ABSTRACT
The higher education sector faces the imminent challenge of how to prepare students with the applicable skills and abilities necessary to secure a job after graduation and to adapt continuously to ever-changing workplace demands throughout their careers. Currently, higher education falls short of expectations in producing market-ready, employable graduates; inadequate employer engagement is the principle culprit for this failure. This chapter describes the existing gap between higher education and employers and discusses the relative implications of this disconnect for workers and employers alike. The chapter delineates a framework of higher education-employer engagement, and its connection to employability, and applies this framework to the case of the Columbia University School of Professional Studies—focusing on how the school approaches employer engagement throughout its academic and co-curricular activities in service of maximizing the employability of its graduates.
