Creating the University of the Future - A Conversation with Laura Eigbrecht and Ulf-Daniel Ehlers

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

In many of the contributions there, we can see as a red thread coming through this idea of personal but also collective agency. This is one of the root and constitutional foundational elements of future skills.

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for another episode this week. My name's Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. It's very often said that the demands of higher education institutions are one of the main reasons why significant change doesn't happen in the schooling system. We'd be doing our young people a disservice if we didn't offer them at least the opportunity to pursue college and university courses. So what would happen if the notion of a university also radically changed? Laura Eichbrecht and Professor Ulf Daniel Ehlers have gathered some of the top thinkers around the world who are creating the university of the future, both conceptually and in practice. Laura and Ulf join me this week to talk about their new book, Creating the University of the Future. Laura is a senior researcher at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University at the Chair of Educational Management and Lifelong Learning. And Ulf is the founder of mindfulleaders.net and a serial social entrepreneur. He's also the full Professor of Educational Management at Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University. In 2017, Ulf founded Next Education, focusing on the future of education and future skills. Thank you firstly for joining. It's an absolute pleasure to meet you both, Laura and Ulf. Thank you. And, um, I'm really excited to have this conversation because As I say, most of the episodes on the podcast are primarily focused around K-12 education, but when I saw your book, Creating the University of the Future: A Global View on Future Skills and Future Higher Education, I was very excited about the fact that we might be able to collaborate and remove some blockages in the, the way that higher education often gets blamed for our inability to innovate in schools. So thank you firstly for joining. It's a great pleasure.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Hi, Timmy.

So the, maybe if we could just set a bit of the context for the book and your work more broadly. I mean, obviously, you know, feel free to bring that in as well. But, um, Andreas Schleicher, who's been a guest on the podcast previously, has wrote the foreword for the book. And I was interested, obviously he's highlighting that it's very much the right time for this work and this sharing of ideas. But also I was quite, I was interested by his phrase where he says our capacity to navigate ambiguity in the moment of crisis is perhaps the most important one to have. It was a, I find that a really interesting phrase that he's, he's really honing in on this idea that how are we equipping our young people to respond to ambiguity and crisis? I mean, it kind of tells me something about the big dynamics that he's thinking about, which is very interesting. But perhaps you could, yeah, from there, what provided the impetus for the book? Why now? Why, you know, why did you feel that it was an important thing to bring together?

Okay, thanks, Tim. I think for us it was quite a natural step to, to do that actually, because we are into what we call future skills research since about 10 years. And we see that this is a topic of rising importance. More and more institutions, at least in Germany and more and more also in Europe, are talking about it. Sometimes it's called transformational skills, it's called green skills, but we call it future skills with all its ups and downs of this concept. And after having, yeah, done quite a lot of research on that, Laura and me, we were deciding with our group to see if we can find allies. Because we very much believe that to bring about change, we do not just need to be good at having a good concept and knowing its demarcations, the landscape of future skills, but also of having allies and knowing who's actually working on that and who's fascinated by that and who can carry a vision forward. And that's what we are very, very much into in Germany. We are part of several alliances and are constantly moving between institutions and actors and trying to connect people in schools also, but also in higher education. And this book was actually 2 years ago when we met, we sat down and we said, wouldn't it be beautiful to just have a look how internationally the discussion is going on there actually? And then suddenly the idea was born, let's have a look at all other continents of this beautiful globe.

Yeah, great.

And we find examples, and could these examples be inspiring? Could, in a way, be the perspective, the view from outside of Europe inspire Europe, or from outside of Germany inspire Germany? Could we find benchmarks in other continents which motivate us as German institutions, as European education institutions, to become better in what we are doing, to move more towards culture skills. And that was the endeavor, and we tried to find some partners in the beginning, and we issued a call, and we tried to start connecting with people and leading conversations, and from these conversations having offspring conversations and other contacts. And people were directing us here and there, and yeah, suddenly a beautiful bunch of organizations from 5 continents came together. And when we had all these papers, these contributions, these chapters, ideas, institutional programs, higher education programs on future skills, or schools, or digital concepts on the table. Very, very broad range. We were asking ourselves, what could this book be called? And there was no other way than just considering the beauty of this in front of us to say Creating the Future University.

