GLOBAL
bookmark

Universities can do much more to address global challenges

Higher education institutions have much to say and do regarding the progress of humanity towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Many are already involved in education programmes and research activities that promote and foster the formation of new generations who are aware of the necessary transformations and are prepared to carry them out.

Others are committed to the generation of knowledge that enhances understanding and develops technologies to address the problems that underlie the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda. However, much more has to be done.

There is already an urgent need to act. As a planet, we are approaching the tipping point in issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. This places human life, and the life of other species on the planet, in danger.

The consequences of the world’s advance towards this dangerous situation are already being felt in the form of more serious natural disasters, more extensive droughts and a lack of access to water and the rise of viruses caused by the destruction of the environment.

The latter has already provoked the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused immense human suffering around the world. We have been warned that new pandemics will be on the way.

The world has also been heading towards a growth of inequality in the distribution of income and resources, between countries and within countries. Poverty is a consequence of inequality. Extreme poverty affects almost 700 million people around the world, whose human rights cannot be met or respected.

Peace is also at stake. There are many violent conflicts around the world due to territorial disputes, civil wars, political instability, terrorism and drug production and trafficking, among other causes. These put lives at risk, produce human suffering and displacement and affect people’s ability to access basic human needs.

The role of universities

These are three of the most pressing issues the world faces. The SDGs address them.

Higher education institutions, present everywhere in the world, are characterised by their freedom of thought and research and are trusted by their societies. They are therefore urgently called upon to respond by educating future generations to be both conscious and adequately prepared as professionals to find ways of surmounting them.

Universities in particular generate knowledge through research that leads to an understanding of the problems in all of their complexity, bringing about new paradigms for human growth and development and designing both political and technological ways forward.

The responsibility of higher education is enormous. In order to really move towards fully accepting that responsibility and making the necessary social and environmental progress, there are barriers that have to be overcome and structural and cultural transformations that have to take place within higher education institutions.

Over the course of 2021, 14 experts from around the world were convened in a Global Independent Expert Group that produced a report, Knowledge Driven Actions. Transforming higher education for global sustainability. This was presented and discussed at the World Higher Education Conference in May.

The document analyses these issues in depth and identifies the barriers that are present in higher education institutions that must be overcome in order for higher education institutions to take responsibility and take advantage of the opportunity of playing a role in facing the world’s biggest problems.

Three main areas of transformation are seen as necessary.

The first area addresses the issue of the complexity of the problems and of the limitations of traditional disciplinary approaches when it comes to understanding them.

There is a need to transit towards inter- and transdisciplinary programmes and research projects in order to be able to grasp existing problems in all of their complexity, educate students with a more holistic view of the world and co-produce knowledge among disciplines and with non-academics, particularly persons who are suffering the consequences of these problems.

Sustainability should be studied and discussed in all academic programmes. Since lives are at stake, a human rights approach should be embedded in the curriculum of all study programmes and the humanities should be present in all interdisciplinary endeavours.

Students should be able to participate in experiential activities that take them out into the world where the problems are and involve them in both research and intervention projects that develop solutions with the participation of those involved.

The second area deals with the need for higher education institutions to be open to different types of knowledge and to different ways of knowing.

The hegemony of a mainly Western and scientific way of knowing in higher education has been called into question. There is a need to acknowledge the diversity of approaches and solutions to the world’s most serious problems, many of which have proven effective in protecting the environment, making for more equitable communities and building peace.

This means higher education institutions need to become involved in epistemological dialogue and in the co-production of knowledge and solutions with different cultures. The cultural and linguistic diversification of the educational community, both students and faculty, facilitates horizontal and respectful dialogue with different paradigms.

Finally, the third area represents a call for strong alliances and a more active and diversified involvement of higher education institutions in society at large.

Higher education institutions should be much more visible in policy development with governments, in social responsibility schemes with industry and the entrepreneurial sector, in advocacy with civil society organisations for the transformations we need in the ways we produce, consume and relate with others and with local communities so they can work together towards the solution to local problems than can perhaps later be scaled up or replicated.

Students should be active partners in these alliances. University networks, both national and international, have to be strengthened around these issues. Higher education institutions have an important role to play in raising awareness in all sectors of society about the consequences of continuing our way of life as normal.

The time is ripe for a profound transformation of higher education institutions and their role in society. Higher education institutions are very diverse, as are the contexts in which they work. Each has to define its own route for change and impact. This diversity enriches their potential. There can be no progress towards achieving the SDGs in 2030 and beyond if higher education institutions do not take on this responsibility.

Sylvia Schmelkes is a researcher at the Research Institute for the Development of Education at Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. She is co-chair of the Global Independent Expert Group convened by UNESCO that authored the report Knowledge Driven Actions: Transforming higher education for global sustainability.