By Judy L Hutchinson
A few days ago, I was in a conversation with colleagues about employability in international education. Some of the discussion centred on NACE career-readiness competencies, a framework widely used by U.S. universities to articulate the skills graduates need in the workforce (NACE, 2026). The discussion was thoughtful and engaging, and it unfolded as part of an Intercultural Leadership Forum hosted by True North Intercultural. The session explored how intercultural competence itself is increasingly framed as a career-readiness skill.
The conversation was lively and useful, and it’s always a pleasure to discuss these topics with colleagues. And yet, as I listened, I found myself uneasy. Employability is a significant and essential consideration. Students today graduate with staggering debt, uncertain labour markets, and rising expectations from parents and employers alike. Universities cannot ignore the need to help students articulate skills that translate into meaningful employment.
But I also felt a familiar tension: when did career readiness become the primary purpose of the university? When did the fullness of human learning, moral development, and intellectual formation get reduced to an employability checklist?
My unease is not with NACE itself, but with the broader shift it represents in higher education thinking. And it is worth examining, especially for mission-driven universities and for those working in international education.
What Exactly is NACE?
For many of us in academia, the acronym “NACE” floats around without much explanation. NACE stands for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a U.S.-based professional organisation that bridges higher education and the corporate world. It conducts extensive employer surveys and publishes annual data on what skills graduates need to succeed in the work force. Their most influential output is the list of Career Readiness Competencies (NACE, 2026):
- Career and Self-Development
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Equity and Inclusion
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Teamwork
- Technology
Universities use these competencies widely. They appear in learning outcomes, co-curricular programmes, internship evaluations, accreditation narratives and more. Employers, especially larger corporations, use them as hiring benchmarks. Career centres rely on them as a common language between campus and industry. However, something striking remains true: most students have no idea what NACE is. They may learn the skills, but rarely the acronym.
This tells us something important. NACE shapes institutional behaviour more than it shapes student identity. It is a framework that seems to orient universities toward the labour market, which is useful, but also limiting if not carefully contextualised.
Where NACE Helps, and Where It Falls Short
NACE fulfils a need. In a culture where the value of a higher education is increasingly questioned (Arum and Roksa, 2011), a shared vocabulary of “career readiness skills” offers reassurance. Stakeholders, such as parents, legislators, boards, donors and employers all want proof that degrees have value. NACE provides a measurable answer. Many of the competencies, such as communication, teamwork, leadership and professionalism are entirely consistent with healthy forms of student development.
But as John Henry Newman (1952/2008) warned more than a century ago, reducing the purpose of education to utility alone fundamentally misunderstands what a university is for. Education is not merely about producing useful individuals; it is about cultivating intellectual habits, moral imagination, and the ability to pursue truth for its own sake.
Similarly, contemporary philosophers remind us that education is never neutral. MacIntyre (1988) argues that all rational enquiry is tradition-constituted and oriented toward the good, and never simply toward the demands of the market. When universities define success primarily in terms of employability, they risk adopting what Pope Francis (2015) calls the technocratic paradigm, which is a worldview that reduces persons to instruments who are valued only for what they produce. Clemens Sedmak (2021) develops this further in his work on Integral Human Development, warning against educational models that treat students as a means to economic ends rather than as persons oriented toward flourishing.
This is where the tension lies. NACE competencies are valuable, but they cannot name or capture the deepest goods of education.
The Tension: Career Preparation vs. Human Formation
Today’s students arrive at the university with intense pressure to “be marketable” before they have time to discern who they are. Parents, legislators, and employers all ask universities to demonstrate ROI. The result is a slow shift toward viewing higher education as training for the labour market.
Yet the purpose of education, especially within mission-driven institutions, has always been broader. Catholic universities, for example, ground their work in the pillars of Catholic Social Teaching: human dignity, the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity (Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, 2005). These principles point to formation, not function; to the development of character, conscience, and purpose. Seen through this lens, employability is necessary, but not sufficient. It is viewed as a fruit of education, not the central purpose.
International Education as the Bridge we Need
If there is one space in higher education capable of reconciling formation with employability, it is international education. Study abroad, for example, naturally cultivates many of the NACE competencies, often more deeply and more authentically than classroom settings can. Students learn to communicate across cultural boundaries, solve problems in unfamiliar environments, navigate ambiguity and work as part of diverse groups. They build resilience, adaptability, and initiative. From a career perspective, the skills gained through international experience are precisely what employers say they value.
But international education goes further and forms virtues that cannot always be measured on the competency grid:
- Cultural humility
- Moral imagination
- Solidarity
- Encounter
- Patience and openness
- Awareness of human dignity
- The ability to live with ambiguity
- An awareness of global inequalities
- Empathy across difference
- And the capacity to ask deeper questions about justice and the common good
These are forms of intercultural competence that scholars such as Deardorff (2006) describe as internally residing shifts in attitudes, worldview, and identity. International education also places students within real contexts of human struggle and flourishing described in Populorum Progressio (Paul VI, 1967), and in the broader tradition of Integral Human Development. When students encounter new cultures, live inside unfamiliar systems, or grapple with inequality firsthand, they begin to understand solidarity not as an abstract value, but as a lived reality.
This is why international education can be so powerful: it forms the person, not just the résumé. It demonstrates that career readiness and human development are not competitors but companions. A student shaped by intercultural experiences is not only employable, but more humane, more reflective, and more capable of contributing meaningfully to society.
Reframing the Narrative: Education First, Employability as a Fruit
The challenge for universities is not to abandon employability, but to place it in its proper context.
A healthier, more mission-aligned framing might say:
- The purpose of higher education is the formation of persons, capable of seeking truth, pursuing justice, contributing to the common good and living meaningful lives.
- Employability is a fruit of this formation, not the core of it.
- NACE competencies are tools, useful but incomplete. They cannot replace the deeper work of intellectual development, moral reasoning, community formation or the pursuit of wisdom.
- International education exemplifies this integration, forming students intellectually, morally, interculturally, and professionally.
Mission-driven universities, such as my own Catholic one, have a unique responsibility to resist the reduction of education to training. Their founding charisms call them to a more expansive vision of human flourishing, one that, far from limiting us, actually gives deeper meaning and coherence to the work we do.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Heart of the University
NACE has a place in higher education. It is helpful and practical, as it provides language and structure for articulating career readiness. But this isn’t sufficient. If universities allow labour markets to define their purpose, they risk losing the very thing that makes education transformative.
International engagement reminds us of what is at stake. It can bridge employability with formation without collapsing one into the other. It can turn students outward, toward the world, in all of its beauty and its suffering. It can form people who live and work with purpose, integrity and global awareness. And these are the sorts of graduates our world, and our workplaces most need.
REFERENCES
Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. University of Chicago Press.
Deardorff, D.K. (2006) ‘Identification and assessment of intercultural competence…’, Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), pp. 241–266.
Francis (2015) Laudato Si’. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Lewin, R. (ed.) (2009) The handbook of practice and research in study abroad. New York: Routledge.
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2005) Compendium of the social doctrine of the Church. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose justice? Which rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
National Association of Colleges and Employers (2024) Career readiness competencies. Available at: https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies
Newman, J.H. (1852/2015) The idea of a university. 3rd edn. London: Aeterna Press.
Paul VI (1967) Popolorum Progressio. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Sedmak, C. (2023) Enacting integral human development. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.