Shift in the role of higher education is a result of the rapidly changing world. Colleges and universities worldwide have a singular objective that is to prepare their future graduates for the dynamic workforce that awaits them. Higher education professionals constantly face pressures from inside and outside the industry and are forced to revisit the meaning of education today and discovering new methods of providing a logical and purposeful education experience in the dynamic environment facing the higher education landscape today.
Conflict, decreasing applications, sudden instability of whole areas of knowledge, coupled with dynamic social and economic changes have led to a need for re-evaluation and clarity. There is a need for response towards a confounding and challenging domain of institution-industry collaboration and the effects of new framework of scholarships and practice. The partnerships call for a need to re-evaluate on the approaches towards the establishment of better institutional resilience and adaptability in a precarious world. Plausible answers to the present challenges require new methods of learning, collaborations, definitions and measures of progress and success. Engagement allows for the use of resources that are otherwise unavailable to institutions and communities. In addition, unlike traditional scholarship, engaged scholarship and learning have to meet both the standards of the institutions and expectations of the partners involved.
The management of wicked problems is dependent on collaboration, a shared risk exposure, opportunity for benefit and a willingness to learn with any possible transformation. As such, the approach to professional education and collaborations with communities have to be modified as institutions prepare graduates for not only the acquirement of content knowledge but also the ability to use that knowledge effectively so as to meet the needs of the people and organisations they be of assistance.
Universities will have to learn how to operate in a solution-finding mode in order to provide appropriate answers to several aspects of wicked problems and to cultivate the knowledge, intellectual skills and social and civic responsibility needed to inform and manage the challenges.
Read the full academic journal.
Join us in the upcoming QS WORLDWIDE 2018 from 22-23 May 2018 in Moscow, Russia, as we discuss the topic on “In Search of University Excellence: Perspectives from Russia and Emerging Countries”