Universities are struggling to incorporate the skill sets needed to cope with the challenges of globalisation in their teaching and research, a conference has heard.
The European University Association’s annual conference, taking place in Brussels on 3 and 4 April, heard that the ever-growing international interaction of students and businesses, paired with technological advances, mean universities need to stretch their mission statements. Merely teaching subject knowledge and not starting active research until postgraduate level is not enough to produce graduates that are competitive in the international job market, panellists said.
“Universities need to offer alternatives to the traditional full-time classroom degree,” said Ada Pellert, the president of the Berlin University for Professional Studies in Germany.
Participants agreed that teaching English-language courses and supporting student exchange were not enough to make universities and their graduates more international. Instead, universities should teach skill sets such as leadership, business practice and intercultural understanding, especially to students who do not go abroad, the conference, which was attended by around 300 senior academics from Europe and beyond, was told.
The issue of changing curricula to adapt to internationalisation is not just a problem for European Universities. Huai Jinpeng, the president of China’s Beihang University, said that many of his graduates struggled to find jobs, while international companies in China were not finding the right candidates to fill vacant posts. He said that research, innovation and management skills need to be taught much earlier in university education than is the case at present.
“The smart students need to study less, so they have plenty of time, and if you do not provide them with something to do they will just think about themselves,” he told the audience. “We need to provide them with good activities to create a chain through which they can realise their innovation and creation ideas.”
He also said that professors should not think just about their research, but on how they can make their teaching more varied to move away from traditional lecture-style classes. “We should emphasise ways to combine research and teaching and build a bridge there for students,” Huai said.
However, some participants worried that the traditional role of the university – to seek new knowledge and provide critical analysis – could get lost among a multitude of efforts to instil management skills and technology capacities in students.
“Universities are not just producers of knowledge, but also of, often inconvenient, doubt,” one speaker quoted Harvard University president Drew Faust as saying. “Where will this be left?”