The Challenge to Remain Relevant: Public Higher Education Versus Private Higher Education

One of the greatest challenges in public and private higher education, globally, is the need to remain “relevant". The concept relevant” being subject to a diversity of interpretations. Both challenges and interpretations, whilst fluid and in a state of reconstruction, retain their essence of what it means to provide higher education and survive amongst a myriad of challenges. Signum University identifies 10 problems in higher education: the Decline of the Humanities; the Foundational Skills Gap; Student Debt; Enrollment Agreements; Archaic Degrees versus Modern Credentials; the Faculty-Staff Divide; Administrative Bloat; Distributed Operations; Remote Learning and Class Mass. (https://signumuniversity.org/solutions/10-problems-in-higher-ed/). At the World Economic Forum (WEF), DAVOS, 2020, the Forum identified 4 biggest challenges to our higher education model: increasing need for life-long learning in a non-linear world; evolving needs and expectations of the “student-consumer”; emerging technologies and business models and a “skills over degrees” model. The WEF recommends that: Universities must re-evaluate their roles ...look at alternative, innovative models that do not necessarily add up to four or five years and involves new actors”. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/fourth-industrial-revolution-higher-education-challenges/).

Against the context of the narrative of the University of the future and the 4^th Industrial Revolution, the session focuses on the following:

1. Models of funding and the capacity to generate revenue,
2. Models of governance and their impact on building strong institutions,
3. Models of programme development and their impact on quality teaching and learning,
4. Management of diversity among students and staff, and
5. Responsiveness to employability and market needs.