Higher Education Futures - 14–15 October 2015 Singapore

14-15 October 2015 - with workshops tentatively proposed for 13 and 16 October 2015 Conference on Higher Education Futures, Singapore
This Conference is an initiative of the OECD in  partnership with the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
The official conference website and registration page will be launched in May 2015. Please indicate your potential interest to attend by completing the online form and you will receive immediate notification once the official conference registration site goes live.
Draft conference programme and description.
While higher education and research are widely recognized as crucial for social and economic development, those responsible for planning and delivering these vital services will face formidable challenges in coming years. In many countries, higher education systems will struggle to sustain coherence in the face of:
• resource challenges driven by scarcity of public funding;
• demographic change, with a number of countries facing significant population ageing and changes in ethnic mix, and others stretched by growing numbers of young people;
• heightened national and international competition for students and research funds;
• growing expectations from those who provide support for higher education of cost containment and demonstrated value for investment; and
• challenges to traditional modes of education structure and delivery, driven from a variety of directions including technological change, competency-based approaches, changes in national and global workplaces and new private or public forms of education provision.
These pressures and trends pose huge implications for the future of higher education and research. The burgeoning demand for education across the world shows no signs of fading, and the need for research across an ever wider range of fields can only grow as nations develop and humanity confronts the many challenges of the future. Institutions thus will need to adapt to take advantage of the opportunities available and to survive in rapidly changing environments. They will need both supportive policy frameworks and institutional ability and willingness to bring about effective change. Following Opening Addresses, the Conference will address these various matters by focusing on four themes:
• Mapping and meeting future demand for higher education
• The rise of higher education in Asia and the impact on the global landscape
• Technology, disruption and the ‘unbundling’ of higher education: challenges to traditional modes of education
• Two sides of the same coin: resources challenges, the drive for quality and imperatives for relevance
Each of these four themes will be the focus of a plenary session and accompanying parallel sessions. In addition, it is proposed that there be pre- and post-Conference workshops.