Employers should be codesigners. Many institutions now have advisory boards featuring business leaders, but those arrangements don’t amount to much when the board meets twice a year for lunch. Instead, employers should directly help define the competencies a program should produce. They should help institutions understand when industry needs are shifting. And they should open their doors through ongoing externships and apprenticeships. When employers invest in curriculum, they find that they stop thinking about the entry-level pipeline as someone else’s problem.
Advisory board is limited impact. Industry partnership is an ecosystem that includes both co-design for the competencies, formative opportunities to apply learning, and job opportunities at the end.