UNESCO report places HE at heart of global transformation
A new UNESCO report has been described as a new “social contract” for higher education which reaffirms its role in “navigating change, generating prosperity and wellbeing”, and making the world “more sustainable, peaceful and just”, according to UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini.
Released on 12 March, Transforming Higher Education: Global collaboration on visioning and action (Global collaboration) builds on the Roadmap 2030 published following the 2022 World Higher Education Conference held in Barcelona.
It emerges against a backdrop of today’s polycrisis: economic and other inequalities; biodiversity loss, climate change; wars and rumours of wars, democratic backsliding; the disruptive impact of AI; the “rapidly transforming worlds of work”; and the loss of faith in higher education by many, according to Giannini.
As did the 2022 roadmap, Global collaboration grounds its analysis and calls to action in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 4, which enshrines the right to quality education for all.
It revamps the six guiding principles in the 2022 roadmap and enunciates seven principles: Committing resources to equity and pluralism; Promoting the freedom to learn, teach, research and cooperate internationally; Fostering inquiry, critical thinking and creativity; Establishing an ethic of collaboration and solidarity; Embracing an ethic of collaboration and solidarity; Centring sustainability, stewardship and regeneration; and Supporting enriched understandings of quality, excellence and relevance.
Together, these principles constitute a “transformative agenda” for faculty, students, leaders and staff” and “can be advanced by non-profit and advocacy organisations, philanthropy, partners in business and industry and policymakers at all levels”, writes Giannini.
Global collaboration provides “Lines of Transformation” for each level of the higher education ecosphere, which in 2024 included 269 million students, 7 million of whom were studying outside their home countries, in more than 24,000 accredited and quality-assured higher education institutions.
‘A special moment in history’
Higher education systems, the report states, will have to embrace “openness and inclusion . . . to diversify ways of knowing”.
Additionally, systems must restyle themselves so that they “facilitate personal and innovative educational trajectories that allow learners to move across different institutions and countries within a lifelong and life-wide learning perspective”, writes Giannini, by, for example, developing stackable micro-credentials and alternative ways of assessing and accrediting skills learned through work.
Higher education institutions will have to move away from seeing their students as being in their late teens and early twenties by “adopting a lifelong learning orientation and advancing flexible learning pathways, and more dynamic forms of engagement with labour markets and entrepreneurial opportunity will make learning more meaningful to all students, whatever age(s) they choose to undertake such studies,” states the report.
The authors of Global collaboration are careful to place this reimagining of the nuts and bolts of higher education within a much wider and ambitious agenda that recognises the crisis facing the humanities and the fact that many have lost faith in universities: “Reclaiming higher education as connected with holistic studies that marry the humanities with sciences will help mitigate disciplinary fragmentation and all the sectors to live up to their promise of serving the global common good.”
In the third “Line of Transformation” Global collaboration addresses pedagogy, calling for “active, problem-and-project-based learning, including relevant internships and workplace learning.”
These, Giannini writes, will help ensure that “higher education, with its distinct practices of study and inquiry, meaningful and relevant to individual, community, national, regional and planetary futures, [and] places it at the heart of transforming the world”.
Giannini told ambassadors and delegates at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the worldwide audience that attended the launch virtually that the roadmap comes “at a special moment in history”.
Recent months and years, Giannini told the session, have “reshaped many dimensions” of the international landscape from a geopolitical and cultural point of view.
“We must be prepared as the education community, especially academics, to anticipate waves instead of reacting – acting and being proactive in making the mission of universities still timely,” she noted.
Academics and universities, she said, have the mission of “leverag[ing] the power of knowledge generation, transmission of law, of knowledge from generation to generation”.
Different starting points, shared directions
Global Collaboration is the product of more than 250 sessions, 1,500 inputs and 250 knowledge products from around the world. Although President Donald J Trump withdrew the United States from UNESCO last July, Americans had been participating in the production of the roadmap prior to that announcement.
