October 2023

One could argue that higher education has gone from being a rite of passage for the privileged few, to now being more directly connected to the need to close skills gaps. The over-riding sense is that education increasingly needs to meet people, both learners and employers, where they are at. This means both in the multiple and continuous life stages of their turning to learning, and the skills they need for its primary purpose for them of being productive in a changing world of work. Meeting learners where they are at increasingly means through technology and at work and at times that suit them and through the facilitation of others. It has long left being an absolute requirement for it to be on campus, face to face only, and at times that suit us and our systems.

We must monitor outcomes in seeking to grow our crop of numbers of equity graduates, and them providing the skills we need for future work. That needs us to see them in the first place and recognise their lived experiences and show them that they matter. We need to care about them more than we care about ourselves and our places in rankings. And this needs significant shifts in our culture, governanceand leadership.

An alternative vision of future education is as technology enabled services, focused on lifelong learning, targeting learners predominantly global and online. This vision presents challenges to those operating with infrastructure, processes and staff and leadership profiles, and offering learning products, meant for the old model of higher education. It presents opportunities for those with changed mindsets to be bold and innovative.

The Accord presents an exciting, energising and unique opportunity for equity and inclusion to be on the front page and in the lead position in change in our sector. It is unleashing long awaited energy and enthusiasm from those that have shown dedication to its cause and case for lifetimes, most fully by those with lived experiences.

It is easy to think we are alone in going through a once in a generation review of higher education and that all the answers we need should come from within. Before jumping to that conclusion, one of several reality and sense checks can come from contrasting our experience and thoughts towards solutions, with lessons others learned trying the same.