About the public consultation
This public consultation is part of the Futures of Higher Education project which seeks to stimulate creative and imaginative thinking and ideas about the futures of higher education to 2050 and beyond. The project takes a global perspective, nurturing discussions around the role of higher education as part of UNESCO’s larger Futures of Education initiative through consultations with higher education experts, the general public, and youth.
Methodology
About the respondents
About the respondents
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Pathways to 2050 and beyond
This public consultation identified four pathways to the future which had the broad agreement of respondents and/or where multiple respondents expressed themselves similarly. They are linked to people’s expectation for higher education in 2050, and the subsequent calls for action.
Quality of life
To provide opportunities for all, access to higher education must be expanded and should be affordable. What is taught in higher education and how it is taught should be adapted to individuals and driven by student choice.
Social Change
Engagement in society and communities should become more integral to education/teaching and research/science. The core functions of higher education must become more relevant to societal and community needs.
Care of the environment
Sustainability should be at the core of everything higher education does through an orientation that is both global and local. Higher education has an urgent responsibility to address environmental, climatic, and other global challenges.
Development of technology
Higher education has a pivotal role in researching, developing, and sharing new technological developments, as well as research and innovation on their use and impact. Technology will increasingly impact teaching in higher education.
Higher education in 2050
Higher education for all
Higher education should represent and be driven by social justice, it needs to be real for everybody. As a human right, higher education should be available and affordable for all students who are willing to be part of it. Yet widening access to higher education should not in any way diminish its quality. It is necessary that higher education becomes more contextualized to the current global challenges be practical and experiential to include various academic and cultural experiences.
Student-centered
Students in higher education should be able to make academic and career choices based on their interests. Universities and other higher education institutions should allow students to co-create the curriculum whereas teachers would be adaptive to the changing demands. Flexible learning pathways should be provided to assist lifelong learning and motivate students to engage in real-life problem solving.
Organization of knowledge
Higher education should dedicate its knowledge transfer and practices around skills for life and skills for responsible citizenship. It should promote diverse knowledge and ways of knowing, teaching and learning. Higher education institutional practices should be underpinned by innovative research. The acquired knowledge should allow students to develop skills to contribute to local socioeconomic development: topics such as innovation, entrepreneurship, ethics can contribute to this end.
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Connected at multiple levels
Higher education has a role to play beyond its institutional practices. It links to its surroundings and serves society in inclusive ways. Higher education has the mission and the capacity to improve the situation of the planet. Its development should be based on a global context with local essence and has an important responsibility in the development of society in different levels: globally, regionally and locally. Higher Education should generate inclusive systems through partnership with local authorities, local industry and the formation of regional university clusters.
Call to action for higher education
Download report & data
In line with UNESCO’s commitment to democratize science and knowledge, the full dataset used in this report is freely available to download. The dataset contains all 1,199 valid responses to the public consultation (i.e. invalid and duplicate responses have been removed) in the language that the responses were received in. The data contains the demographic data – location, occupation, age range, and gender identity – as well as the responses to the four open (free-text) questions in the consultation. It is hoped that the dataset will be of interest to researchers and policymakers around the world.