The colleges teach learning, but they do not learn to survive

The increase in tuition fees, the decrease in registrations and the disappointing employment results have led to a lot to wonder if the college still holds its promise. Dozens of small institutions close or consolidate, taken between rising costs and weaken demand. These are not isolated failures. These are signals from a system that needs reinvention.

The real challenge, however, is not external. It’s structural. If higher education must remain viable in a competitive and post-industrial economy, it must move from consideration as an autonomous enterprise to recognize its role in the broader talent supply chain.

This change requires more than programmatic adjustments. This requires a rethink of priorities.

For a large part of the last century, colleges and universities kept the industry with the length of ARM, operating on the premise that their objective is to cultivate knowledge for itself. The theory was king. The practical application was often treated as a peripheral company, or worse. But the world has changed. And therefore have the expectations of students.

Today’s graduates are faced with a job market that requires both agility and applied experience. Many enter the labor market overwhelmed by debt and without the tools to contribute from the first day. Students and families are starting to ask more difficult questions. Employers also lose patience. We should not be surprised. Higher education is late for a course correction.

In many institutions, the idea of ​​aligning itself more closely with industry is considered with caution. Some see him as a dilution of the academic objective or a threat to the independence of the faculty. Others simply fear change. But these objections lack the point.

Professional preparation does not have to be done at the expense of intellectual rigor. In fact, the most effective graduates ready for workforce are those who may think critically, communicate effectively and adapt to complexity. These are not general skills. These are the very features that the rigorous academic study is designed to develop. What is missing is experience.

At the University of Kettering, where I am president, we have built a model that integrates traditional learning with a deep structured commitment on the labor market. Our cooperative program is not an additional module. It is the foundation of our model, and for more than a century. We do not consider students as customers. We consider them as emerging professionals. And we do not treat employers as donors. We treat them as partners.

Founded in 1919 under the name of the school of automotive trades, Kettering became the Flint Institute of Technology before being acquired by General Motors in 1926 and renamed the General Motors Institute. Over the next five decades, it has been the main engine of GM talents, producing generations of engineering and management leaders thanks to a deeply integrated cooperative model. In 1945, we added a fifth year universal thesis requirement, completing our development in a full diploma university. GM was sold in 1982, and in 1998, we became the University of Kettering, named Charles F. Kettering, GM research chief and one of the first defenders of professional cooperative education. This inheritance always defines us.

Today, each Kettering student alternates on a 4.5 year old study program between the intensive academic conditions of 11 weeks and the remunerated professional locations of 11 weeks. They graduated with two and a half years of specific discipline experience and often more than $ 100,000 in income. We associate ourselves with more than 600 employers on a national scale, including the main companies in mobility, aerospace and autonomous systems – to deliver this large -scale model. Each year, almost 100% of our graduates guarantee a job in a few months, often with their cooperative employers and frequently in leadership travel roles. More than 1,500 former students are currently held management positions in industries, especially in Caisses C of fortune companies 500.

Kettering’s commitment to cooperative education is not only semantics. It is a change of orientation. In our model, industry is the customer. The student is the product. And our work consists in developing this product with intellectual depth and practical capacity.

The most effective way to do so is through cooperative education: formal, supervised and remunerated work courses integrated into the academic calendar. The concept is not new. He is from the University of Cincinnati more than a century ago and was defended by institutions like Northeastern, Drexel and Antioch. More recently, schools across the country have started to experiment with summer courses and short -term internships to meet growing demand.

But not all cooperative models are created equal. To be more than CV lines, these programs must be based on some basic principles.

First, they must be integrated into the academic content and linked to the chosen field of the student. Second, the work must be substantial and supervised, no office. Third, he must be paid and the employer must be actively involved in the training of experience. And fourth, there must be sufficient repetition to build a mastery, not just the exhibition.

This advantage is not won at the expense of liberal arts. The courses of philosophy, communication, ethics, economics and history are based on their professional preparation.

And as companies adopt an AI to automate more entry -level tasks, expectations in terms of human contributors increase. Employers are now looking for graduates who can enter into complex roles and based on judgment immediately. Pressure on colleges to produce graduates who are really ready will only intensify.

The issues are real for the private sector. While industries are faced with growing talent shortages, disconnection between academic production and economic needs is no longer just an educational problem. This is a national competitiveness problem. Recent federal initiatives, such as chips and science act and expanded NSF investments in STEM education, underline how national emergency decision -makers see the need to strengthen the talent pipeline.

Business leaders have a role to play here. By establishing more in -depth partnerships with university establishments, shaping cooperation programs, investing in student mentorship and supporting policies that encourage applied learning, employers can help fill the preparation gap. It is not a charity. This is the strategy.

The future of higher education will be defined by the institutions which understand this change and will act on this subject. Those who remain attached to inherited hypotheses will continue to lose ground. Those who adapt not only will survive, they will produce graduates ready to direct.

We are educators. But we must also be learners. And for the moment, the lesson is clear: relevance is not inherited. He is won.

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