That's what it's about, actually. Fantastic. Amazing. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it is very global. I see you've got a map in one of the early chapters just of all of the different contributors from around the world. So it's a really amazing picture. And And as you say, kind of both theory and practice as well. So really practical examples of people implementing and trying things out and learning. Fascinating. And perhaps Laura, could you speak to some of the, because I know you talk about 10 drivers, you know, obviously this is all happening within a context. And as Andreas has highlighted this pace of change and many things moving and shaping the needs of all of the whole ecosystem for around young people in terms of what kinds of preparation they need. So, what are those drivers that you try and highlight early in the book to kind of set the scene for the rest of the chapters?

Yeah, of course, as Urs already said, it's the whole book is set in kind of a situation where we have many challenges and transformation going on. So it's not like we are, of course, we're curious all the time. That's also, I think, one of the reasons why we, we wanted to do the book and why we wanted to talk to many people from different countries. But of course, we did the research on future skills and everything because of there's a need for it. There are many needs because I think I'm not telling anything new that we're living in times of great transformation and challenges brought about by many, many different things. Let's say climate change, of course, political and other crisis, etc. So that's one side where we're living in a time, I think, where everybody's perceiving that there's a lot of change going on and it can be very disruptive and quick and nothing has prepared us like the knowledge we have right now cannot really prepare us for that. So that's one of the things that we're in times of disruption and something that we have in these 10 drivers that drive that is a very strong driver also towards self-organization. So that, yeah, that people and individuals are more and more also asked. It's not enough anymore to go to school, to go to university and then to have a degree and then to see what's happening. It's probably never been, but maybe that's the way it has been presented. But there's a kind kind of maybe pressure or development, which can be positive and also very challenging to you as an individual to prepare yourself and to cope with all these changes as a person, but also to do that with other people together. And I think these are strong drivers that kind of show that maybe the way that we have been learning and teaching, etc., is not in line with these challenges and with these demands on individuals.

Interesting. Yeah. It's, there's sometimes an interesting critique of these ideas of lifelong learning, like from a kind of neoliberal perspective of thinking about actually it's pushing the responsibility for the transformation onto the individuals when actually what one of the things I appreciate about the book is that you're looking at the structural, the enabling and constraints of structurally around the ecosystem to support some of that work. Cause it's not, it can't just be all about me and my learning and how do I find the right skills? So what are the, yeah, what are the structural conditions? I think that's an interesting thing that you're doing there.

Go ahead, Claudia.

I actually think that thinking about how the debate has developed about future skills in the past years, I think that's kind of a direction we're taking. I think, of course, we have different debates and different actors in the field. We have, of course, more job market related skills, which are really like more skills. And in our view, future skills are more like competences, and that's of course related to individuals. But we see also in many of the contributions that there's a big social and communal aspect to it. And I think that's kind of where the discourse has really also developed, that we also have a look at that, that we're not only individuals, independent and isolated maybe from other individuals, but that the challenges are kind of global and they cannot be resolved by singular individuals. And I think that's something that really comes through in a lot of these contributions and which I found very interesting as well.

Yeah, exactly. I think to add to that, what Laura says, and directly related to the book also, I think there are almost 30 contributions and in many of the contributions there we can, can see as a red thread coming through this idea of personal but also collective agency.

Yeah.