According to Dr Noah W Sobe, chief of section for higher education at UNESCO and formerly a professor at Loyola University Chicago in the US: “the publication is styled as a roadmap in recognition of the fact that there will be different starting points, different priorities in different settings and moments”.
It also recognises “shared directions, some guiding principles designed to inspire the work of higher education, faculty, students, leaders, staff, as well as the nonprofit advocacy organisations, philanthropy partners in business and industry and policymakers at all levels,” he said.
Overall, the publication underscores the fact that higher education institutions and systems “will need to be different in the future than they are today, more inclusive, better protected and better connected, better resourced, more critical, creative and innovative, more relevant and impactful and more attuned to sustainably living well together within planetary boundaries.”
The publication of Global collaboration was accompanied by the launch of UNESCO’s Higher Education Policy Observatory (HEPO), a one-stop shop that allows analysts to see education policies (for example, legislative frameworks governing higher education) and key statistics from 146 countries and to compare them.
According to Mathias Bouckaert, a UNESCO policy analyst, the HEPO was constructed with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)4 (Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning for all), particularly target 4.3 in mind.
The latter calls for “equal access to …. affordable and quality education” by going beyond “gross enrolment ratios”, which does not, for example, include information on “quality and affordability of higher education studies”.
Bouckaert described HEPO as an online platform centralising information on key policies and features of higher education systems.
“The primary purpose of the observatory is to inform policies by providing comparative and comprehensive evidence on national higher education systems and the global higher education landscape. It also supports international collaboration, knowledge sharing and research,” he said.
Understandings of quality
Each speaker at the launch drew attention to a different problem in international education that Global collaboration addresses. Peter K Ngure, Kenya’s permanent delegate to UNESCO, began his address by focusing on “competency”, which addressed the seventh guiding principle of Global collaboration: Supporting enriched understanding of quality, excellence and relevance.
Speaking from Paris, he said: “If education is truly to serve our societies, we must confront decisively and collectively the growing threats to its credibility.
“I'm speaking specifically with a focus on the continent I come from, Africa. The Africans in the house would largely agree with me that cheating in examinations compromises research integrity. Falsified academic credentials and the proliferation of fake certificates undermine public trust, devalue genuine achievement and weaken our institutions.
“When integrity is eroded, the very foundation of knowledge collapses. We must therefore strengthen quality assurance systems, modernise examination management through secure digital platforms, enforce strict penalties for academic fraud and promote a culture of honesty,” Ngure said.
Global collaboration declares that quality assurance must not be “symbolic and performative” but “meaningful and impactful”, and that more discussion is needed “on how quality is to be defined across diverse settings”.
Sobe outlined for University World News how Ngure’s comments fit in with a number of UNESCO conventions dealing with the recognition of educational qualifications (for example, ) the Global Convention on Higher Education, the Addis Ababa Convention for Africa and the Lisbon Recognition Convention for Europe that help “fight fraud, fraudulent degrees, fraudulent institutions (diploma mills) and, I hate to say it, even fraudulent quality assurance agencies”.
When she addressed the question of measuring universities’ quality, Professor Iveta Silova, associate dean of global engagement at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation in the US, said she challenges university leaders to fundamentally rethink how “excellence and quality” are defined but also how they are rewarded.
Referencing, though not naming the SDGs, she said she was not talking about a mere “technical adjustment”.
Rather, she was speaking of “a shift in institutional purpose . . . because if we measure quality narrowly, we will produce universities that are narrowly effective. And in a century defined by interdependence and planetary limits, narrow effectiveness is no longer enough.
“Rankings largely reward scale, citation, volume and reputation in higher education; they privilege short-term visibility over long-term responsibility”.
“The issue is not whether rankings provide data. The issue is whether they define our purpose. So a richer and broader definition of quality, as this report rightly emphasises, requires, I would argue, three shifts.
