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Working with more than 130 institutions in 26 countries has revealed both the common challenges and unique contexts shaping higher education. Vice Chair & Managing Director of the University Design Institute, Minu Ipe, shares global lessons that highlight three areas where transformation is most urgent: creating learner experiences that empower people across their lives, translating research into real-world impact, and stepping up as active partners in community transformation.
So we have learned a lot in and through the projects that we have been engaged in. Working in 25 countries has given us such [a] perspective into the context of cultural differences, but also insight into the hopes and aspirations of humans in all of these places. Universities are different based on where they are located, and yet there are things that are somewhat similar across them all.
The challenges that universities face are, again, broadly somewhat similar. There are local nuances, so it's given us such interesting insight into what is needed. But what we come away with as we engage in these projects is a collective sense that higher education needs transformation. And there are three areas where we see that need for transformation. So the first is transformational experiences for learners.
This goes back to the idea of, “How are we engaging students and learners in our environments to prepare them to become master learners, to take charge of their lives and careers, and to find ways to be contributing members of society?” And the transformational experiences also means not just serving those who find a way to make it into the institution, but to find a way to open doors and create pathways for those who historically have not been invited into these spaces.
And then really expanding the idea of who universities are serving from students. That's sort of a narrow framing to the broadest framing possible. How can the assets and resources of institutions of higher education be made available to humans from cradle to grave? Because humans are learning organisms, right. So why would we only limit our capabilities to some small subset when society demands that all humans are learning and evolving at a much faster pace?
So transformational learner experience is one area where we see globally, there is a need. There's transformation through research for those institutions that are research intensive or aspire to be research intensive. There's such a demand to create knowledge that solves social problems, but it's not enough for the institutions to create knowledge. I mean, we have amazing scientists and universities around the world who are creating, you know, breakthrough ideas and new solutions.
Those have to make their way into society. Those have to make their way into the hands of people who can then take it and deploy to take it and multiply it. So transformation through research is another thing. It's another piece that we are recognizing is important. And the third piece, increasingly there is a sense that universities should be responsible for the transformation of their communities.
And so this is not just serving the teaching and education mission and the research mission. This is sort of taking a broader view to say, what do our communities need and where can we as institutions of higher education step in? So for example, you could say, well, I'm going to just focus on the students that come into the institution and make sure they have a fantastic learning experience, and we will set them up for success.
That's fine, except they feel a school system, if you're a K-12 system, is not really robust, and there are not many people who can actually make their way into the institution. Then do universities have a responsibility to look in that direction and be supportive of the school system? Right. Or you can look at the health outcomes of your community.
So you can say, well, we educate the physicians and the nurses and then off they go and they will do something. But what about an area like health literacy, right. Where can universities bring the collection, you know, the entirety of their assets to work with community partners to make a difference. And that can apply to anything. It can be clean water, it can be agriculture.
Take any example, [that] would fit into that realm. So the capacity of universities to create transformative outcomes for their communities is an area that I think is a tremendous opportunity for universities to start leaning into, to see themselves playing that role and active role and taking responsibility for that. So we are seeing those three areas: a transformation in learning experiences and learners transformation through research and then transformation of communities.
Those are things that emerge everywhere we go, but we are also learning that change is hard and transformational change is even harder. Universities are systems within systems. So sometimes when we look at transformational change, the barriers exist outside of the universities. It could be the policies and the laws of the country. It could be that the universities have restrictions on what they can and cannot do.
The resource model is complicated in most places. Universities are also in places where the public infrastructure is inadequate, primarily, as we've seen recently, the post COVID, around technology. So there are external systemic issues that address what universities can do. And then when you look within institutions, we find that there are some basic themes, regardless of where we are.
Some of them would be bureaucratic structures that are slow to change. Cultures that really are not agile, that are not open to innovation. University structure around academic silos, faculty centric institutions where you sort of don't see huge differences between faculty and staff, and who gets to make decisions and then lead us sometimes with the vision, but not the will to power through transformational change.
So we recognize that these barriers exist, we understand why change is hard. And yet what is so energizing about our work is that wherever we go, we encounter people with a deep appetite to do something about it. Who really wants these institutions to change and be agents of social transformation and have impact? So, that energy optimizes our work and we're excited to see where we can go.