And I think this is one of the root and constitutional foundational elements of Future Skills really. It's really stressing this importance of cognitive, social, emotional resources which have to come together to enable people to act efficiently and effectively. But it's not just about individual competences, but also about this idea of co-agency and collective agency, so that in this world we can act together to move things forward and to really shape the future which we want, because we can see today that Many things in our institutions, many situations, many processes and agreements and the way we do things are the result from decisions we took 5 or 10 years ago in the past. And if we want to do it differently, we need to collectively decide different. And that's also a very important trait of future skills.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that because I think moving beyond just this individual kind of capital accumulation framing is incredibly important because I think we're not really going to shift practice and structural constraints really if we're not actually bringing in that more collective agency aspect, which I think is a fascinating idea. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, so therefore let's, let's move on to the idea of the future skills, because as you say, you've been researching in this area for a long time and I know for Andreas, it's a big concept and I was really interested to see You, you've used, both of you have used the word transformation already, and I, I, I wondered perhaps there's something more there that we could say as a way into some of the work on the future skills. Because I think in one of your previous presentations, Ulf, you talked about transformation as the future general principle. I found that an interesting phrase, like how does the idea of transformation set a context in which these competencies are bringing, you know, as I say, it's not just about capital accumulation of I can do this or I'm, you know, I'm good at this. There's something else going on that relates to transformation. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, it's really relating to this idea of emergence, which is a concept which describes very well our current situation as humanity. We're faced with situations as societies or individuals or groups which we just cannot see coming. We cannot determine that they are coming. And everybody of us can tell stories from its private life, but also from our collective experiences that suddenly there were situations which we just could not see coming. And it's not just the pandemic or financial crisis, also digital developments, digital transformations are just— and how to deal with this is an issue which we are focusing when we talk about future skills. Transformation is really this idea not just to react in these situations, but to shape these situations. Transformation is a paradigm which goes beyond transfer. Transfer is what we have as a paradigm of education designs in our education institutions, often as our first paradigm. We want to teach to students knowledge which they then can take away and transfer it so So to mean adapted to a new situation, then apply it there and solve a problem. And we very much believe that transformation is actually the next step. It's the next general principle which we need to, to embrace in a way. And transformation is really going out into a situation and meeting the stakeholders which are there in their challenging context, in their context. And engaging with them, co-sensing, co-developing, co-creating the solution. And me as an actor with my future skill mindset, I'm one of them in eye-to-eye cooperation. And I think this is the idea of transformation. And as a science institution, I think transformation means to, to teach our students to go out in the world and become part of situations, of groups, of interventions, to become part of interventions in a church or in a social situation, in their workplace, wherever they are, in their family, to become part and to learn from the situation and not just to transfer a solution which they have learned before, but to really sense what can we develop together with the other persons and actors involved there, and then take away from there the new experience and bring it back into the sciences. System and then go from there and co-develop in that way and shape the future, yeah, the situation at the same time.

Yeah, lovely. No, thank you. It's kind of a responsiveness there. That's the word that comes to mind as you're talking is like you're responding in context. I mean, it comes up so much for me in my different conversations with different people. But Laura, perhaps you wanted to add, or if you could also perhaps talk about the, um, the co-creation learning and development aspects of the future skills, that would be really interesting. Thank you.

Yeah. Transformation is really like a term that Ulf and I are discussing a lot as well, because it's kind of an aspect of future skills that I'm very, very much interested in. But it's also a term which is a little bit like future skills. It exists in very different meanings and it can have a very strong meaning filled with values, expectations, et cetera. But then it can also be a very neutral term, or maybe not neutral, but for example, if we take the term digital transformation, there are different views to it. Like sometimes it's used in a way like digital transformation is just happening. It's not really happening in relation to us, but we kind of have to react to it. But in the end, it's kind of also people who are involved in shaping the digital transformation. So another view would be, okay. We as people, if we look at the term agency as well, we are involved in this transformation. That also means that there's different directions that we can take. And I think it's strongly linked also to the term future that we have and future skills. What is this transformation aiming at? Like, what is the future we want? Is there only like one possible way? I think right now in many heads and minds, it's a kind of a dystopian future. And that's not very motivating to act on it, actually. So thinking about co-creating and co-sensing, that's an approach we're also having a look at, and which is also in the book with the survey from the UNESCO did with many people from the world looking into a future and thinking like how it could and should be, like imagining positive futures that would also motivate you to, to go into that direction and to use your agency. In order to, with other people, to walk into that direction, to have a positive future. And I think it's very strongly linked. Like if we take transformation in a way that we are part of this transformation and that we can also design it in a way, if we link it to future skills and if we link it to the aspect that the future is not set yet, it's not there yet, we don't know what it looks like, but we can kind of have an impact on it, then I think the co-creation comes automatically in.

