfully occurs. 

As we enter 2026, the value proposition of university for prospective students has weakened. As Alex Usher writes, “the external environment has changed and in this new environment, university doesn’t seem like quite such a bargain anymore.” There is significant uncertainty about the career impacts that AI will have on graduates launching their careers and AI is already having disproportionate effects on job seekers under age 25. A 2025 Environics Institute study found that Canadians are increasingly likely to encourage a young person to pursue trades training or apprenticeship over university education, with trades and apprenticeships being favoured two-to-one.  

These are worrisome trends for the university sector. And they hit programs differently. 

People tend to forget how many university programs are explicitly vocational. Professional programs such as engineering, education, social work, law, accounting, agriculture, computer science and health sciences (medicine, dentistry, nursing, rehabilitation sciences, veterinary sciences, pharmacy, etc.) can easily point to the connection between university education and student careers. These faculty and instructors will be challenged to keep up with changing professional needs (including the impact of AI) but their general social value is not under question. Further, given the longstanding career connection of these programs, these faculty and instructors will not need to be convinced that student skill development is integral to their programs. 

Programs with less obvious ties to specific career outcomes have a steeper hill to climb. The social value of non-professional programs is under greater scrutiny. Faculty and instructors have often focused on disciplinary knowledge over skill development. Universities will be pressed to clearly articulate the value of such programs to governments and the public. There is a strong value proposition to be made: it is frequently argued that due to AI, the human literacy skills learned in these non-professional programs will be in increasing demand in the future. The challenge for these programs will be to explicitly and effectively teach these skills. 

I have no doubt that the inherent conservatism of academia will be a barrier to change for some programs. At the same time, I am confident that some faculty and instructors will rise to the challenge to make the societal case for their programs and their disciplines. I believe we will see exciting discussions and innovations in the sector as faculty and instructors recognize and seize their agency to reimagine non-professional programs to meet contemporary student needs. These efforts will be accelerated by openness and support: 

• Openness: For non-professional programs, there can be resistance to the idea of skill training. “We teach students how to think!” “I am teaching citizens, not workers.” “I have too much content to teach to waste time on skills training.” This is a false and unhelpful binary. The teaching of thinking skills, citizenship values and disciplinary knowledge is important. And at the same time, so is the teaching of skills that will equip students to apply their knowledge. It is the combination of advanced knowledge and skills training that distinguishes university education from other education. 

• Support: Faculty and instructors are often conservative because universities fail to provide them with the information, supports and safety to innovate. Information needs include understanding of labour market skill gaps and opportunities, and how their programs can connect with these. Supports include assistance with curriculum mapping, program design and potentially release time for faculty leading this work. Safety includes reassurance that units will be able to experiment and not be punished if they don’t always get it right.  

I am excited by the possibilities for our sector. My intention is to use this column space over 2026 to encourage faculty and instructors to take up the challenge of program innovation and to provide them with information to spark their imagination in doing so. Please watch this space!