Designing for the Learner-First Workforce

What is a learner-first workforce model

A learner-first workforce model starts with how students actually live and work today.

At Excelsior University, that means designing programs for working adults, military learners, and career changers who are balancing multiple responsibilities. Education is not separate from work. It must connect directly to it.

What employers need from graduates

Employers consistently point to a broader set of expectations. Technical skills matter, but they are not enough on their own.

Graduates must be able to communicate clearly, think critically, and collaborate across teams. These skills are often assumed, but they need to be built intentionally into programs and reinforced through applied learning.

Why flexibility is now essential

Many students are managing unpredictable schedules This is especially true for military learners and working adults.

Programs must allow students to continue progressing even when work schedules shift or life circumstances change. Without that flexibility, persistence becomes much more difficult.

Where the system creates friction

Barriers such as credit transfer limitations, rigid timelines, and complex administrative processes continue to slow students down.

These challenges add time and cost, and they often prevent students from completing credentials even when they have already made significant progress.

What a learner-first system requires

A learner-first system reduces friction, aligns programs with workforce demand, and creates clear pathways to employment.

When institutions design around real  student experiences, learners can move more efficiently through education and into careers that support long-term mobility.

Transcript

00;00;04;19 – 00;00;38;21 Shalise Obray Welcome to the President’s Form podcast. This month we’re focusing on what we’re calling the learner first workforce, how institutions are better connecting education to opportunity while designing for the reality of today’s students, working adults, career changers and learners. Balancing multiple responsibilities. I’m joined today by David Stable, president of Excelsior University. David is a consistent leader in this space, and Excelsior has been at the forefront of building programs aligned to high demand industries while supporting learners who need flexibility, recognition of prior learning, and clear pathways to advancement.

00;00;38;24 – 00;00;50;25 Shalise Obray David, great to have you back with us. When you think about a learner first workforce. How is that showing up in the way Excelsior designs its programs and pathways?

00;00;50;27 – 00;01;23;24 David Schejbal So thanks. Good to be with you. So, you know, we, have many corporate partnerships, and we engage with employers a lot. And so we have a pretty good idea of what employers are looking for, and they’re typically looking not only for well prepared people by people who are actually practice ready so that they can go and work, the first day on the job so that the employer doesn’t have to do a lot of training.

00;01;23;26 – 00;01;55;12 David Schejbal So we’ve taken that, to heart. We are providing, our students not only with good opportunities to learn online, but also opportunities for intensive, in-person experiences at, some of our sites. And we’re also trying to provide our students with some of the, what I call cognitive skills that employers don’t talk about as much, but, but but we all know that that’s what they want.

00;01;55;13 – 00;02;02;13 David Schejbal Things like, critical reasoning skills, good communication, emotional intelligence, those kinds of things.

00;02;02;15 – 00;02;23;15 Shalise Obray That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like Excelsior has been really intentional about aligning your, your programs with high demand industries. And I know that you’re doing that even in some of your newer programs. What are you seeing work especially well when it comes to connecting learners to real job opportunities or job opportunities in real time?

00;02;23;17 – 00;02;57;21 David Schejbal Well, like I said, I think the practice really piece is really important. So, having, very detailed conversations with employers, and getting to the heart of what it is that they’re looking for, because an employer might say, you know, I really want somebody to know this particular programing language, but when you probe that a bit, what they really want is someone who can talk to different people, talk to programmers, talk to salespeople, talk to management, and have the technical skills, to be able to apply.

00;02;57;23 – 00;03;18;09 David Schejbal But it’s not the I think a lot of times employers will lead with the technical skills, whether it’s whether it’s, it or health care or business or whatever. But, but it’s the, the, the, the soft skills, the interpersonal skills that are often the ones that trip people up.

00;03;18;11 – 00;03;36;02 Shalise Obray Your students are often balancing work and education. And I know it’s not just your students, but I think the majority of students, at this point in time, what are the most important design choices that make it possible for them to succeed with, with that being the case?

