Barcelona, 18-20 May 2022. Reinventing Higher Education for a Sustainable Future.
AVAP’s director attended the WHEC 2022 (World Higher Education Conference 2022) together with Pilar Ezpeleta, General Director of Universities.
The Conference has been organized by UNESCO in collaboration with the Spanish Government, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the City Council and the Diputació of Barcelona, and in alliance with GUNi/ACUP (Global University Network for Innovation / Catalan Association of Public Universities).
As indicated, the main objective of the event was to reflect on and rethink ideas and practices in higher education in order to guarantee the sustainable development of the planet and humanity. Throughout the 3 days of its development, the conference has served as a meeting point for dozens of key players in higher education in the world. The conference was attended by politicians, university managers, teachers, researchers and professionals.
This is why the event brought together all stakeholders to define and prepare their roadmap for a new stage of higher education with a special focus on the global disruption created by COVID-19. “The sessions, with various parallel activities, have dealt with topics as different as the future of education in the world, leadership, equal opportunities, lifelong learning, open education, refugees, student competences, the situation of education in the different continents”, as Javier Oliver comments.
The conference also served for the premiere presentation of the latest report promoted by UNESCO (the Higher Education in the World Report 8) “New Visions for Higher Education towards 2030” coordinated by the Global University Network for Innovation (GUNi). It was the first time that the conference left Paris, the permanent seat of UNESCO. With this, “the variety of round tables with the participation of world experts, the presentations of papers and posters, the debates and, above all, the permanent dialogue have stood out. Its development in Barcelona has been a complete success,” says the director of AVAP.
For its own, UNESCO considers that the process of collective construction is the greatest wealth of this conference, which aims to become a global conversation fed by diverse narratives on higher education.
In this way, UNESCO has organised the conference to offer new knowledge, creative partnerships of innovative ideas and produce a broad and revitalised coalition of the global higher education community in support of the 2030 Development Agenda and beyond.
