International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building
International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building
The ‘World Universities Summit’ has been conceptualized by the O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) with a vision to create a platform for universities worldwide to come together to help shape the future of the youth and our community. As a part of this initiative, we invite you to participate in the three-day virtual summit on the theme ‘Universities of the Future: Building Institutional Resilience, Social Responsibility and Community Impact’, organised by the International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building (IIHEd) of JGU.
The quality of a country’s system of higher education is a reflection of its current level of national development as well as a bellwether of future economic progress. Technological advancements, Pedagogical and disciplinary innovations, Academic research, combined with globalization and deeper societal engagement, are now changing the very way higher education institutions function: how they teach and research; how students learn and grow; and how societies are served and benefited.
Today, at a time of social, political, technological and economic shifts across the world have been attenuated by a pandemic, the whole world is faced with the pivotal challenge of reimagining the role of universities than ever before. There is an array of possibilities about how technology and community engagement are most likely to affect future academic offerings and outcomes, ignited by innovative student engagement, impactdriven faculty research, and the pursuit of academic collaborations. Openness, rather than exclusivity, is the emerging operating model of the 21st century. University leaderships, therefore, are increasingly grappling with critical challenges of finding new ways and means of building and supporting society interactions and common good while at the same time facing myriad questions about their public roles, often forcing them to re-examine and recast them.
Eventually, the raison d’être of a university is to be linked to society and thereby it would be meaningful for universities of the future to embed social goals in its core activities of teaching, research and community outreach. Institutional reform, in this direction, would inevitably require risk-taking, innovation and learning from the past.
Hence, as the world continues to face one of the largest global crises of our time, it is important that universities across the world come together to find their collective consciousness and utilise their intellectual capital to pave a holistic and sustainable way forward for higher education institutions across the globe and reimagine Universities of the Future to strengthen their vision and commitment towards institutional resilience, social responsibility and community impact.
Therefore, this summit aims to bring together Vice-Chancellors, Presidents, Rectors, higher education leaders, policy makers, leaders from the government and regulatory bodies, leaders from the industry and media, and representation from the civil society from different regions of the world to envisage the universities of the future.