Today’s Inside Higher Ed post by NU VP of global strategy and business development, Peter Stokes, touches on some topics we’ve been discussing recently at Aspire, such as the importance of widening the scope of experiential learning (and how it’s happening at NU) and the merit in incorporating employer needs (and input) into the development of academic curricula.
Stokes states his premise with some urgency:
…the need for closer collaboration and tighter alignment between [business and academia] has arguably never been more critical—particularly if we aspire to create an experience that treats the journey from education to employment as a continuum.
He goes on to frame the discussion around methodology, with an emphasis on keeping experiential learning opportunities:
Like all institutions, we want our recent graduates to land good jobs and advance their careers — and we want the local economies within which those graduates work to benefit as well. But experience has taught us that there is no single path to achieving this aim, and thus we recognize the need to continually explore new ways of creating powerful experiential learning opportunities for our students that foster a smoother and more productive journey from education to employment.
Check out the full post and share your thoughts with us—where do you see opportunities opening up on the ever-evolving journey from the classroom to the workplace?
