Part Two: Why Universities Need an Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience
In Part One of this series, I argue that colleges and universities often conflate two different outcomes: discovery and preparation. Experiential learning initiatives help students explore potential career paths and understand how different professions operate, but exploration alone does not translate into employability. Colleges and universities must ensure their graduates are as employable as possible.
If institutions want graduates to leave campus with resume-caliber work experience, they must design systems that produce real work opportunities at scale.
Most campuses already offer dozens of programs that support exploration. Mentoring programs, alumni panels, and industry road trips all play an important role in helping students discover possible futures. What most institutions lack, however, is a coordinated infrastructure designed to ensure that students graduate with meaningful professional experience that demonstrates their ability to contribute in the workplace.
If universities are serious about ensuring that every student graduates with resume-caliber experience, they cannot continue to treat this work as a side project managed primarily by career services offices, steering committees, or individual academic departments. They need infrastructure.
Specifically, universities should consider establishing a dedicated unit that I will call the Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience. The purpose of this office would be simple but ambitious: to facilitate, structure, and scale meaningful work opportunities for students across the institution and its external ecosystem. Creating such a unit signals that workforce preparation has become a core institutional function rather than a peripheral service. It also acknowledges that scaling meaningful work opportunities requires coordination, systems, and sustained investment.
Turning the Campus Into a Project Engine
The first responsibility of the Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience should be to ensure that the university continuously generates meaningful, resume-caliber projects within its own operations.
Every campus is filled with real, unsolved problems. Data needs to be analyzed. Communications strategies need content. Research needs to be translated into accessible formats. Programs and systems need evaluation. Universities can generate an enormous amount of work that could be structured into student-led projects.
These opportunities exist across both academic and administrative units. Enrollment management, advancement, student affairs, research centers, athletics, auxiliary services, and academic departments all generate work that can be organized into structured student projects. In this model, the campus itself becomes a laboratory for applied learning. Rather than treating professional experience as something that happens only off campus, universities would recognize that many meaningful opportunities already exist within their own operations.
Importantly, not all projects should serve the same purpose.
Some projects should be designed to achieve real institutional goals. These are initiatives where the output is intended to be used, implemented, or built upon. When executed well, they directly advance institutional priorities while giving students substantive professional experience. Other projects will be primarily developmental. Their primary value lies in the learning process rather than the final product. Unless executed at a very high level, they may never be integrated into institutional operations, and that is acceptable as long as expectations are clear.
Both types of projects are valuable. What matters is that they provide students with the opportunity to engage in real work, collaborate with supervisors, and produce tangible outputs that can be documented in resumes or professional portfolios.
The role of the Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience would be to identify these opportunities and provide the systems that allow them to scale. Faculty and administrators would serve as project sponsors and coaches. When done well, the entire campus becomes a project engine for applied work experience.
Building an Alumni and Employer Project Marketplace
The second responsibility of this office should be to expand the number of projects sourced from alumni and external employers, particularly those working in small and medium-sized organizations. Many alumni-led companies, startups, and nonprofits have meaningful work to be done but lack the infrastructure to host traditional interns. With the right support, these organizations can become powerful partners in student development.
Rather than relying solely on large employers with established internship programs, universities can build a curated marketplace of project-based opportunities that connect students with alumni and other external partners. Working closely with advancement and alumni engagement teams, the Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience could identify opportunities, standardize expectations, vet supervisors, and ensure quality across these partnerships.
In this model, alumni engagement evolves and expands by helping create sustained workforce partnerships. Alumni can and should help create meaningful work opportunities that strengthen the professional pipeline for future graduates.
Acting as an Internal Talent Broker
The third role of this unit should be to function as an internal recruitment and matching organization. At most universities today, students are largely responsible for navigating opportunities on their own. Those who already possess strong networks, professional confidence, or family connections often secure the most meaningful opportunities.
If professional experience is truly a priority, access cannot remain this uneven. The Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience should assess student readiness, manage applications, and actively match students with appropriate opportunities. In effect, it would operate as a mission-driven recruiting firm focused on student development rather than profit. As the volume of internal and external projects grows, this matching function becomes essential, because without it, opportunities remain fragmented and difficult for students to navigate.
Integrating Artificial Intelligence Into Professional Practice
The fourth responsibility of the office should be to ensure that students develop fluency in using artificial intelligence within professional environments.
Nearly every industry is now integrating AI tools into everyday work. Yet most students and supervisors lack clear guidance on how to use these technologies productively and responsibly.
A centralized unit can provide shared training resources, ethical frameworks, and practical coaching so that students learn how to incorporate AI into real projects. Rather than treating AI as a standalone topic, it becomes embedded in the way students approach research, analysis, communication, and problem-solving.
Building the System Universities Currently Lack
What I am describing requires executive sponsorship, dedicated funding, and cross-divisional authority. Without those elements, this work will remain fragmented and impossible to scale.
The central argument of this series is not that universities need more experiential learning programs. Most campuses already offer many opportunities for exploration. What they lack is a system designed to consistently produce resume-caliber work experience.
The Office of Applied Work & Professional Experience represents one possible model for building that system. By coordinating internal projects, expanding alumni partnerships, matching students with opportunities, and integrating AI training, universities can create an infrastructure that prepares students for the realities of today’s labor market.
Establishing such a unit requires investment and institutional commitment. But it also represents an opportunity. Many of the most significant benefactors in higher education are deeply interested in student success and workforce readiness. A bold initiative designed to ensure that every student graduates with meaningful professional experience is exactly the type of institutional priority that visionary donors often find compelling.
If universities want to demonstrate the value of a college degree in an uncertain labor market, building systems that produce real work experience may be one of the most important investments they can make.
In Part Three, I explore how career services must evolve within this new ecosystem, and why the traditional model of career advising is already being reshaped by artificial intelligence and changing student expectations.
For more information about CMAC’s Career Pathways practice area, visit our website and contact us for a discussion about how we might help.