Education is a perishable commodity. This is why, during a long professional career, it is necessary to replenish one’s knowledge several times in order to keep up with the latest developments in a particular field of research, where progress is often rapid. One way to achieve this is through continuing professional development, where the alignment of employers’ skill requirements with university programmes has not always been optimal. However, a recent study by Professor Gunnar Karlsson at KTH reveals many opportunities and proposals for aligning needs, supply and demand more effectively.

KTH has a number of courses within its programme that could be opened up to professionals. By rapidly expanding the range of courses on offer, KTH can gain a deeper understanding of the educational needs of the business community and the public sector while simultaneously meeting those needs. In parallel, we can develop a strategic range of courses based on successful research and establish intelligent collaborations with our strategic partners. These are some of the proposals in the report on lifelong learning.

By expanding our range of offerings, we can establish a unique position and gain valuable insights into demand. The solution is to build on our existing course portfolio, providing a broad range of options and great freedom of choice for potential customers. Although it can be difficult for industry to agree on concrete definitions and orders, we have a general idea of what demand looks like. Therefore, we need to create an offer that the market can respond to.

The report’s proposals are powerful and innovative, yet they also utilise our existing strengths. This has now been fully investigated, and I hope that we will soon be able to take the proposals forward to a pilot round in 2026. At the same time, we can start developing more courses based on successful research environments at the forefront of knowledge, for example. We are ready to develop lifelong learning that is both agile and appealing to current employees and to the companies and organisations that want to enhance and develop their skills. I hope that many of our partners in industry and society will want to join us.