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A new study by Pearson and Amazon Web Services has sharpened concerns over whether universities are keeping pace with the demands of an AI-driven labour market, finding that 53% of employers say their main difficulty is hiring graduates with the right AI skills. The report, released on April 13, surveyed 2,711 learners, higher-education leaders and employers across the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Vietnam, pointing to a widening gap between academic confidence and workplace expectations.
Pearson and AWS say the disconnect is most visible at the point where education is expected to translate into practical capability. While 78% of higher-education leaders believe their graduates are meeting employer expectations, only 14% of current graduates say they have reached a high level of proficiency in applying AI tools to a professional workflow. That mismatch matters because employers are no longer looking only for basic AI literacy. They want graduates who can use tools in context, judge outputs, adapt quickly and work effectively with others.
The study’s findings land at a time when global employers are already bracing for broad skills disruption. The World Economic Forum said in its Future of Jobs Report 2025 that more than 1,000 employers, representing over 14 million workers, expect major labour-market change through 2030, while LinkedIn has said that 70% of the skills used in most jobs are set to change by the end of the decade, with AI acting as a central driver. Against that backdrop, a graduate pipeline misaligned with business needs is becoming a strategic problem rather than a narrow campus issue.
What stands out in the Pearson-AWS research is that employers are not asking for coding ability alone. The report says communication and collaboration are the top priorities for 50% of employers, while 45% rank adaptability highly. Yet higher-education leaders tend to place less weight on those qualities than employers do, even as they focus heavily on critical thinking and creativity. The result is a form of double misalignment: graduates may leave university without enough applied AI experience, and without enough of the human skills that businesses now see as essential when AI handles more routine entry-level work.
The research also suggests the problem is structural. It identifies six “frictions” slowing the move from classroom to workplace: pace, connection, capability, governance, experience and skills. One of the clearest is speed. Fieldwork conducted in January 2026 found that 67% of respondents see AI-driven change as moving fast, but only 24% think universities are keeping up. Another is weak communication between employers and institutions. Only 25% of higher-education leaders say they have formal, systematic processes to gather workforce needs, even though employers say the shortage is already affecting hiring.
There are, however, reasons to treat the study with some caution. It was commissioned by Pearson and AWS, both of which have commercial interests in education and skills development, though the fieldwork and analysis were conducted by PSB Insights. The employer sample, at 304 respondents across six countries, is enough to show direction but still modest for sweeping global claims. Even so, the report’s broad pattern aligns with other independent work. The OECD said in 2025 that only a small share of training courses currently include AI content, while many existing programmes lean towards advanced skills rather than broader workplace literacy.
The report does more than diagnose the problem. It argues that employers should act less like passive buyers of talent and more like partners in shaping it, through co-designed curricula, clearer hiring signals and better feedback loops. That view is echoed in the AWS commentary accompanying the report, which says the aim is to turn AI tool engagement into workplace capability. Pearson’s higher-education leadership has framed the issue even more bluntly, arguing that basic AI literacy is no longer enough and that institutions which build structured links between curriculum and work will define the next phase of workforce readiness.