00;03;36;04 – 00;04;03;26 David Schejbal Well, and and as you know, more than a third of our students, their work, balancing work means balancing military work. And so, what we learn from our military students that we certainly extend to all of our students is that, flexibility and, in an understanding of personal circumstances is really, really important. So in the military, it could be literally a life and death issue.

00;04;03;26 – 00;04;31;00 David Schejbal Right? So military students who are deployed often have to go dark. They cannot communicate. And so if they can’t communicate, with, their families, they certainly can’t get into online courses to do work and they can’t turn in assignments. So we need to be very understanding and flexible, with that. And, and we we need to be able to understand that with some of our other students as well.

00;04;31;01 – 00;04;54;21 David Schejbal Doesn’t mean we let students, get away with, dodging it. But, but we need to understand that people have really complicated, really busy lives and that education is one piece of their lives, but it’s not the only piece. Our students are an 18 year olds who’s, you know, who’s whose life consists of living in the dorms and having a beer on Thursday night.

00;04;54;24 – 00;04;57;09 David Schejbal Our students are juggling a lot of stuff.

00;04;57;11 – 00;05;23;01 Shalise Obray I think it’s really telling how you’re saying that. You’ve learned from your military students that how hard you’re trying to, be flexible and design around the needs of your of your students. Where do you see the biggest gaps today between what employers need and how at higher education is currently structured? I know you’re talking about sometimes employers don’t always say exactly what they what they need.

00;05;23;02 – 00;05;24;27 Shalise Obray Where do you see those gaps?

00;05;24;29 – 00;05;56;03 David Schejbal You know, I don’t think higher ed has been really good at focusing on the interpersonal skills that we’ve been talking about the communication, the the emotional intelligence, the ability to work across teams, the grit, inability to deal with ambiguity. We the the phrase that I always, excuse my faculty is that it’s it’s, faith based learning where we take it on faith that students are somehow magically going to learn that stuff.

00;05;56;05 – 00;06;23;10 David Schejbal They don’t magically learn it. You have to be explicit about it. You have to make exercises that help them practice those skills, because otherwise it’s unrealistic to expect them to learn it. But it’s those particular cognitive abilities, those those, interpersonal skills that are absolutely transportable from job to job and that become, increasingly more important as people, go up the food chain.

00;06;23;12 – 00;06;35;14 Shalise Obray I think they’re becoming increasingly important to, as we see what I can do or what technology can do, versus what we need people to do or how we need people to work together in teams.

00;06;35;15 – 00;06;36;26 David Schejbal You bet. Absolutely.

00;06;36;28 – 00;06;48;10 Shalise Obray If we were to get this right at scale across institutions, across the whole system, what would be meaningfully different for for learners, do you think?

00;06;48;13 – 00;07;13;00 David Schejbal Well, I think so. First of all, one of the things that we need to do is take the friction out of the learning experience. Higher ed has been great at creating a bureaucracy that’s student, unfriendly. And whether it’s credit transfer or, being able to take time off like I was talking about or sensitivity to personal, responsibilities and challenges.

00;07;13;02 – 00;07;29;12 David Schejbal We need to take some of that friction out of the system and make it easier for students to actually focus on learning, rather than having to spend time, and energy and frustration dealing with the bureaucracy. That has nothing to do with the actual learning process.

00;07;29;15 – 00;07;45;21 Shalise Obray I think that would be a huge relief for for many students. Thank you so much for talking to us today. This is exactly the kind of work that I know the forum is focused on elevating

00;07;45;22 – 00;07;47;27 David Schejbal Thank you so much. Always good to be with you.

00;07;47;29 – 00;07;59;24 Shalise Obray What we’re discussing isn’t theoretical. Institutions like Excelsior are already building models that connect learning directly to opportunity, and doing it in ways that reflect the reality of today’s learners. Thanks for listening.