GLOBAL
15 May 2022
More than 1,500 participants will gather in Barcelona, Spain, for the third UNESCO World Higher Education Conference, to chart a renewed vision for higher education in the next decade.
The conference, running from Wednesday 18 May to Friday 20 May, will launch a global conversation to “reshape ideas and practices in higher education to ensure sustainable development for the planet and humanity”, UNESCO says, and to create a common roadmap for higher education to 2030.
How higher education can be adapted to global and local challenges, such as sustainable development, will be high on the agenda. Other key issues are how international mobility can be supported and how higher education institutions can be adapted to become lifelong learning institutions.
“The purpose of the conference is to launch the next decade for higher education globally and reflect where we have been and where we want to end up towards achieving Agenda 2030 [for Sustainable Development] and beyond that,” Chief of Higher Education at UNESCO Peter Wells told University World News.
Agenda 2030 comprises the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets set to achieve them, which were agreed by the 193 UN member states in 2015.
The World Higher Education Conference – or WHEC2022 – programme is the result of two years of open dialogue with “every conceivable higher education-related NGO, network of universities, university conferences, student groups, academic groups, institutions and multilateral partners such as UNHCR, the private sector and civil society”, Wells said, but primarily the conversation is being led by academics, researchers and students.
“We are creating a global conversation to get everybody thinking, to reimagine, reinvent,” he added.
With 235 million students enrolled in higher education worldwide, a number that has more than doubled in the past two decades and will likely double again over the coming decade, expanding access to higher education while ensuring provision is of good quality will be a key focus.
Among the questions to be discussed at the heart of the conference are: Faced with such growing demand, how can we ensure quality higher education that is adapted to contemporary challenges such as sustainable development? How can international academic mobility be supported? What lessons can be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic?
The conference will be opened by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, the Spanish Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau.
The conference will draw lessons from the past two years to design systems that are both stronger and more resilient, UNESCO says.
In order to develop the roadmap for higher education to 2030, the conference will focus on 10 themes:
• Impact of COVID-19 on Higher Education;
• Higher Education and the Sustainable Development Goals;
• Inclusion;
• Quality and Relevance of Programmes;
• Academic Mobility;
• Governance;
• Financing;
• Data and Knowledge Production;
• International Cooperation; and
• The Futures of Higher Education.
Technical expert groups for each theme have drawn up papers over the past two years to feed into the thinking on the roadmap to 2030 and there will be roundtable discussions on each theme at the conference.
There will also be many HED (higher education) talks by speakers in short 15-minute formats plus Q&A in the style of TED talks.
The conference represents an opportunity to deepen and expand common efforts of knowledge production, policy dialogue, exchange and networking.
This will be the third UNESCO World Higher Education Conference, the previous ones having been held in 2009 and 1998.
Rapidly changing economies
Among the issues to be discussed are the impact of current challenges in the world on higher education systems and higher education’s response.
These include the context of rapidly changing economies, new modes of work, technological developments, demographic trends, mass consumption, increasing mobility and migration, as well as societal and environmental threats and diverse forms of conflict.
There will also be a focus on the digital revolution – including the emergence of artificial intelligence, the rise of web-based education and training and big data developments – which is disrupting all aspects of life and work. Higher education both has impact on and is impacted by this revolution.
Special attention will be given to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has provoked major changes to the delivery of higher education by the forced switch to online teaching, which in turn has required and forced the development of new methods of teaching and learning – but has also increased inequalities due to uneven access to broadband or Wi-Fi, laptops or even electricity in some locations.
Increasing student mobility
Six million of the global student population are studying abroad and this number is expected to rise to eight million by 2025. But international frameworks are needed to support mobility, which is not only an academic asset for students, but also a boost to knowledge sharing and mutual understanding.
At high level sessions at the Barcelona Conference, UNESCO will call on its member states to pursue ratification of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, the first UN treaty to strengthen inter-university cooperation and cross-border academic research. Fourteen states have already ratified the text and only seven more signatures are needed for it to enter into force.
Roadmap to 2030
The conference will end with the creation of a roadmap to 2030 for higher education worldwide, upon which governments and institutions can reflect and decide for themselves how they adapt their own policies and programmes in the light of that.
Wells told a press conference on Friday that the common roadmap will identify six ‘critical transition’s for the decade ahead:
• Democratise access: enable the right to higher education through equitable, funded and sustainable access.
• Encourage rich and holistic student learning experiences that foster democratic values rather than a restrictive focus on disciplinary or professional training.
• Move from disciplinary silos to inter- and trans-disciplinarity, encouraging active collaboration among diverse perspectives.
• Take a lifelong learning approach aimed at serving the diverse education needs of youth and adults and offering flexible learning pathways.
• Connect institutions and programmes to enlarge the educational opportunities for youth and widen recognition mechanisms to consider all types of programmes (formal, informal, hybrid, online…) .
• Renew pedagogical practices and use technology to enrich higher learning experiences and research.
The Global University Network for Innovation (GUNi) and the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP) are the key local partnering organisations.
University World News is the exclusive media partner for the conference and will be providing extensive coverage.
The programme for the conference can be found here.
