Leaders, academics, researchers and professionals from around the world discuss various practices and models of leadership and management in higher education at an international conference that ended yesterday (July 5) in HCM City. Photo courtesy of SEAMEO RETRAC

HCM CITY — Leaders, academics, researchers, and professionals from around the world discussed the diversity of practices and models of leadership and management in higher education at an international conference that ended on Friday in HCM City.

The annual conference on Leadership and Management in Higher Education: Driving Change with Global Trends aims at creating a global platform for discussion, collaboration and intellectual exchange among educational leaders, academicians and professionals in the areas of higher education from all over the world.

It is organised by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) Regional Training Centre in Việt Nam and Canada’s British Columbia Council for International Education.

The two-day event focused on issues related to institutional autonomy, quality assurance and accreditation, employability of graduates, and leveraging the fourth industrial revolution for higher education.

“Internationalisation of education is what universities are engaged in,” Randall Martin, executive director of the British Columbia Council for International Education, said.

“Internationalisation tries to create a softer, more human face to globalisation.

“Internationalisation is about reciprocity, diversity and supporting students in the new world economy.

“In terms of meeting the new global economy, those are the forces we need to deal with and prepare our students for jobs that exist and jobs that don’t exist yet and deal with people from around the world in terms of human migration and immigration.

“The people, the communities and the companies that our students are going to be working with are very different from what I grew up with now. So, the universities have to adapt and prepare themselves and the students for those changes,” he said. — VNS