Universities are very good at talking about portfolios.
We review them, validate them, market them, monitor them and occasionally close parts of them. But too often, the conversation still starts in the wrong place.
It starts with the institution. It starts with the course we want to run, the market we think exists, the recruitment target we need to hit, the academic expertise we already have, or the financial contribution we hope the programme will make. All of those things matter. But they are not the starting point for a serious skills strategy.
Making the first move
The starting point should be the workforce problem.
Employers rarely approach universities, colleges or training providers with a neat qualification request. They don’t usually begin by asking for a degree apprenticeship, a Higher Technical Qualification, a CPD course, a T Level placement or a short unit of learning.
They begin with a business problem. They need to recruit, retain, reskill, improve productivity, develop managers, respond to AI, decarbonise operations, strengthen social value, or create a future talent pipeline.
The role of a university should be to translate those workforce problems into high-quality learning solutions. That requires a different way of thinking about portfolio development.
The skills evidence is now too strong to ignore. Skills England’s 2026 Annual Skills Report makes clear that the system needs to be more evidence-led and aligned to priority sectors. The Employer Skills Survey 2024 reported 250,500 skill-shortage vacancies across the UK. It also showed that employer training expenditure was £53 billion in 2024, down from £59 billion in 2022 and 18.5 per cent lower in real terms than in 2011.
This tells us two things. Employers still need skills, but we cannot assume that need will automatically convert into investment in training. The offer has to be relevant, flexible and easy to navigate.
That is where universities need to move from course portfolio management to skills ecosystem leadership.
The ecosystem question
A course portfolio is a list of provision.
A skills ecosystem is a set of relationships, pathways, and capabilities that connect learners, employers, colleges, universities, professional bodies, and local economies.
The first asks: what can we teach? The second asks: what does the economy need, what do learners need, and what can we deliver well?
This shift matters because the skills challenge is not limited to apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are important, but they are only one part of the answer. Employers also need placements, internships, graduate recruitment, CPD, professional education, short courses, apprenticeship units, Higher Technical Qualifications and applied research.
And learners need progression routes, not disconnected products.
For universities, this has implications for how we work with employers. Business engagement cannot sit at the edge of the institution as a sales or recruitment function. It has to become a source of strategic intelligence.
Employer-facing teams hear things that should shape institutional decisions: where demand is growing, where employers are struggling to recruit, which delivery models do not work, where curriculum is behind practice, and what skills are emerging in the workplace. If that intelligence stays in individual inboxes or relationship notes, the institution does not learn from it.
A mature business engagement function should generate opportunities, but it should also inform portfolio development. It should help universities decide what to grow, what to redesign, what to stop, and where to partner.
Finding the right path
This also means universities need to think in pathways.
A pathway is not the same as a course. A pathway connects school engagement, technical education, placements, apprenticeships, higher technical learning, degrees, CPD and professional progression.
It makes sense to employers because it supports workforce planning. It makes sense to learners because it creates visible routes into and through work.
This is where integrated education groups have a particular opportunity. At LSBU Group, for example, the combination of London South Bank University, South Bank Colleges and South Bank Academies creates the potential to connect early talent, technical education, higher education, apprenticeships, placements and professional learning. The wider lesson is not institutional self-promotion. It’s that structures only become valuable when they simplify the journey for employers and strengthen progression for learners.
A construction employer does not want to navigate separate parts of an institution to discuss school outreach or graduate recruitment. A health employer does not want disconnected conversations about nursing associates, registered nurses, allied health, placements and leadership development. The employer wants a coherent workforce conversation and universities need to organise themselves accordingly.
Quality street
There is also a quality point. Flexible provision must not mean weaker provision.
Shorter courses, modular learning and apprenticeship units can help employers respond quickly to change, especially in areas such as AI, digital, green skills and leadership. But if they become disconnected fragments, they will add complexity rather than solve it. Quality has to be designed across the whole skills ecosystem.
For apprenticeships, that means robust initial assessment, employer commitment, progress reviews, and assessment readiness. For placements, it means meaningful workplace learning, not just hours completed. In terms of CPD, it means learning that can be applied in practice. And in higher technical provision, it means employer recognition and progression value.
The same principle applies to impact. Universities are used to measuring enrolments, income, and continuation. Those are important, but they are not enough. A skills ecosystem approach requires us to measure employer satisfaction, repeat engagement, learner progression, placement outcomes, social mobility, productivity contribution and regional value. This is not about turning universities into training suppliers. It is about taking seriously our role as civic and economic institutions.
Universities remain places of knowledge, research, critique and intellectual development. But if we are serious about public value, we must also be serious about how that knowledge connects to work, opportunity and place.
The next phase of skills reform will reward institutions that can join things up. Not those with the longest list of courses. Not those with the most polished prospectus. Not even those with the loudest employer engagement rhetoric. The strongest institutions will be those that can build skills ecosystems: coherent, employer-informed, learner-centred, and rooted in place.
That requires universities to ask harder questions of their portfolios. Not only: does this course recruit? But also: what problem does it solve? Which employers helped shape it?
How does it connect to progression? Can working adults access it? Is the delivery model viable? What impact will it have?
That’s the shift we now need to make. Portfolio development should not just decide which courses run. It should design the skills infrastructure that employers, learners, and communities need.
