Experience Is the New Credential

For generations, higher education has been built around a familiar exchange: students learn the material, demonstrate that knowledge through assignments and exams, earn a degree, and take that credential into the labor market. That model is not disappearing. But something important is changing around it.

Employers are increasingly asking a different question. Not simply, “What do you know?” but, “What have you actually done?”

That distinction matters because knowledge is becoming abundant. Artificial intelligence can explain a concept, summarize a report, generate an analysis, build a presentation, and walk someone through a business problem in seconds. Access to information that once separated the prepared from the unprepared is rapidly becoming democratized.

The labor market is already signaling this shift. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that nearly 70 percent of employers now use skills-based hiring. Employers also say one of the strongest ways candidates can demonstrate those skills is by describing real situations in which they solved problems. Nearly all respondents in NACE’s 2026 Job Outlook considered U.S.-based internships valuable, and employers continue to emphasize experiential learning and work during college.[1]

The evidence becomes even more interesting when academic performance is compared directly with experience. In a 2026 survey of nearly 1,500 executives and senior talent leaders, the Strada Institute for the Future of Work found that employers preferred candidates with direct work experience, industry internships, and relevant project-based experience. At the bottom of the list was a candidate with a 4.0 GPA and academic awards—but no work history.[2]

That does not mean grades no longer matter. It means grades alone may no longer tell employers what they most need to know.

ZipRecruiter’s 2026 graduate research points in the same direction. Graduates with work experience during college were more than twice as likely to be employed as graduates without it.[3] Experience does more than fill a line on a résumé. It gives young professionals stories to tell, problems to discuss, mistakes to reflect upon, and evidence that they have operated outside the controlled environment of an assignment.

And AI may make that experience even more valuable.

Strada found that more than 40 percent of employers say AI has increased the analytical and judgment-based responsibilities assigned to entry-level workers, while a similar share say it has reduced foundational or skill-building tasks.[2] That creates an uncomfortable paradox for new graduates: some of the routine work that historically helped young employees learn how businesses operate is being automated, while employers simultaneously expect those same employees to arrive capable of handling more complex work.

This is where experiential learning becomes more than an educational philosophy. It becomes workforce preparation.

In my own classes, I am increasingly trying to move business education closer to the environment students will enter after graduation. Students are not simply reading about market expansion; they are working with Total Quality Logistics on opportunities associated with expansion into Canada and Mexico. In another course, students are working with MCS Manufacturing on the development of real sales pipelines across marine, rail, and construction markets. Students in professional selling are practicing difficult conversations repeatedly in an AI-powered sales lab rather than waiting for their first job to discover how they respond to objections, uncertainty, and pressure.

These experiences are messy by design. The answer is not sitting in the back of a textbook. Industry partners may change direction. Data may be incomplete. Team members may disagree. A recommendation that sounds great in the classroom may not survive five minutes of questioning from an executive.

That is precisely the point.

The World Economic Forum estimates that 39 percent of workers’ key skills will change by 2030. AI and technological literacy are rising rapidly, but so are creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership, and analytical thinking.[4] Those human capabilities are difficult to develop through passive exposure alone. They require repetition, feedback, failure, adjustment, and another attempt.

We should therefore think differently about what students accumulate during college. The degree remains important, but alongside it should be a portfolio of evidence: projects completed, problems solved, presentations delivered, simulations attempted, industry relationships built, and lessons learned when things did not go according to plan.

That portfolio tells a richer story than a transcript ever could.

The future of business education should not force a choice between theory and practice. Students need theory because it gives them frameworks for understanding the world. But they also need opportunities to test those frameworks against reality before their livelihoods depend on getting the answer right.

And in an economy where AI can increasingly produce the answer, the ability to demonstrate judgment, communication, adaptability, and execution may become one of the most valuable credentials a graduate can carry.

References

1. National Association of Colleges and Employers. 2026 Job Outlook — Spring Update. 2026. View source ↗
2. Strada Education Foundation, Institute for the Future of Work. Entry-Level Hiring in the AI Era: What Employers Are Thinking (and Doing). May 19, 2026. View source ↗
3. ZipRecruiter Economic Research. ZipRecruiter’s Graduate Survey 2026. 2026. View source ↗
4. World Economic Forum. The Future of Jobs Report 2025. January 7, 2025. View source ↗

Kenneth W. O’Connor, Ph.D.

Professor, researcher, and business practitioner focused on professional sales, supply chain logistics, transportation, artificial intelligence, defense manufacturing ecosystems, and applied business education.