“The first one is from extractive metrics to a relational impact,” she said. “Instead of asking how many papers are published, we should ask how knowledge is co-created with communities.
“Does research help regenerate ecosystems? Does teaching strengthen democratic capacity and planetary responsibility? Quality must be measured not only by the outputs but also by the relationship and long-term contributions to planetary survival,” she said.
Academic freedom under threat
Harald Nybølet, Norway’s deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO, made a statement few would contest. “The roadmap reminds us that universities are places where ideas are developed, values are debated and futures are imagined.”
He continued: “That's worth saying out loud, because the reason we're all here is a shared belief that higher education matters deeply for individuals and for the kind of world we are trying to build together.”
Without naming specific national cases, he said: “The roadmap is also honest about something we shouldn't gloss over: the conditions that make good higher education possible are under real pressure.
“Norway would like to say a few words about that. Academic freedom is under threat. The roadmap says so, and Norway agrees.
“We are seeing governments interfere with what can be taught and researched. We are seeing funding structures that quietly shape which questions are worth asking, and we are seeing researchers pay a personal price for pursuing inconvenient findings.
“This isn’t abstract. A university that can't follow the evidence stops being a university in any meaningful way,” said Nybølet.
“We should all remind ourselves to take the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel seriously, as a genuine commitment, not a formality,” he said.
“And we note the roadmap’s warning that even well-intentioned research security policies can end up undercutting the free flow of ideas if applied without care for security matters, but openness should be the default in a world where facts are routinely contested.
“We need universities that teach people not what to think, but how to think. There is a line in the roadmap that stayed with us: ‘Shared futures are diminished if intellectual talent, curiosity and dedication are wasted’. Curiosity isn’t a luxury; it’s something democratic societies genuinely depend on,” said the Norwegian ambassador.
Sobe expanded on what Nybølet said, emphasising how the roadmap can help support academic freedom.
“I think the roadmap adds clarity on the significance of academic freedom to the workings of higher education. Higher education cannot work without academic freedom. And I think what the roadmap illustrates is that it is a foundational, fundamental value of the university across its many different contexts.
“As you [Nybølet] said in the lead-up to the question, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on institutional autonomy … on limitations of academic freedom. This goes beyond what can be said. There are pressures on the freedom of researchers to pursue research that they're passionate about, that they’re inspired by.
“There are infringements on the rights of researchers to participate in professional associations, to travel to professional conferences. These are all important dimensions of academic freedom, and I think that what the roadmap does is bring clarity to what academic freedom is in a way that's going to be useful globally,” said Sobe.
Global collaboration places “Promoting the freedom to learn, teach, research and cooperate internationally” as the second guiding principle of the roadmap and states that university faculty should be able to “pursue research agendas that challenge conventional wisdom. And they should be free to share their ideas and expertise, including with the public, without fear of retribution.”
The guiding principle goes on to state: “The exercise of academic freedom requires a high degree of institutional autonomy and collective responsibility. To engage in creative and innovative teaching – and to undertake research that expands and transforms knowledge in the service of society and sustainable development globally – strong academic self-governance is necessary.”
Artificial intelligence
A number of participants discussed Global collaboration’s fourth guiding principle: “Establishing a human-centred role for digital technologies and AI.”
Nybølet said: “I think that the roadmap strikes the right balance. Generative AI is disruptive, and higher education has to engage with it seriously. But AI that mimics language isn’t the same as thinking, critical reasoning, ethical judgement, or the ability to sit with uncertainty. These are things universities do that no algorithm replicates. We should be protecting that space, not quietly letting it erode.”
In his comments in the session, Sobe noted that the roadmap calls for the establishment of “a human-centred role for digital technologies and AI”.
Human-centred role for AI
“The challenges that the world faces today can only be solved through shared resolve and collective action, and this requires a pivot on the part of the higher education sector, so that collaboration and solidarity become its defining features, both in terms of teaching and learning and in the way that higher education institutions cooperate with one another,” he said.
