🤔 Skills Intelligence in Higher Ed: aligning market needs to improve outcomes. Join for Back to School in NYC this Sep.

Hello 👋

Skills intelligence is moving into focus for postsecondary institutions as strategic input for program design and learner success. With employers beginning to benchmark skills directly and governments launching national platforms, universities are under pressure to align with evolving market needs. Platforms that map emerging roles, forecast in-demand skills, and translate them into clear signals are now influencing how institutions update curricula and measure graduate readiness.

• Graduate Employability: Employers are beginning to accept demonstrated skills instead of credentials—especially in tech, healthcare, and AI-adjacent roles, and universities can help learners articulate credits into competencies.
• Policy Pressure: National upskilling initiatives are accelerating demand for transparent, job-relevant learning pathways.
• Institutional Strategy: Skills intelligence is becoming a planning tool for academic programs, not just a career services feature.

Explore HolonIQ’s Skills Intelligence Market Map to see how higher education fits into the fast-evolving skills ecosystem. Request a demo today.

At the center of the skills economy are learners—the shared focal point for universities, employers, and governments. They need clear visibility into which skills matter, not just which degrees to pursue. When these three sectors align on language, standards, and pathways, learners gain access to more personalized, job-relevant learning journeys. Skills intelligence makes that alignment possible.

🚕 Early Bird Pricing ends in June!
2025 Back to School Summit; September 9 to 11 in NYC

Register now.

Join 700 higher education leaders, industry CEOs and investors and philanthropy at the 2025 Back to School Summit, September 9–11 in New York City. 🇺🇸 Two full days of high-impact presentations, private roundtables, fireside chats, and curated networking with top companies, global foundations, and major institutional investors.

💪 Power Moves

🧑‍🏫 The University of Michigan and Google launched an AI Virtual Teaching Assistant to improve higher education and support educators.

📖 Kuwait College of Science and Technology partnered with Microsoft to embed AI into academics and curricula.

🤖 IBM Taiwan partners with National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University to integrate watsonx.ai into AI classrooms and collaborative research.

💰 Education Funding

🎓 Udemy, an online education platform, secured a credit line of $200M to expand its AI-powered skills platform and support global growth for enterprises and consumers.

🖥️ Principia, a Brazilian higher education financial management system, raised $35M to integrate AI to automate processes such as re-enrollment and class scheduling.

💡 Prepia, a Serbian AI-powered exam prep platform, has raised $1.7M to scale its AI-driven exam prep platform across +300 markets. 

🏫 Taawoni, a Saudi edtech startup, raised $1.6M to scale its platform that connects universities and employers for cooperative training programs.

📢 Wolters Kluwer Health, a global provider of information services and solutions, has acquired IntelliLearn, an Australian company that offers online courseware solutions for nursing school.

Thank you for reading. Have a great weekend ahead!
Have some feedback or want to sponsor this newsletter? Let us know at hello@holoniq.com