Right. Yeah. There's a, there's an interesting tension coming up for me because I've had Kurt Wieste, I don't know if you know his work, on the podcast a couple of times and I had a funny conversation with him because obviously the podcast is called Future Learning Design and we spent quite a bit of time talking about this kind of, because he talks about subjectification and agency of people stepping into their subjectification that happens very much in the present. And there's a really interesting tension there about we love this future orientation in education and sometimes I think it distracts us from because a lot of what you're talking about, this responsiveness to context and co-creation and co-agency happens in the present. And there's, as you say, I hear, you know, possible futures and we are co-creating possible futures, but it's, I always find it an interesting thing that it sometimes it pushes things away from us when actually the work needs to be done right now, you know, in, in so many different aspects.

That's a, I think it's a very strong point and I think if we, look at, um, with when we've done future skills workshops, for example, with students, it's a very present thing that we're doing. We're working with learners and students, and we also use the past in order to talk about future skills development. We use situations that they have been in, challenges that they've mastered, and from there we see like what future skills have you learned from that, was what was like a transformational experience. So we also take the past And then these learning experiences, they, I feel like they're especially strong when they happen in present, on site, in a group, which is like a nice and convivial peer group, which can listen to each other and give very caring feedback as well. So I think also about future skills learning, we have a very strong present aspect. And I think that, yeah, even if we talk about future skills, I mean, it's, we put a focus on something talking about future skills, of course. And I think it can be the focus that we are in a situation where we can work towards futures. But of course, the situation and the reason why we do that, it's already there in the present. And it's also in the present that we are acting.

And I would say that's one of the criticisms as well of the skills narrative is that it's sometimes presented as being context-free or content-free. And actually, you know, that's never how it's articulated, not never, but in the majority of cases, that's actually not how it's being articulated. That's how it's being interpreted, but actually you can't develop skills in a content-free way. I mean, you are always in a context doing something, right?

Yes, this is, this is a really interesting point which we usually never mention. And the point is that when you talk about future skills, you are not in a value-free zone, right? We are basing our concept of future skills very much on, on strong values. And I think every concept of future skills is based on, on this kind of, of context or on strong values. And it's important to understand which values are there, actually. Do I want to go— do I as an educator or as a school or as an individual want to go in that direction? And for us, it's very important to, to base our work on, on humanistic values, on, on the idea that people should be able to unfold and develop, not just as individuals, but as, yeah, as a collective, as a society, and to care about each other and to work together in cooperation and to try to find win-win constellations and not lose-win constellation.

Yeah.

And to do that in a sustainable and nature, let's say, global responsive way. And I think that's very important to, to really also to not hide this in this conversation about often also about a discussion, debate, maybe even not conversation, but debate about, you know, opinion leadership in this issue. It's very much on the policy level, for example, when policymakers are talking about education of the future, it's coming down to the idea, how do we want to be together?

Exactly. Right.

This world and what do we need for this? And I think that's a very, very important point to make and not to miss. And I was actually not understanding that in the beginning, but in the recent years I'm becoming aware that this is very important to explicitly mention.

