Kyiv Polytechnic reps join webinar on QS World Future Skills Index 2027

On 8 July 2026, representatives of the International Collaboration Department at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute joined the webinar organised by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, the leading global provider of specialist higher education and careers information and solutions.

In this webinar held under the theme “The future skills race: Unpacking the QS World Future Skills Index 2027,” its participants explored key findings from the Index, and discussed the trends and standout insights from this year’s report. Two panellists, namely Matteo Quacquarelli, Vice President of Strategy and Analytics at QS, and Sam Duke, Frameworks Manager engaged in the design and development of QS rankings methodologies, also provided an overview of the methodology underpinning the Index and what it reveals about preparing for the future of work.

As artificial intelligence, technological disruption and shifting workforce demands reshape economies around the world, understanding future skills readiness has never been more important. The QS World Future Skills Index 2027 evaluates how well countries are equipped to meet the evolving demands of the global labour market. Designed to support governments, policymakers and education leaders, the Index offers a comprehensive view of the factors driving future skills development, talent readiness and long-term economic resilience.

Presenting a joint vision, Matteo Quacquarelli highlighted that the Index is more than a global benchmark. It provides a platform for informed conversations around graduate employability, workforce transformation, AI readiness and economic competitiveness. The Index combines higher education, labour market, economic, and workforce data to assess future skills readiness globally. It also seeks to evaluate whether universities, employers, and economies are working together to prepare talent for tomorrow. “We conducted an analysis that started to look through the phase of work at breaking this out into a regional lens,” he said.

Matteo Quacquarelli explained that the Index is built out from four equally weighted pillars: Skills Alignment, Academic Readiness, Future of Work, and Economic Transformation. It is calculated, using methodology processes similar to all QS rankings. “We define which economies are eligible, excluding those locations with the population below 1.5 million to ensure maximum comparability,” he noted. “Also, we undertake data processing, deriving a normalised score between 0 to 100 for each economy in each lens.”

Measuring how well country’s graduate skills match employer expectations, the Skills Alignment lens is derived from data about skills supply and demand from the QS Employer Reputation Survey. Describing Academic Readiness including the Green Education sub-indicator weighted at 15%, Sam Duke detailed that it assesses academic performance by looking at over 5,000 universities worldwide, with a deeper analysis of the 1,500+ institutions currently ranked in the QS Subject Rankings.

Sam Duke also pointed out that demand for future skills was outstripping supply in 51% of the economies reported in this year’s index. “Education policy alone hasn’t been able to close this gap,” he said. “Looking at Economic Transformation across regions and income groups, Taiwan comes out as the top performer in the high-income space.”

Comparing Australia with its high-performing US counterpart, Matteo Quacquarelli added that there is a real advantage for the Down Under in an Economic Transformation index context when it comes to broader Workforce Readiness, higher levels of tertiary enrolment, and stronger relative labour force participation.

Closing the event, the QS Vice President of Strategy and Analytics underlined that university leadership need to be thinking about how they are augmenting their teaching models to incorporate new methods of skills acquisition, experiential learning, internships to support graduates in developing or enriching foundational or human skills. At the same time, policymakers should be thinking about how to marry their higher education system with their industrial strategy to bring the research excellence of their institutions into alignment with the innovation requirements of their industrial strategy.

“The two stakeholder groups should collaborate to identify the mechanisms through which research can traverse into commercial innovation within an economy, as a technology transfer can take place between universities and industry to accelerate the augmentation potential through AI and digital,” he concluded.