Disruption Through Connections Conference
Professor Lucy Marshall is DVC of Community and Leadership at University of Sydney. In this episode she joins Peter Chun as CEO of UniSuper to explore the comparative issues of culture, change management and staff wellbeing between academic and commercial organisations. The transformation and disruption facing the sector, and the rapid emergence of AI and changing market demands, are adding to the loss of social license in making universities tough places to be. Stabilising workplace culture as a prerequisite to leading change and caring for staff wellbeing makes tough calls on leaders which this episode explores.
Demand for fee-paying, on-campus, degree-awarding, undergraduate and postgraduate education by domestic and international students is falling in developed countries. Demand is changing in shape and nature. It is migrating toward online, stackable, credentialed, personalised and globally available learning, and will continue to do so. Ignoring this is futile and dangerous.
Secondly, university public sympathy has reduced. As has employer satisfaction, staff morale, student satisfaction and government support, and the detrimental impact of the way government currently manages provision of learning has got worse. Meanwhile public, government and employer support for competitor innovative learning providers – not just universities – is growing and will continue to. You’re not the favourite child any more.
Thirdly, this is occurring while global demand for skills grows. But it is now less for school leaver graduates and more for lifelong learning, for an ageing population as falling birth rates become widespread, and as the need for skills updating rises exponentially. Global demand in developing countries for democratised access to lifelong learning is growing fast and will continue as a search for equity in global declining populations, amid geo-political turmoil, makes it inevitable.