Yeah, thank you. I know I really appreciate that because that actually has been coming up a lot for me recently in a lot of conversation about learning sciences, cognitive sciences, and Sometimes the narratives in education, particularly when they're supposedly evidence-based or research-informed, present themselves as being value-free. But of course, nothing's really value-free. And what we're talking about is, yeah, important stuff about futures that we might prefer or might not prefer. And different people will have different values around what those kinds of preferred futures are. And I think I agree. I think it's so important to at least be explicit about that, that we're talking about and not just assume that this is a a value-free consensus that everyone of course just needs to get on board with, because it, that misses, I think, a lot of what's actually going on about the co-creation of a future, one of many possible futures, as you said, Laura. No, interesting. And so just to mention, just to point people, because I really appreciated it, the subject-object-world triple helix model in the book as well. I just wanted to flag that perhaps we've already talked about it in a way, but I think that's something really interesting there, but that also reminded me of Bista's work, those relationships between the different aspects. But maybe we could move to, obviously there's many different presents and futures presented in the book. And given that we're talking about this concept of the university of the future, I wondered, I, I was actually also considering the word university. I mean, it's like turned into one, right? The etymology of university is like turning into one. And so there's something in there for me about diversity, but maybe we'll get onto that. But I suppose the high-level question is, is it possible that the university of the future will be unrecognisable from the current understanding of what a university is? That's a fun one.

Ja, ja, it's a fun one. I mean, there are also different ways to approach this, of course. Like, we could think about, I mean, I could ask you like what you would love the university of the future to look like, maybe. Maybe I can ask that.

That's a great, no, it's a great question. Yeah. Because I mean, in a way it comes back to what we're saying about, you know, that preferred future, what the role of a large educational institution, I mean, it conjures already, it conjures pictures in your mind. Right. And I think one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is how do we shake off those preconceptions about what those, Ray Ison, I've had him on the podcast recently, he refers to Institutions as social technologies. And I, I find that a useful reframe because then you can think, what kind of a thing are we trying to do here? And therefore, what kind of a social technology might help us to do that? And I mean, personally, I feel strongly that we are going to need local community-rooted solidarities actually, as, as things get pretty tough in the coming decades and centuries with, you know, the climate collapse and all of the possible futures that that brings. So I actually think there's a role for educational institutions, schools and universities to be some kind of a community hub providing opportunities, affordances for local people locally to connect and share skills and those kinds of things. So for me, that's, that would be a kind of a, what it might, and it probably wouldn't look like the big campus central university in a, in a big city. I don't know. Yeah, it is an interesting question.

I really like that question and I always thought about it. I think it won't look completely different because it will be us involved in it as people. And I think in a university we will have certain things that we want to find. And I think there's something between inspiration, ideas and knowledge and sharing. So I think these ideas will be there somehow. And then I always think, thinking about the future, it's also sometimes nice to think back like the university, it is is now what we have imagined it in the beginning. I think there, there is a certain coherence, but then you already talked about probable futures, et cetera. So I think with all the futuring models that we have, the, for example, the Futures Cone, et cetera, there we have different levels from now, which we can imagine the future, like more probable ones than some futures that are really not possible at all, but that we could make up crazy ideas about. But then there's probable ones, but then there's preferable ones. So it's a little bit like we can wish for very nice university futures, but I think the things we will find, they are kind of already there. Maybe they are a very small component, like something which is already there, but which is not very dominant right now, which we have maybe in some very innovative practices, like maybe they become more dominant in the future, but if you have Actually, in the research that you did for the Future Skills book, you already have some scenarios for future universities, which we also find right now, but which could be more dominant in the future.

I was just realizing that I think I also could talk for hours.

Sure, sure.

