Podcast

Teri Cannon as Founding President of Minerva University reflects on the journey to build a different type of university that is intentionally global. After 10 years of helping students from 130 countries learn in a rotation through 7 global locations in North and South America, Europe and Asia, Minerva as a private university has been named the world’s most innovative university for the second year running by the World Universities with Real Impact rankings.It does so with no campuses or owned buildings, no research and no facilities of any kind that do not focus on the student experience. And it teaches global students to become global leaders with cities as places of learning and technology as a key enabler.

VCs Bruce Dowton, Andrew Parfitt and Alex Zelinsky and DVCs and VPs Clare Pollock, Theo Farrell, Merlin Crossley and Michelle Bellingan, as panellists at the HEDx conference in Sydney share “pithy” reactions to the interim report the day after its launch in Canberra. Something for everyone in a shift from a market-led to a centrally-led combination of collaboration and competition. Dr Ant Bagshaw of L.E.K. Consulting and Martin Betts as co-hosts, share a sense that the supply side has been offered many ideas while the demand side of planned growth has some issues that remain to be explored. What do we all make of the interim report?

Professor Mary O’Kane Chair of the Accord Review Panel joins the HEDx podcast for a second time through an interview with research partner HERDSA at a keynote plenary panel session at their annual conference in Brisbane last week. In an interview by co-hosts Martin Betts and Christy Collis from the HERDSA Executive, Mary outlines her thoughts about submissions received, where her report is up to, what the key issues are that it addresses and what the process will be for the sector to engage with it after its release. Fascinating insights traversing equity, diversification, collaboration, lifelong learning and VET/HE integration at this critical point in time for the biggest review of the sector in a generation.

Professor Sherman Young DVC at RMIT joins pedagogical evangelist Manuela Francheschini from Adobe to discuss digital adeptness and fluency. As technology moves so fast, the big questions appear to be posed by students and staff becoming unsure of what the boundaries and rules are anymore as we all seek new paradigms with new technology. What will learning look like as we all become cyborgs?

Tiffany Wright as Director of Education for Microsoft ANZ outlines how tech companies offer opportunities for partnership in the global mission to make education available to all. The future of work is being increasingly influenced by and disrupted by technology and digital skills are becoming more important. Partnerships like that Microsoft has with UTS, Macquarie and TAFE NSW illustrate how a multi-sector dialogue can allow rapid technology advances to be mastered by HE providers and made available to lifelong learners.

Ginny Barbour as VIce-Chair of the Declaration On Research Assessment has led global efforts to find new ways to assess research quality. The aim has been to moderate commercially motivated efforts of commercial publishers to exploit science and publishing for their own commercial purposes. She shares her insights into the limitations of journal impact factors for diverse disciplines and how the university rankings are equally inappropriate in assessing diverse missions of universities in their broader purposes for the same reason.  Lessons for emerging efforts to enhance rigour in research assessment and research integrity from a pioneer and leader of open science in the mission of changing higher education for good.

Michael Fung as Director of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, is the architect of the Skills Future lifelong learning strategy in Singapore. He shares thoughts on the global move towards lifelong learning and a competency based approach to the future of higher education and its relevance to the Australian Universities Accord. He shares lessons that are vital for us to hear in shaping the future of our HE system through once in a generation change.

Professor Vivek Goel as President of Waterloo University in Canada is leading an exercise to generate a vision for what Waterloo will look like at 100. This 35 year future planning horizon is unheralded in global universities and generates a unique perspective on risk, culture, vision, mission and change. He outlines the opportunities this creates for differentiation and cultural change and the impacts this has on Waterloo and its partners and staff engaging with broader system-level change to allow the Waterloo culture to fit with the context in which the organisation works.

Data Scientist Stephen Shaw founded birthgap.org following his work surfacing the growing global gaps in birth rates from that required to sustain populations. He has found that all countries will see a dramatic fall in future populations due to births falling below a replacement rate of 2.1. He joins the HEDx podcast along with Professor Selena Bartlett, Professor of Neuroscience at QUT, to discuss how this phenomena impacts the future of universities and how it creates a structural shift from school leaver university populations toward lifelong learning needs and the opportunities this creates for global universities.

Professor KC Chua is President of Singapore Institute of Technology where he leads a differentiated institution of applied learning. In a system with two top 50 comprehensive research universities SIT pursues a different mission focused on skills, jobs and the needs of business and industry. And no one cares about its place in rankings. Does Australia need more places like SIT?