A Skills-First Economy Needs an Identity-First Foundation

Higher education is moving from talk to action, and that deserves credit. University Business has announced its inaugural UB Executive Leadership Summit, an invitation-only gathering of college presidents, provosts and chief academic officers in January 2027. Its goal is to build an agenda for a skills-first economy: stackable, employer-aligned credentials, skills-based hiring and a stronger role for institutions in regional economic leadership.

The announcement captures the moment well. As Amy Dujon, Vice President of Education at ARC Network, put it, the gap between what institutions produce and what employers need is now an operational conversation, and the task is to move "from awareness to action."

I agree. Having spent years working alongside university leaders, I have seen how hard it is to change institutions built to last for centuries. Convening the people who can actually redesign them is exactly the right instinct.

But there is something underneath the skills-first conversation that deserves a place on the agenda.

What the Data Is Really Telling Us

The announcement cites ManpowerGroup's finding that 69% of U.S. employers report difficulty finding the skilled talent they need. Look closer at that 2026 survey of more than 6,000 employers and a revealing pattern appears. The soft skills employers want most are professionalism and work ethic, communication, collaboration, critical thinking and adaptability.

Those are not skills that a credential easily certifies. They are expressions of who a person is and how they show up.

Then consider the other side of the equation. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 42% of recent college graduates are underemployed, working in jobs that do not require their degree. Millions of young people have the credential. Far fewer have found the work that fits what they bring.

That is what the headline misses. The gap is not only between what students can do and what employers need. It is between what students have completed and whether they know who they are, what they solve for and where they belong.

A Credential Is a Standard, Not an Identity

Let me be clear: employer-aligned credentials matter. Standards give employers confidence and give learners a common language for what they can do. Standardization is an asset.

The risk comes when the standard becomes the whole story. A skills-first economy can quietly turn into a credentials-first economy, where students are treated as an inventory of competencies to be matched against job openings. That approach scales. It does not help a young person understand why they are drawn to certain problems, or how to bring their full capability into a room.

In my work on Leadership in the Age of Personalization, the central argument is this: it is no longer about institutions defining the individual. It is about the individual defining the institution. Standardization and personalization are not opposites. Each modernizes the other. Credentials provide the standard. Identity provides the direction.

One of the five shifts I ask leaders to make is from brand identity to individual identities. The question beneath it is simple and uncomfortable: Who do you let them be? Too many students graduate having been allowed to be a major, a GPA and a list of completed requirements. Too few graduate having been asked to discover what makes them uniquely valuable.

The Question Every Credential Should Answer

When I work with leaders on their personal brand, I start with a question most cannot answer in a sentence: What do you solve for?

Imagine if every student could answer that question before graduation. Their credentials would stop being a checklist and start being evidence of a direction. Employers would see not only what a candidate has done, but how they think and what problems they are built to solve. Career services would become identity services, not just placement offices.

This is also why the K-20 conversation on the summit's agenda matters so much. Self-discovery cannot start in the final semester. Young people learn early which parts of themselves are rewarded and which are better left out. The sooner institutions help them claim what they bring, the less they will have to reclaim later in their careers.

As I explored in Higher Education Can't Rebuild the Past, institutions that reinvent by choice rather than by crisis will lead the next era. And as I wrote in Raise the Individual, Not the Resume, adaptability and self-awareness prepare young people for a changing workforce in ways credentials alone cannot.

Three Questions for Presidents and Provosts

As higher education leaders gather to build this agenda, I would offer three questions to bring into the room.

Do our students graduate knowing what they solve for, or only what they have completed?

Who do we let them be: a major, or an individual?

Are our employer partnerships designed around job openings, or around the people who will fill them?

None of these questions replaces the work of aligning credentials with employers. They make that work more likely to succeed.

A skills-first economy is the right goal. The institutions that reach it fastest will build it on an identity-first foundation.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.