The QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific 2023 was held at the KL Convention Centre last week and attracted more than 1300 participants from around the world. The four-day conference was preceded by the QS Asia Pacific Higher Education Pre-Summit in Hong Kong hosted by Lingnan University.
His Highness Tunku Ali Redhauddin, Tunku Besar of Seri Menanti, Negeri Sembilan, this week opened the QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific 2023 hosted by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), co-host Applied Science Private University in Kuala Lumpur. His address made light of the fact that there are currently 170,000 international students in Malaysia, with this number forecast to grow to 220,000 by 2025. This has not happened by accident.
Indeed, the Malaysian international education sector has been undertaking a steady, planned international education strategy for nearly a decade, and many of the country’s universities have enjoyed a steady increase in international student participation.
The theme of the KL Summit was ‘Creating the Right Outcomes: Universities and the Future of Work’. Indeed, the event’s focus on employability was evident throughout most sessions. Some notable speakers and takeaway learnings include:
- The impact of AI technology on jobs (the new jobs and the jobs it will replace)
- The future of working habits and professions across APAC
- Raja Azmi Adam – Google for Education discussed removing barriers to education
- The rise of micro-credentialing in APAC
- Increasing internationalisation across the APAC region, with its Universities acting as global hubs for learning, research and soft diplomacy
- The relative importance or rankings, performance metrics and qualitative measures of universities in helping students to choose where they will study
Professor Edward Peck, the Vice-Chancellor and President of Nottingham Trent University, laid a welcome comment on the table at the opening ceremony, ‘Universities are increasingly being looked at as customer service organisations. We have to change the rules of the game. HE is now a highly competitive sector. We compete on success measures such as employability, student experience or sustainability. We must point future students to genuine truths.’ This comment resonated with many delegates at the conference, including the 30 University Presidents who participated in an exclusive workshop with QS.
During the Presidents’ Dialogue workshop, QS CEO Jessica Turner invited each president to discuss what ‘keeps them awake at night’, and two central themes emerged: the rising cost of research/university operations and the importance of redefining the value proposition of the university.
On the topic of employability, several sessions overtly discussed the topic, while most referred to it. Indeed, the future of work, employability, the skills gap and the role of HE is helping students to find work were listed as key features of most conference sessions. A QS session looking at the Skills Gap and Employment Readiness highlighted the following points:
- Career considerations are a vital component of the decision-making process for prospective international students
- High employability outcomes are listed in the top 3 and 4 criteria for students deciding where to study (the other 2 were affordable tuition fees and high-quality teaching)
- 24,000 employers in the APAC region have this year identified some soft skills deficits in QS research, namely interpersonal, resilience, flexibility and active learning skills
In my own session together with colleagues from AWS Global Education, Robert Walters, Advisory Singapore, The Human Factor and The British Council (Malaysia) we explored the new frontier: the provision of employability skills at the beginning of the student lifecycle. Students demand evidence of employability outcomes and support as part of the enrolment process at a university, and the Successful Graduate partnership with QS enables this to happen. The session explored the appropriate skills required by graduates, the role of industry engagement in university education, and the types of solutions that suit students, institutions and industry in developing intervention strategies to deliver highly relevant graduates.
Of course, there were too many sessions at the summit to cover here, and it is Sunday morning at the time of writing. The beach is calling, so here are some additional highlights from sessions that I was able to attend:
- Higher education’s role in developing good neighbours and community impact in the APAC region
- The role of universities in delivering collaboration with both employers and the deeper community
- How to understand QS rankings, ratings, data and insights
- What do international students want, and are their expectations being met
- Sayasat Nurbek, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan, presented the Atlas of New Professions and Competencies, where the government has mapped 463 priority professions (239 of them new, 129 disappearing) across the entire country in order to help Kazakh universities to redefine, teach and deploy a new national labour force
- Overcoming barriers related to student access to online education
- The role of universities in continuing to bridge the gap between education and industry
- 22-year-old entrepreneur Harsha Ravindran (CEO of Ascendance) closed the conference by explaining how her business is engaging Gen Z by offering personalised learning, practical skills and flexibility in attaining education outcomes. Up to 50% of the Gen Z market is untapped due to the reluctance by many to engage with the traditional university education model…
This year’s QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific promised to explore the intersection between universities and the future of work and how institutions in the region can create the right outcomes for students through a more creative and considered approach to education. The conference delivered on this agenda and did not disappoint.
Next year’s QS Higher Ed APAC Summit will be held in Macau, with pre-summit and post-summit events being held in Kazakhstan and Hong Kong.
You can register your interest here.
