Rising tuition, declining enrollment, and disappointing employment outcomes have led many to question whether college still delivers on its promise. Dozens of smaller institutions are shuttering or consolidating, caught between rising costs and weakening demand. These are not isolated failures. They are signals of a system in need of reinvention.

The real challenge, however, is not external. It is structural. If higher education is to remain viable in a competitive, post-industrial economy, it must shift from viewing itself as a self-contained enterprise to recognizing its role in the broader talent supply chain.

That shift requires more than programmatic tweaks. It requires a rethinking of priorities.

For much of the past century, colleges and universities have kept industry at arm’s length, operating on the premise that their purpose is to cultivate knowledge for its own sake. Theory was king. Practical application was often treated as peripheral, or worse, vocational. But the world has changed. And so have student expectations.

Today’s graduates face a job market that demands both agility and applied experience. Many are entering the workforce burdened with debt and without the tools to contribute from day one. Students and families are beginning to ask harder questions. Employers, too, are losing patience. We should not be surprised. Higher education is overdue for a course correction.

At many institutions, the idea of aligning more closely with industry is viewed with caution. Some see it as a dilution of academic purpose or a threat to faculty independence. Others simply fear change. But these objections miss the point.

Professional preparation does not have to come at the expense of intellectual rigor. In fact, the most effective workforce-ready graduates are those who can think critically, communicate effectively, and adapt to complexity. These are not soft skills. They are the very traits that rigorous academic study is designed to develop. What is missing is experience.

At Kettering University, where I am president, we have built a model that integrates traditional learning with deep, structured engagement in the workforce. Our cooperative program is not an add-on. It is the foundation of our model, and has been for more than a century. We do not view students as customers. We view them as emerging professionals. And we do not treat employers as donors. We treat them as partners.

Founded in 1919 as The School of Automobile Trades, Kettering became the Flint Institute of Technology before being acquired by General Motors in 1926 and renamed the General Motors Institute. For the next five decades, it served as GM’s primary talent engine, producing generations of engineering and management leaders through a deeply embedded co-op model. In 1945, we added a fifth-year universal thesis requirement, completing our evolution into a full degree-granting university. GM divested in 1982, and in 1998 we became Kettering University, named for Charles F. Kettering, head of GM Research and one of the earliest advocates for professional cooperative education. That legacy still defines us.

Today, every Kettering student alternates over a 4.5-year course of study between intensive 11-week academic terms and 11-week paid professional work placements. They graduate with two-and-a-half years of discipline-specific experience and often over $100,000 in earnings. We partner with more than 600 employers nationwide—including leading firms in mobility, aerospace, and autonomous systems—to deliver this model at scale. Each year, close to 100% of our graduates secure employment within a few months, often with their co-op employers and frequently in leadership-track roles. More than 1,500 alumni currently serve in executive positions across industries, including in the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies.

Kettering’s commitment to cooperative education is not just semantics. It is a shift in orientation. In our model, industry is the client. The student is the product. And our job is to develop that product with both intellectual depth and practical capability.

The most effective way to do that is through cooperative education: formal, mentored, compensated work placements embedded in the academic calendar. The concept is not new. It originated at the University of Cincinnati over a century ago and has been championed by institutions like Northeastern, Drexel, and Antioch. More recently, schools across the country have begun experimenting with summer internships and short-term placements to meet growing demand.

But not all co-op models are created equal. To be more than résumé lines, these programs must rest on a few core principles.

First, they must be integrated with academic content and tied to the student’s chosen field. Second, the work must be substantive and supervised, not clerical. Third, it must be paid, and the employer must be actively involved in shaping the experience. And fourth, there must be sufficient repetition to build mastery, not just exposure.

This edge isn’t gained at the expense of the liberal arts. Courses in philosophy, communication, ethics, economics, and history ground their professional preparation.

And as companies adopt AI broadly to automate more entry-level tasks, expectations for human contributors are rising. Employers now look for graduates who can step into complex, judgment-based roles immediately. The pressure on colleges to produce graduates who are truly ready will only intensify.

The stakes are real for the private sector. As industries face growing talent shortages, the disconnect between academic output and economic need is no longer just an educational issue. It is a national competitiveness issue. Recent federal initiatives, such as the CHIPS and Science Act and expanded NSF investments in STEM education, underscore how urgently national policymakers view the need to strengthen the talent pipeline.

Business leaders have a role to play here. By forming deeper partnerships with academic institutions, shaping co-op programs, investing in student mentorship, and supporting policies that incentivize applied learning, employers can help close the readiness gap. This is not charity. It is strategy.

The future of higher education will be defined by institutions that understand this shift and act on it. Those that remain tethered to legacy assumptions will continue to lose ground. Those that adapt will not only survive, they will produce graduates who are ready to lead.

We are educators. But we must also be learners. And right now, the lesson is clear: relevance is not inherited. It is earned.

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