Reimagining Schools in a Hyperconnected World
Before March 2016, I would never have thought of myself as having any connection to the word ‘education’ in a professional sense. I was busy being a working mother, with three children and a decent career as a partner at McKinsey. I have no doubt that if somebody had told me that I would […]
Remodelling Higher Education in a Changing World
Like many established institutions, higher education (HE) providers are struggling to work out how to engage with a changing world order. The rise of populist movements is challenging some of the fundamental concepts on which HE is built. HE providers across the world are being challenged to prove their worth to society. While these challenges […]
Innovating Higher Education for Refugee Learners
Sadiki is a recent college graduate, an intern at a tech startup, and one of over 21 million refugees currently displaced worldwide. Recently he gave a tour of the refugee camp that has been his home for the last twenty years and reflected on his educational journey. As the group passed a large, shady […]
Equality in Education and the Elephant
What do you picture when you hear the phrase ‘equal education for all’? I guess that the vision you embrace is often framed by your context. For some ‘equal education for all’ means gender equality, for others it refers to children affected by conflict or refugee situations. For me, working in South Africa, it means […]
Fixing Higher Education’s Access Problem: Let’s Start With Better Data
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series on how to combat inequalities in participation in higher education. Systemic barriers to accessing higher education (HE) are restricting who benefits from globalisation while fuelling the rise of populist forces across the globe. UNESCO has recognized the problem. One of its 2015 lifelong learning goals […]
Can Universities Save the Enlightenment?
The main challenge for higher education in 2017 is to discern how to educate citizens in a world in which the political philosophy of liberalism, the cornerstone of modern universities, is increasingly challenged by populist and nationalist movements. Universities are a relatively recent invention in the 200,000 or so years in which humans, in […]
WISE@Madrid Infographics
The Death of Education, But the Dawn of Learning
Education is dauntingly complex. There are simply SO many variables. Even a windy day changes the whole school. We also know from today’s greater knowledge of physiology and cognition that relatively small changes in temperature, hydration, noise, light levels and more can profoundly impact on attention and learning in one part of a room, […]
Using Less to Do More to Achieve Equity in Education
The average education budget in developing countries amounts to just $416.87 per child per year to cover everything from buildings to teacher salaries to books and administration. In the United States that budget is $12,296 per child per year. Meanwhile in Afghanistan the budget amounts to only $100 per year. As the majority of the world’s children live […]
Higher Education and Inclusion of Refugees
Globally, refugees constitute vulnerable groups since their migration is forced and since they are in need of protection. Their future status in terms of residence, citizenship, permits and visa is often in a situation of limbo for long periods of time. Refugees and asylum-seekers also live lives in a sort of a vacuum, where the […]