Dear readers,
the Stifterverband published their latest study on Future Skills, giving more attention to the learning context at universities and universities of applied sciences.

The report: https://www.stifterverband.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/future_skills_2030.pdf
The scientific report: https://www.stifterverband.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/future_skills_2030_wissenschaftlicher_bericht.pdf

AI is reshaping industries. Climate change demands action. Disinformation threatens democracy. Which skills will keep you relevant?

The Stifterverband’s Future Skills 2030 framework, developed with input from over 1,500 experts across business, academia, government, and civil society, identifies the 30 competencies that will matter most.

Five Categories of Future Skills

1. Foundational Skills — Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, creativity, ethical competence, learning agility – NEW!

2. Transformative Skills — Ambiguity tolerance, sustainability competence, systems thinking, innovation competence, resilience

3. Community-Oriented Skills — Dialogue skills, democratic competence, participation, diversity competence – NEW!

4. Digital Skills — AI literacy, data literacy, media literacy, information competence

5. Technological Skills — AI/ML, cybersecurity, software development, quantum computing (for specialists)

Six Megatrends Driving Everything

Climate change, AI, digitalization, democratic culture, disinformation, lifelong learning.

The Bottom Line

The skills that will matter are about thinking critically, communicating clearly, and engaging responsibly. The technology will keep changing. Still, AI has to be integrated across disciplines.

We were delighted to see that our book Future Skills by Dippelhofer et al. (2025) is cited in the study — a wonderful endorsement of our work in this area. -> Open Access: Dippelhofer, S., Matthes, W., Salzmann, S., Schork, S. (2025). Future Skills an Hochschulen: Ein Spannungsfeld? Konzepte, Erwartungen und Praxisbeispiele in Studium und Lehre. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.

I also want to share some insights from an online discussion on 23 January with two women involved in the Stifterverband report: Wibke Matthes and Vera Gehrs. They both explained that future skills are needed in any discipline and should be embedded in universities and universities of applied sciences. Some universities have already set up a Future Skills Centre responsible for integrating them into existing courses and offering additional training open to all. This is not the case at universities of applied sciences. Some have created a position for a few years, but the continuation of this role is often not guaranteed. Nevertheless, we need a general mindset in which all educational institutions recognise their responsibility to integrate future skills into their organisation and teaching, so that future complex problems can be solved. Whether people support professors in embedding future skills or professors receive training to integrate them into their lectures depends on the context. In my view, it makes complete sense to participate in Future Skills Training, integrate it into existing lectures and offer an interdisciplinary course for all students (eligible for ECTS credits) to learn Future Skills. At our university, this would be a compulsory weekend course for all Engineering & Informatics, Economy and Law, as well as Health, students in a dedicated semester (i.e. the fourth or fifth semester, before students start their practical semester and major projects).

Happy reading
Sabrina