Kingston University Future Skills Report 2025
Discover the findings from Kingston University’s latest Future Skills report – identifying the skills most valued by industry to drive innovation and boost economic growth.
Future Skills 2025: Perspectives from East and West
Kingston University is driving a major skills revolution in higher education, playing a key role in shaping the skills agenda in the UK and now internationally.
Our sector-leading Future Skills campaign is informed by extensive research, exploring the skills most valued by employers – skills that empower individuals throughout their education, work and every aspect of their lives.
Launched at the Houses of Parliament, our latest report, Future Skills – Perspectives from East and West, features the results of a survey of UK businesses conducted by YouGov, alongside research produced by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The report shows how businesses are increasingly placing a strong emphasis on human-centric skills, such as problem solving and critical thinking and reveals the importance of understanding the impact of emerging technologies and the need for advanced skills education in universities.
Kingston University is leading the way in the delivery of Future Skills in the United Kingdom. From September 2025, every student completing one of our undergraduate courses will benefit from our sector-leading Future Skills approach as a core, taught and assessed part of their degree alongside their subject-specific learning.
Explore our latest Future Skills report
Future Skills are the essential skills that are vital to drive innovation and boost economic growth.
Working in partnership with leading businesses on Future Skills
As a leading provider of digital solutions in higher education, Adobe is proud to support Kingston University’s Future Skills campaign, as an Adobe Creative Campus. Through the partnership Adobe and the University have jointly identified how we help and support students to gain critical Future Skills that are essential for the modern workplace.
Adobe’s digital tools empower students to develop these critical skills, ensuring they are ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. Adobe is committed to supporting this initiative by providing innovative tools and solutions that enhance digital literacy and creativity among students.
Adobe’s partnership with Kingston University on Future Skills briefs has been immensely rewarding, as we jointly prepare students for the modern workplace. We encourage other businesses to join us in this endeavour, as it provides an opportunity to showcase forward-thinking approaches to resolving skills gaps and investing in future talent."
The advertising industry is moving at an incredible pace. With rapid advancements in technology, data and AI, developing future-ready skills has never been more important. It's not just about digital capabilities; it's also about nurturing creativity, problem solving and communication – skills vital across all industries.
By prioritising skills development today, we're setting people and the UK economy up for long-term success. Future Skills is a fantastic opportunity to strengthen career pathways and grow the next generation of talent."
The Future Skills journey so far
Our new report, Future Skills - Perspectives from East and West, builds on three previous Future Skills League Tables. Since 2021, working in conjunction with YouGov, we have regularly surveyed more than 2,000 business leaders to identify the skills businesses most value. Our first report sparked a national conversation about employer needs to ensure their future competitiveness. Our second report furthered the debate, examining students’ perspectives alongside the workforce requirements of UK employers. Our third report examined emerging challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact of our sector-leading approach to Future Skills education, which has been rolled out across our undergraduate curriculum since September 2023.
Kingston University is the only university in the UK fully embedding Future Skills into every undergraduate degree programme across its core curriculum.
Our Vice-Chancellor's viewpoint
"Artificial intelligence has dominated the narrative about the future of work in recent years, perhaps even overtaking the perceived threat of global competitors. Its advent has firmly reinforced the need for Future Skills – those skills that are uniquely human.
“Our latest report shows human-centric competencies are equally as vital as technical skills in the modern workplace. Only by embedding them will we be able to truly address the new developments and opportunities that lie ahead in our rapidly evolving, digital-first world."
– Professor Steven Spier, Vice-Chancellor, Kingston University
Benefits for business
John Lewis Partnership: driving innovation
John Lewis Partnership has been collaborating with Kingston University second-year students completing the Explore phase of the Future Skills programme. As part of a live brief – the largest at the University with an industry partner – more than 600 undergraduates across two Faculties have been creating innovative business solutions for Waitrose & Partners.
Students are applying critical thinking to address key business priorities, including AI adoption, supply chain optimisation and climate risk resilience. Computer science, cybersecurity, geography and geology students have developed approaches to understand soil health and crop cycles, taking their learning to Leckford Estate in Hampshire. Other students devised systems to capture supplier data and developed predictive models. Marketing students created a strategic communications plan to encourage suppliers to adopt AI for data insight. This partnership exemplifies how business challenges can be embedded into education, enhancing student learning and driving innovation for industry.
The Future Skills student journey
Across our undergraduate degree courses we have implemented an innovative three-phase approach designed to ensure students develop the essential life skills and acquire the graduate attributes they need for success in their careers.
Navigate helps students transition to university in their first year, introducing them to Future Skills and helps them understand the skills they currently have.
Explore provides second years with industry-relevant, experiential learning, working directly with employers through live projects, site visits to businesses and mock assessment centres.
Apply, which will launch University-wide in September 2025, builds on the learnings from Navigate and Explore, providing an opportunity for final-year students to refine and personalise their skills, preparing them for the first step of their career careers and life once they graduate.
Find out more about the student journey through Future Skills >
"The main difference Future Skills has made for me is being able to enter the world of work with an open mind. Everything is not set in stone. In the future, I might not be an architect, so I need to adapt."
– Maria Alexe, second year architecture student
Join the Future Skills campaign
- Partner with us on Future Skills with your business challenges and tap into our student talent to help your business innovate.
- Join us as thought leaders on Future Skills to shape skills development strategies.
- Upskill your workforce with bespoke professional development courses and AI-enhanced digital training.
- Innovate your business through our Knowledge Exchange and Research Institutes.
- Drive business growth with our Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
- Recruit from our talent pool of diverse students and graduates.
Work with us
Want to know more about Future Skills? Contact us via email for further information.
You can even join the conversation on social media with the hashtags #FutureSkills and #TownHouseStrategy.
