Reimagining the futures of higher education

With the participation of: Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO; António Nóvoa, University of Lisbon; Sahle-Work Zewde President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.  

Other panelists: Hilligje Van’t Land, International Association of Universities; Yume Yamaguchi, United Nations University; Sebastian Berger, Global Student Forum; Keri Facer, University of Bristol, UK; Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, International Islamic University Malaysia; Mpine Makoe, University of South Africa.  

Moderators: Sobhi Tawil, UNESCO; Francesc Pedró (UNESCO IESALC) 

• Rapid changes and multiple and overlapping crisis and challenges have an impact on higher education, which can also contribute to tackling these challenges.  
• The world is at a crossroads, facing unprecedented transformations due to new modes of work, technological developments, and demographic trends, among others.  
• Inequalities, threats to democracies, climate change put the future of humanity and the planet at risk.   
• UNESCO’s initiative and report Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, presents a forward-looking vision of how education and learning as humanity’s greatest renewable resources to respond to challenges and transform the world.   
• A new social contract can help rectify exclusion and to shift the mindset necessary for transformation.  
• Focused in the right to education throughout all life: inclusive, open, renovated, inclusive, resilient and committed with communities to create solutions for sustainable futures.  
• Education is a public good and a global common good. Without higher education none of the 17 SDG will be achieved, it is the main stakeholder in society that will make the difference it is well managed, supported, recognized.   
• The futures are shared and interdependent; there is a global responsibility to overcome discrimination, marginalization and exclusion.   
• A new social contract would build pathways and relations with society as an ecosystem for innovation and citizenship, intertwined with cities, democratic participation and open to digital transformation.