July 2024

Sir Chris Husbands is former Vice Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and the first Chair of the UK Teaching Excellence Framework. He recently published reports into future implications of generative AI and four scenarios for the future of higher education in England. He sees an acute need for leaders to listen to the dispossessed who miss out on higher education. He argues that complacency and arrogance leaves us at risk of not rethinking a university model in acute need of change to embrace technology, evolve culture and engage communities if HE is to realise its true potential.

Noah Pickus of Duke University and Bryan Penprase of Soka University share insights from their recent book The New Global Universities: Reinventing Education in the 21st Century. It describes 8 global case studies of new universities in North America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Each have redefined the inherited ritual of what universities do. The book and episode provide lessons for leaders to challenge the conventional university model paradigm using intellectual courage, entrepreneurial audacity and adaptive leadership.

Paulo and Guilherme Silveira are two brothers who co-founded and lead Alura as an integrated set of companies delivering IT skills in Brazil. They do so with support from SEEK Investments whose MD Josh Nester joins me on this episode. Their business spans from state partnerships in K-12, through a university they bought and now operate, to skills provision for alumni lifelong learners, that grow into corporate education for new leaders of businesses. In total they serve more than 2 million learners as a business. The example gives pointers of new revenue and diversification opportunities that others could learn from.