Thinking back that 15 years ago already I made a book on the future of the university and I was interviewing, uh, Jay Cross. He's— he has died 5 years ago, but he was back then— he was one of the really wonderful promoters of and inventors also of this concept of informal learning. And in the end of this interview, I, I said to him, okay, this is such a great stuff which you're saying here, I'm going to, you know, transcribe it and put it in, in this book. I'm just— universities. And then we were, you know, thinking and discussing what could be the title of the book. And then we took a quote from his— this interview, which he had said earlier. And this quote was, "Back then, they still had professors to teach them." And I think there are so many wonderful ideas around this supporting development in a way, supporting agency development, which probably in the future of the desirable future of the university will be probably done in a very different way. And so, yeah, it's, it's really a very interesting question. And another thought game, mental game, thought experiment we did once in a workshop also, I don't know, 10 years ago or so, was how would the university be if we would not have any grading there? How would the university be? And that's really interesting. We really thought for 2 weeks online and and then 2 hours in presence in a workshop with everybody about this and discussing this issue. And one issue which came up was students would only come because they're interested in things, right? Otherwise—

and what a radical idea. Yeah.

And that's another dimension there, which is important for the future of the university, I think, to support learning, to to co-design situations in which learning occurs, in which people are really involved and can co-create their curriculum. This is such an important issue.

Yeah.

And today I'm, I'm really, you know, I'm talking about that very often, and, and I think one thing we really, really should do, and I, I see it in many universities that colleagues are really convinced already about that, We need to ask and create opportunities for students to participate in building their own curriculum. So important to participate in building their own curriculum. 50% or 75% or 90%. I don't know how many, how much we dare.

Exactly. Yeah.

To give out of our hands, but let's do it. Why not? I mean, that's so important.

There's a lot of fear underlying a lot of the conversations around education, I find. Not many people talk about fear, but I, as a parent, as a teacher, you know, there's quite a lot of fear, but that's probably another conversation for another day. But Laura?

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot on my wishlist for the university of the future.

Nice. Nice.

I also think like the subject of fear is, it's a good one also about these discourses. Of course, like the way that we've been discussing it, like having students participate more. I think there's also a question of fear, of course, of because there will be a loss of power involved, probably for some hierarchical, more hierarchical settings that we have right now. And I really like that idea that in the future, if you go to a university, you are already in the whole community. It's not like you go there and then you're like a newbie. You don't know anything.

Yeah.

You kind of need to have your degree until you are accepted as somebody who can take decisions and can be involved and can change things. So I really like that idea of everybody coming together in the university to address some challenges and really of having open windows, whatever it looks like, to society. And I think because you talked about context a lot, local context, I think there, there will be a lot of power for universities who really can connect to local contexts and tackle challenges together and also have other people who are not official students, maybe we won't have that in the future anymore, involved to address these challenges and create a space for that. Yeah. So that would be a nice university for the future.

No, absolutely. No, fascinating. And I did, I had a question about radical ideas cuz I had a recent podcast conversation with Professor Jonathan Jansen from University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and about what it takes to keep a radical idea alive in an institution. And this was about decolonizing curriculum and those kinds of things. Fascinating conversation. But yeah, the concept of a radical idea, because I've seen a couple of interesting ones that I'd love to, love to pick out, but I'm interested in what you would say, what are the most radical ideas in the book?

Yeah, I think I've been thinking about it and it was not easy for me to, to pick one. I think one of the radical things is that a lot of people agreed to come together for that book and to share also things which are not ready and perfect yet. Because that also goes with, we're in the field of educational innovation, so we are trying out things. And some of the authors also took the initiative of the book to try something out and to bring the future skills subject into what, what they're doing now, to do like a slow innovation a little bit. I think what stuck in my mind as ideas that I would like to think about more was, for example, the conversation with Tom van Beeker, because he's, he's talking a lot about, he's always taking images from other contexts. As metaphors to really make us think differently about education. And he's talking about food a lot and he has that idea, wouldn't it be interesting to take a craft, like a handicraft, and to bring it together with my skills? Like, what could we make out of that if we bring that together?

Interesting.

Yeah, that was such a cool idea. And he also had the term, I think we have it also in the title of the chapter, How can we make things happen, which serendipity is the term, like, uh, intentional serendipity, right? Yeah. And how can we create spaces for this to happen? Because this will create fascinating things in the future.

