WGU Partners with Emsi to Map Skills Students Need to Real-World Jobs

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Western Governors University (WGU) today announced the university will partner with Emsi, a leading labor market analytics firm, to support a groundbreaking new initiative that will map the skills and competencies WGU students acquire to real-world jobs. A leader in preparing students for career success, WGU is building on its legacy of student-focused innovation to further align its workforce-relevant curriculum to the most current and pressing employer needs by surfacing value and real-time career insights to students as they work their way to degree.

“Job seekers want to know what skills to learn that will translate into a successful career or promotion, so the creation of a personalized learning pathway that incorporates those skills and competencies will help students match their credentials with what employers want,” said Dr. Marni Baker Stein, WGU Provost and Chief Academic Officer. “WGU is building a comprehensive skills map across industries to serve as the ‘operating system’ that will maximize value to students by providing career-relevant programs, a clear way to communicate value to employers, and data-driven career assistance.”

Emsi’s Open Skills Library identifies nearly 30,000 skills from hundreds of millions of job postings, résumés, and professional profiles and is updated every two weeks. Using artificial intelligence, the Open Skills Library will be used to match WGU’s competency-based curriculum with a list of workforce-relevant skills, allowing WGU to tailor the student learning journey even further by focusing on specific skills and competencies that match a learner’s goals. WGU is already teaching and assessing the marketable skills industry values. This new partnership will highlight the workforce relevance of a WGU degree by translating credentials and experience into the high-demand skills they represent.

“There is a lot of inefficiency in the labor market because three critical sectors – people, businesses and higher ed – have struggled to understand each other. Essentially, they need to speak the same language and we believe skills is that language. WGU is a real trailblazer in this work and their model is one of the truly innovative practices in higher ed today. We are eager to support this work so that more people can be connected to good work and so more good work can find the talent it needs to succeed,” commented Emsi’s Executive Vice President of Higher Education, Luke Jankovic.  

About Emsi

Emsi provides colleges and universities with labor market data to build a better workforce and nurture strong economies, businesses, and graduates. Hundreds of institutions use Emsi to align programs with regional needs, drive enrollment, connect students with in-demand careers, track their alumni’s employment outcomes, and demonstrate their institution’s economic impact on their region.