Doha, Qatar: Critical topics shaping higher education on a global scale – from diversifying learning pathways and enduring educational mobility, to how universities can withstand polarization and pressure – have been explored by international experts through Qatar Foundation-led sessions at the WISE 12 Summit.
The biennial gathering of international education expertise, hosted by Qatar Foundation’s (QF) global education initiative WISE, saw QF’s Higher Education division organize platforms for placing the spotlight on how learning can transcend traditional borders and credentials, and ways in which institutions of higher education can remain resilient in times of conflict, tension, and rapid change.
In a WISE 12 session titled ‘Building a Global Learning Passport: Breaking Barriers for Mobility and Recognition’, Francisco Marmolejo, President of Higher Education and Education Advisor, QF, told the audience: “There are challenges to learning – many of which concern tradition, prestige, rankings, or finances – but, at the end of the day, what matters is being mindful of the importance of education.
“At Qatar Foundation, we have established a Universal Skills Passport as one of the tools we use to ensure that, regardless of a student’s academic program, there is a mechanism to recognize the additional skills and values that they will need to be the mindful and responsible citizens of humanity’s future.”
Among the speakers in this session was Omar Alshogre, Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, who said: “The most global thing about education is a person’s personal experience of someone – everybody has a personal experience that is so useful in their life, but it’s not recognized professionally or academically in any way, and I believe that needs to be incorporated in educational systems and in the recognition of a final degree.”
QF’s Higher Education division also hosted a session on the theme ‘Universities in Polarized Times: Reimagining Mission and Discourse’, in which higher education experts examined the role of the world’s universities amid the often uncertain and turbulent backdrop of their societies, with the speakers Her Excellency Dr. Sheikha Abdulla Al Misnad, former President of Qatar University.
The session saw Dr. Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in the US, warn against universities succumbing to “conformity”, saying: “My sense is that pressure has led to universities, which are the very places that are supposed to have freedom, becoming socially, intellectually, and culturally conformist – what that leads to is society becoming conformist, and staying in one place rather than moving forward.
“Students are told that they have to be prepared for the world otherwise they won’t get a job. We have to create university settings where people who also want to learn, and open their eyes, and compete for ideas with one another can do so.”
And Dr. Michael Kent Young, Chancellor of the NEOM Education, Research, and Innovation sector, told the discussion: “Students come into university interested in talking about the meaning of life and how to contribute, and four years later 80-85 percent of them leave with a sense of dissatisfaction because they haven’t talked about this.
“If we can get back to the central business of a university, where debate and taking positions is legitimized, that would go some distance toward recapturing what we desperately need to recapture.”
During WISE 12, QF’s Higher Education division also hosted discussions on key topics including how to connect education to societal values; fostering cross-cultural community engagement within universities; and reinforcing the ethos of universities as places of truth-seeking, civic action, and knowledge production.