So that's a great concept. I love, I've always loved that idea of serendipity and that I love that idea that you could be intentional about creating opportunities for that to happen. By definition, you can't make it happen, right? That's an oxymoron. But yeah, interesting. What about you, Ulf? Were there any radical ideas that stick out for you?

Yeah, the, the thing is that we, we are discussing future skills and future university since some time now, and the things which seem too radical to me 5 years ago, right? Yeah, our companions along the way.

Yeah, interesting.

And the big issue is always when I go into my own university or in other universities universities into the faculty councils, for example, then I sometimes feel, wow, comparing to the reality of university life today, we are really—

it's all pretty radical. Yeah.

When you, when you really talk about co-creating the curriculum, for example, or really integrating learning and assessment by the way of giving students the power to assess themselves Yeah. When you think about how one of our Swiss partners is doing it in their program, when you think about asking students to self-evaluate their work and come to defend their self-evaluation and then discuss with the guides or experts.

Yeah.

How much credits they want to have for this piece of work in their studies. So this is very radical actually. And rarely seen in the world, right? And also even in this field of lifelong learning, I mean, when you hear the word lifelong learning and universities, you think, okay, that's a very old discussion. We have already 30 years ago we started that. That's nothing radical new. But, but if you really look at, at the potential there to think about how can we design higher education as a concept of in-loops and out-loops, where students go into university and have a learning episode, take it away, and then go into their life and walk their life. And then they come back and they loop into the university again, and then they loop out again and they loop into different universities, you know, like not just one institution, but many institutions. And these institutions are in a future world starting to understand what the other institutions have provided and contributed to the backpack of the students.

Right.

Yeah, of agency and personality and human. And, and so this in loops and out loops, suddenly lifelong learning becomes a very sexy concept. You think, wow, yeah, academic lifelong learning, that's interesting. How can we do that as a university? Or this axis shift, you know, shifting the axis of a curriculum, shifting it away from a disciplinary axis where, where the curriculum revolving around the questions of a discipline, shifting it from there to another axis, to an axis of societal challenges, of our challenges which we are faced with in society. And then suddenly you see, oh wow, that's totally interdisciplinary then, because problems and challenges do not know disciplines. They are always interdisciplinary. And this is another radical idea. And I can see bits and pieces coming there and there and And that's why it's so important to connect through such things like you do now, but we also tried with our book and a community, even an international community, because I, I was having this privilege to, to study with Niklas Luhmann, actually, this theorist of, of systems theory, a sociologist. And he was talking about the future of the university in 1976, and he was saying the future of the university as a system, because it's a quite beautiful system, this idea of the university and how we have set it up, even if sometimes a bit different. But in, in general, it's an autonomous institution, and the future of such institutions are heavily depending on narratives, because narratives are shaping the expectations of the people, of the members of these institutions. And he said that the future of the university will be shaped according to the expectations the people are developing, which are inside there in these institutions. And, and that's why it's important to have narratives and to have communities where we can discuss these expectations.

Yeah, that's very interesting. I think that one of the shadow narratives I would say is the kind of more economistic new public management issue, right? You know, that for me, as you know, my understanding, not working in a university, but Speaking to many people who do, that's been a really dominant narrative over the last few decades that have, has really shaped the institution towards much more, you know, bean counting and accountability and all those kinds of things, which actually different values, right? But I would argue is probably has stifled some of the, the radical ideas that may have fostered. But there, there was one I, we haven't got time necessarily to talk about it, but chapter 7, Wolfgang Stark's chapter about resonance spaces. That was an interesting one for me. I was, So that I think refers to Hartmut Rose's work on resonance and fascinating idea. The idea of a university as a resonance space. Like I'd encourage people to go and look at that cuz there's, that's a pretty radical idea, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's also the discussion we need, I think, in the book to really think about the role of the university and the role of everybody involved and how it cannot be detached from things that are happening around us. I really like the concept as well.

