Leadership

Nancy Pratt, PhD
Founder and Principal

Dr. Pratt brings more than two decades of experience in higher education leadership, with deep expertise in workforce education, continuing education, and institutional strategy. Her work focuses on workforce education portfolio design, microcredential strategy and quality frameworks, and organizational alignment within public universities. She combines scholarly research with senior-level practice to help institutions build workforce education systems that are academically credible, operationally sustainable, and aligned with labor market realities.

Marius Boboc, PhD
Founding Partner and Senior Advisor

Dr. Boboc is a senior higher education leader and scholar with extensive experience in institutional effectiveness, accreditation, administrative leadership, and strategic planning. His work reflects long-standing engagement with academic governance, quality assurance, and large-scale institutional initiatives within complex university environments. He provides strategic counsel and institutional perspective that strengthens the rigor, legitimacy, and sustainability of University 5.0’s work.

Our Approach

Our approach begins with the conviction that workforce education is not a department or a collection of programs, but an institutional capability. We help institutions move from fragmented initiatives to integrated strategies that align adult learning, workforce pathways, and academic values.

This work is informed by the University 5.0 framework, which examines how learning, leadership, and labor interact within contemporary higher education institutions. While the framework encompasses multiple institutional dimensions, our advisory work is deliberately focused on workforce education and adult learning as the most immediate point of leverage. Each engagement combines research, design, and implementation, translating institutional intent into coherent structures and measurable outcomes.

Values and Expertise

University 5.0 is grounded in the belief that education and workforce development share a common purpose: advancing human capability. Our work is guided by five principles that shape how we engage institutions and how we define quality and success.

Integration over Fragmentation
We prioritize coherence across credit, non-credit, and workforce education initiatives, helping institutions align programs, policies, and practices into unified systems.

Leadership with Accountability
We support institutional leaders in clarifying responsibility, decision rights, and sustainability within workforce education, strengthening stewardship without expanding scope beyond mission.

Adult Learning as Workforce Education
We specialize in workforce and adult learning designed around real learners, grounded in adult learning theory, and aligned with meaningful labor market pathways, including microcredentials and credit-adjacent models.

Quality as Institutional Legitimacy
We help institutions develop quality frameworks and standards that make workforce education academically credible, transparent, and defensible under accreditation and internal review.

Partnership with Purpose
We value collaboration that strengthens institutional capacity and regional impact, supporting employer and ecosystem engagement without outsourcing educational responsibility.