The Business-Higher Education Forum is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1978 that connects corporate and higher education leaders to align and scale solutions that meet emerging and persistent talent needs.

Numerous corporate CEOs and university leaders, including American Public University System (APUS) in March 2025, have joined BHEF to lead innovation at their organizations and in the field to meet the changing talent needs of learners, workers, and businesses.

The organization focuses on:

• Develop a larger workforce with high-value, employer-aligned skills and credentials for better economic outcomes;
• Increase access to and use of work-integrated learning to connect and prepare talent inclusively;
• Scale effective national practices through regional networks and leadership.

BHEF has fostered dozens of business-higher education partnerships and created over 100 academic pathways. Examples of partnerships and initiatives include:

• AI and the Future of Talent Collaborative launched in 2025 to bring together businesses and educators to understand the future impact of AI on key industries, and to develop solutions to use AI effectively and ethically.
• Regional Talent Competitiveness Accelerator is launching in Spring 2025 to equip leaders with data-driven strategies, best practices, and collaboration models to strengthen regional pipelines for talent.
• Media Engineering: A project team of NBCUniversal engineers, BHEF staff, and Stevens Institute of Technology faculty and administrators identified key qualities and skills necessary for a media engineer. This collaboration led to the development of a minor in media engineering for computer and electrical engineering majors in a matter of months.
• The Joint Engineering Leadership Development Program: Beginning at a local community college or University of Missouri, St. Louis, and culminating at Washington University, provides a pathway to bachelor’s degrees in civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering to nontraditional students.
• Workforce Partnership Initiative (WPI): A joint project with the Business Roundtable created highly tailored educational and work-based learning opportunities with nine partnerships across the country.
• Work-based Learning: In 2023, BHEF received grant support from the Strada Education Foundation to conduct in-depth research to increase work-based learning (WBL) opportunities for college students. BHEF's research will include a landscape analysis, focus groups, and a national survey of at least 500 employers. This approach will allow for a deep understanding of the nuances of employers’ perspectives on WBL, and the incentives and barriers they experience, both internally and externally. It will also provide a statistically significant analysis of trends related to the value proposition of work-based learning to employers and their provision of WBL opportunities.

BHEF has developed a methodology for successful partnerships: the partnership implementation process, the strategic engagement model, and a theory of action to increase STEM student persistence, transfer, and completion.

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