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POLICY & REFORM tackle some big policy challenges more effectively .
This review takes place in the middle of a global skills shortage and war for talent .
But must also cater for long term population vulnerability from global falls in birth rates and ageing populations , which with work and experience changes are creating long-term shifts towards lifelong learning .
It is responding to immediate accessibility challenges , particularly in our regions and for under-represented student groups .
These include the need to improve retention and completion rates . But has a broader challenge to serve long-term needs for social cohesion and democratisation of learning access that is emerging as a dominant global phenomenon .
It is taking place when we have short-term opportunities to harness what was learnt from a rush to online learning and virtual research and engagement processes .
This requires reconciling rapid and irreversible advances in technology with some current learning and assessment processes and practices that are ill-suited to them .
This needs us to be open to innovate , transform , manage disruption , and form lasting partnerships and dialogue with newly emerging EdTech and BigTech collaborators .
And it ’ s taking place when Australia is moving increasingly from a service economy to a knowledge economy but is still struggling to work out how it draws on the great research and knowledge expertise in our higher education system .
This is an opportunity and a time for big and bold ideas .
Those ideas can clearly come from the many bright people we have in the sector . Our higher education institutions have many innovative thinkers and pioneers of organisational and management practices , learning and pedagogy , and technology and science , amongst others .
All are passionate about their work , disciplines and how knowledge and learning advance within them .
They are capable and inquisitive in combining expertise with peers from other disciplines and institutions . They , and their institutions , have much to offer to an Accord process .
But if we are really to gain the biggest and boldest ideas for the way our higher education system might transform , we might look further afield to new university models that have emerged at places like Arizona State University in the US , University of Waterloo in Canada , and Coventry University in the UK .
We might embrace thinking towards new educational institutions being speculated on by leaders of learning innovation in MIT .
We might reflect on how Asia in general , and Singapore in particular , have moved from being where we once looked mainly as a source of onshore students to our campuses .
They might now be where approaches to higher education system planning , of mission and discipline specific differentiation in institutions , offer inspirations for how we might progress our own system .
Beyond looking to ourselves , and for lessons from those like us in other parts of the world , this is also a time to learn from other sectors .
The way that business models , a customer focus , technology strategies , collaborative partnerships and innovative cultures have transformed sectors with parallels to education , learning and knowledge development are extensive and rich and give rise to thoughts of a New Learning Economy .
The Accord needs big ideas , and bold thinking from multiple sources , to make lasting change and initiate a culture and mindset to set us up for the long term .
This review takes place in the middle of a global skills shortage and war for talent .
It is harder to think what we need for the next 20-30 years and horizons shorter than that are easier and stimulate different ideas .
That longer time frame needs the best and most diverse ideas from innovators within the sector , and the most successful and varied parallel thoughts from global leaders and innovators of our genre .
But big and bold new ideas of a reimagined long-term future might also come from drawing in an unfiltered view from our customers , and lessons other sectors have learnt when facing transformation , disruption , new customer expectations , and rapid technology change of their own .
There is a need for facilitators of big ideas into the Accord .
They have the chance to provoke great and vital submissions from the sector itself .
In a review that has such importance for all our futures , and for the nation and our people that are the reason we are conducting it , we also need to go beyond the risk of any groupthink .
Limited perspectives and experiences that cloud and crowd out potential shafts of light from further afield need augmenting .
We both see great opportunity for the Accord ’ s big ideas to come from multiple diverse sources in changing higher education for good . ■
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