Boosting Future Skills in Higher Education. Lessons Learned from Funding Programs, Networking, Establishing Standards & Curricular Integration

Facing challenges at an individual, professional, and global level, individuals need a new set of competencies: Future Skills. Higher education plays a central role in teaching these, but their curricular integration can be challenging. The Stifterverband organization has contributed to Future Skills education in higher educations by providing two Future Skills frameworks and funding programs such as “EntrepreneurialEntrepreneurEntrepreneurial SkillsSkillEntrepreneurial Skills Skills”, “Data Literacy EducationDataData Literacy Education”, and “Curriculum 4.0.nrw”. Here we share our experiences from these programs to aid decision makers in higher education when implementing Future Skills education. Working with several institutions tackling a variety of challenges when implementing entrepreneurialEntrepreneurEntrepreneurial LearningLearningEntrepreneurial Learning education allowed us to distill several guidelines for sustainable entrepreneurship educationEntrepreneurEntrepreneurship Education. Including a wide range of experts in our Data LiteracyDataData Literacy networks, we developed a mutual understanding of and commitment to Data Literacy education—the Data Literacy Charter—and gained valuable experiences working in these networks. Funded with 7.5 mio. €, the large-scale “Curriculum 4.0.nrw” program has been supporting the curricular integration of a range of Future Skills related to digitization. Here we collected the most common obstacles as well as supporting factors when integrating Future Skills into existing curricula as well as suggested solutions to these obstacles.