Yeah. Amazing. And so then if we could just, I'd love to ask before we finish about the, the global, just to come back to that point about diversity and global dynamics, because I think there is sometimes a tendency for these kinds of conversations to be dominated by, you know, North Atlantic broadly, US and Northern Europe. And I wondered what have you learned from the process about, you know, things happening in the Global South and obviously, you know, there's a huge number of the young people coming up now will be in the Global South and phenomenal proportions of the young people globally will be in the Global South. So, and also that will be where some of the biggest challenges are felt around climate emergencies, et cetera. So I wondered, yeah, just to finish, if there was any reflections from bringing these chapters together about some of those more geographical disparities or inequities or, you know, what, what came up around that?

And we have to say, like, we call it a global view on future skills and future higher education, but of Of course it's not really, because of course, as you say, we are also in our networks and of course they have like a geographic tendency, et cetera.

Sure.

So we have contributions from different countries, but I think we cannot say that the publication is really global. So obviously there are many perspectives missing. I think one thing is also language. It's a book written in English. And I think what I really hope is that, of course, like we made a call, we connected with people, we had people come at us that we haven't known before. And I really hope this goes on because I think we can learn from that. And I think like the, the skills question, the future skills question, it's, it's one which is really interesting also in that context. I think we have one chapter with the small states of Mauritius and Eswatini, and they also talk about how they as post-colonial states are also faced with specific challenges. And also what I really like in that chapter that they put their value proposition forward. They also show us what other contexts can learn from them in their specific context related to future skills, but also like how to deal with it in such a small state in postcolonial context. And I really like that. I would— I wish we have more of that. So that would be one of the hopes for the next steps of the book.

I agree very much, and I also want to emphasize that this is not really a global view. It's really a particular view of people, international actors in our bubble, so to speak. Sure. That's true. Although we stepped a bit outside of our bubble also. I find often that what unites us all around the globe or all around this community, which is the 60 authors which are involved in these chapters in the book, is this felt impetus of moving forward, of reforming. Transforming the institutional landscape which we have. And we all do have different challenges and not the same challenges, but we are all striving to find ways to educate people in a, in a different way. And this is really what strikes me when I look at this, this work. And this is really, really a very profound feeling of thankfulness, actually, I let's say, to be able to connect and to maybe be part of this network which is making everybody, including us, feel we are there working on an issue and a topic and a theme which is relevant to many, and we are not alone. This is, I think, really a good message and a good learning for us at least.

Yeah, and I think in that respect, Chapter 9 is also really interesting because there we have the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and they try to do like a global public consultation on the futures of education, higher education. And there we really have a lot of ideas about also about future skills and also about learning together and inclusion, etc. And in the consultation, there's like a longer paper about it which is publicly consultable, and I think we have really interesting ideas and also that there's a— Ulf says there's a shared direction of approaching global challenges as well.

Fantastic.

And on June 25th at 3 PM Central European Standard Time, we are going to have a virtual book launch. Maybe some people who are now interested in what's that actually can meet some of the authors.

Fantastic. Oh, good. Well, I'll definitely share that as part of it. But yeah, no, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. The shared sense of direction and bringing, I mean, I think, you know, there is a real sense of movement that we're, this is early in a, in a process and bringing more perspectives into it is incredibly valuable. But I would also say, and that's, that was one of my intentions for inviting you onto the podcast was to make the connection with the K-12 conversations as well, because I think they are very resonant with a lot of what you've said. You know, a lot of the questions that are being asked And the responses about, you know, co-creation, learning, development, all of the different things that we've touched on are really relevant conversations happening with younger learners as well. And I think to have a broader conversation is, I think, a really important one as well. So they're not again siloed by age because actually these are, you know, this is, this is a continuum of, you know, lifelong learning or however we want to describe it. But there's something important there, I think, for me about connecting those dots as well. So thank you so much for sharing the book and for all of your work and for joining us today on the podcast.

Thank you so much, Tim Logan. I think we're taking some inspiration as well from the conversation.

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