NUR-SULTAN – The Eurasian Forum of Higher Education Leaders will be held at Nazarbayev University in Nur-Sultan June 6 and 7. The theme of this year’s forum is “Future Ready Graduates.”
Photo credit: nu.edu.kz.
“We believe that, together with our participants and speakers, we will find an answer to the question of what the future graduates should be. We will discuss the qualities and skills that young professionals need to have,” said Loretta O’Donnell, vice provost of Nazarbayev University.
This year’s event will focus on the readiness of higher education institutions to prepare students for the changing nature of work environments and their capacity to develop future leaders and good citizens.
Today, institutions are challenged to maximise the value they bring to students, which increasingly implies an internationalisation of learning experiences, opportunities to participate in research, lifelong learning channels and a strong portfolio of trusted partnerships with leading industry players, to name a few elements.
Sessions at the forum will focus on these elements and their interplay with local and international job markets, as well as how they are shaping learning environments. Forum participants will include top managers of universities in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Asia, Europe and the United States, as well as representatives of national and international companies. Participants will discuss the changing labour market and new challenges facing higher education. Additionally, the forum will focus on lifelong education, the importance of educating future leaders in terms of civil society and the formation of an industrial-academic ecosystem.
More than 30 forum speakers from eight countries, including Kazakhstan, Russia, Sri Lanka, the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, China and Thailand, will address the forum. Among the speakers are Tan Eng Chye, president of the National University of Singapore, Tian Xu, vice president of China’s Westlake University, Kenn Ross, managing director of the Minerva Project, Emin Askerov, a social entrepreneur, and Leila Akhmetova, a student at Nazarbayev University and head of the organising committee of the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations international conference.
The forum has been held annually at Nazarbayev University for the last eight years. The theme of the forum last year was “Innovating Higher Education in the Age of Disruption.”
