Lightcast Addresses Higher Education's Relevance Crisis with Real-Time Skills Alignment Technology
Based on 18 billion labour market data points, Lightcast's Skillabi leverages new programme-occupation alignment score to close the gap between 'taught' and 'sought' skills
MOSCOW, Idaho, June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As higher education institutions grapple with declining enrollment, tightening budgets, heightened return on investment scrutiny, and a job market that is increasingly moving to skill-based hiring, a first-of-its-kind innovation has emerged to address one of the sector's most pressing challenges: ensuring academic courses align with real-world job market demands.
Lightcast, the global leader in labour market data, analytics, and expert guidance, today announced a series of new educational programme diagnostic tools built into its portfolio intelligence application, Skillabi. Designed for higher education and corporate learning and development (L&D), Skillabi analyzes programme content—course descriptions, learning outcomes, and training materials—and, using sophisticated algorithms, maps it against the largest corpus of high-fidelity labour market data. The algorithms identify gaps and trends, and give portfolio and product development planners actionable intelligence to build or modify programmes to meet evolving workforce demands.
'Our mission with Skillabi is to minimise the distance to the labour market for education and L&D organisations,' said Kevin Gounden, Chief Product Officer at Lightcast. 'Higher education is at a crossroads and programme relevance is the new currency. Our latest innovation is poised to change how courses are designed and maintained because institutional leaders now have a data-driven pulse on the skill demands. They can spot trends and skill gaps early and shape a portfolio that drives employability and enrollment.'
Skillabi leverages Lightcast's compounded insights, encompassing more than 18 billion labour market data points, including job postings, career profiles, along with company and compensation data. It also draws on two decades of skill and occupation taxonomy expertise, data classification, and sophisticated machine learning models to create structure from traditionally fragmented labour market data.
'Skillabi is already proving to be a valuable tool for St. Kate's, particularly within our School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences and our School of Business, where we've begun using it more readily for curriculum design,' said Erin White, Director of Institutional Research at St. Catherine University. 'Though we're early in fully leveraging Skillabi, its insights into labour market needs are already helping us shape more relevant programmes, positively impacting enrollment. It's a promising asset that helps us make informed decisions and better prepare our students for success.'
Skillabi's features include:
- Portfolio Skill Analysis: Extracts skills from learning content by leveraging Lightcast's Skill Taxonomy.
- Programme-Occupation Alignment Score: Quantifies programme relevance with a clear, objective score (0-100) of how well a programme's skills outcomes match real-world roles.
- Skill Gap Identification: Highlights missing or underrepresented skills critical to the workforce demand.
- Market Opportunity Insights: Pinpoints high-demand occupations aligned with a programme portfolio's strengths or growth areas.
- Portfolio Modelling: Simulates the impact of potential portfolio changes on alignment scores.
- Analyst Platform Integration: Optionally connects within Lightcast's broader analytics platform – Analyst – for deeper labour market exploration and insights.
Lightcast's data depth and transparency—used by over 1,000 educational institutions, the majority of Fortune 100 companies, state and local government agencies, and global edtech partners—underpins the impact Lightcast's skill diagnostic and alignment software and services can have on learning content, whether part of an L&D program or a broader higher education programme portfolio.
'Our partnership with Lightcast has created a powerful connection between education and skilling and the real-world demands of the workforce,' said Rohan Chandran, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Guild, the leading talent development company. 'By integrating Skillabi and leveraging Lightcast's Skills Taxonomy into our Learning Marketplace, we ensure that the skills employees gain through Guild programs are practical, clearly defined and understood, and immediately applicable on the job.'
Skillabi is available now in the US, Canada, and the UK. Request a demo or a trial.
About Lightcast
Lightcast provides trusted global labour market data, analytics, and expert guidance that empowers communities, corporations, and learning providers to make informed decisions and navigate the increasingly complex world of work. With a database of more than 2.5 billion job postings and career profiles, our team provides best-in-class customer service with robust data, clear analysis, and expert guidance on skills, jobs, and opportunities. Lightcast is active in more than 30 countries and has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and India. The company is backed by global private equity leader KKR. For more, visit lightcast.io.
Press contact:
Cara Christopher
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