Employability is a shared concern across the educational sector. Behind that lies a series of decisions on reviewing and redefining course portfolios, including ensuring course leaders are teaching their students the skills employers are looking for to boost their career prospects.
The challenge
Local governmental agencies that inspect the education sector in their region are increasingly pressured to assure the quality of their education. However, without granular data, these institutions can’t have a solid picture of what their regional labour market looks like and struggle to advise teachers on how to best upgrade their course plans.
Building a Talent Observatory to support universities
Lightcast offers user-friendly dashboards powered by our unparalleled labour market data. These Talent Observatory platforms are fully customisable, so agencies can add the relevant labour market data for their region, and enable users to find, for instance, job posting trends for particular sectors, in-demand skills, and profile data of local talent.
These data-powered platforms enable agencies to understand their local labour market and access the quality of education of their regional universities, by mapping the most in-demand skills to the skills universities are teaching across courses.
How AQU Catalunya is using Lightcast to increase the quality of Catalan universities
AQU Catalunya is the leading governmental agency responsible for assuring the quality of the Higher Education system in the Catalonia region. In 2021, AQU Catalunya partnered with Lightcast to build its Talent Observatory platform. Powered by Lightcast data, this platform contains detailed information across various labour market categories, including skills, occupation and industry trends in Catalonia.
Catalan universities rely on the Talent Observatory platform to review their courses and career services, increasing student employability and competitiveness in the market. By using accurate and current labour market data, universities can prove the quality of their courses and services, and be in a stronger position to apply for European public funding.
Commenting on the importance of its Talent Observatory for Catalonian Higher Education, José González, Project Manager of Internationalization and Knowledge Management at AQU Catalunya, noted:
“Universities have assumed an important role in improving the employability of graduates, not only in terms of finding work, but also in designing training programs that respond to the skills needed in today's job market. Therefore, providing information on the skills most requested by the labour market is essential to adapt training programs to emerging professional profiles and thus increase the employability of graduates.”