For her part, Dr Dorothy Okello, dean of Makerere’s School of Engineering, had a somewhat more sanguine view of AI, at least when it came to management of the university: “I really promote the use of AI in what we are doing. It enables us to have a bigger picture. It enables us to enhance our productivity.”
Yet, even she said: “I tell our students that we are not giving up our brains for AI. We are simply taking advantage of the opportunity that it presents us with whatever limited resources we have. We take advantage [when possible] of the opportunities it presents and move much faster and much better.”
Lifelong learning
A central concern of the authors of Global collaboration and speakers at the launch was the need for universities to foster lifelong learning by “ensuring that higher education institutions provide frequent and accessible learning opportunities across the lifespan”.
To think of higher education as “only a transition stage between adolescence and adulthood, or between foundational schooling and work, is at odds with reality” the report’s authors wrote under the heading: “Transformation towards a lifelong learning orientation”.
Ngure spoke for everyone concerned with lifelong learning when he said, “From early education through higher learning, higher education must reimagine learning itself. The traditional rigid academic calendar and one-size-fits-all progression pathways no longer serve the diverse realities of today's learners.
“Schedule flexibility, modular learning structures and recognition of prior learning can allow students to move at their own pace, balancing work, family responsibilities and study. Learner-based education empowers individuals to master competencies deeply rather than merely complete semesters,” he said.
“Leveraging emerging technologies is equally critical. Artificial intelligence, digital learning platforms, virtual laboratories and open educational resources offer unprecedented opportunities to personalise learning and expand access.”
Having laid out what amounts to the standard story of fostering lifelong learning, Ngure pivoted and noted: “As we think about the complexity that all these technologies come with, we should deal empathetically with parts of this planet where these technologies are not available.
“If you're in Paris here, you can assume [that having] a laptop is a human right everybody has. But there are many parts of the world where if you have a laptop, you're even endangering your life when you're crossing from one street to the other – because somebody else would see that [computer] as a resource that can be turned into something else.”
Single disciplines are not enough
Commensurate with a number of UNESCO protocols and the SDGs is the discussion on the contours of knowledge and how universities’ stewardship of knowledge differs from what it would have been several decades ago.
Borhene Chakroun, director of the Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems Division at UNESCO, who moderated the session, noted in a question to Silova: “The roadmap advocates for pluralism and knowledge systems and moves away from hegemonic patterns and norms.
“An institution like Arizona State University (ASU) has lots of resources to dedicate to that. How do you suggest we approach that, and also from a global perspective beyond ASU?
“We started with the premise that planetary challenges cannot be solved by a single discipline and they cannot be solved by a single university, and they cannot be solved by a single knowledge system. So pluralism, therefore, is not an ethical gesture, but it’s a practical necessity,” Silova explained.
“We are experimenting with essentially building the new space, which we call the global futures laboratory that was created around this premise. Today’s major challenge is planetary sustainability. So we are reorganising the university around complex systems, not around the departments anymore.
“This space brings together scientists, engineers, social scientists, humanists, policymakers, community partners to work on issues such as water security or climate resiliency or biosystems or governance.
“Just to give a really quick example, take water, which is a major issue in the [US] Southwest desert in Arizona. We approach it not only as a hydrological problem, but also as a cultural problem, a political, technological, ecological, economic problem – in all of its complexity,” Silova noted.
“We bring together climate scientists, engineers, public policy experts, people with Indigenous knowledge, urban planners, behavioural scientists, and people from the environmental humanities. We do this because “there is no single discipline that can really hold together the whole system.
“So embedding pluralism, therefore, is not just adding voices; it’s really about redesigning how knowledge itself is produced, and it’s kind of redesigning the power structures within higher education institutions. So really, it’s not even an option anymore in the 21st century. It’s an infrastructural necessity,” she said.