How is higher education transformed in the world?
Traveling from Asia to attend the 2022 IAUP Regional Meeting, which started on September 28, at Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga (UNAB) in Colombia, took Dr. Sabur Khan, Founder and President of Daffodil International University in Bangladesh, about two days of travel. Khan is a businessman, an expert in information technology, who founded this higher education institution in 2002. Today, it boasts more than 30,000 students in 32 academic programs.
Fewer hours -“only” 27- was how long it took Dr. Kakha Shengelia, President of Caucasus University in Georgia, to be in Bucaramanga in order to participate in the six panels that took place until September 30, in which leaders of different member institutions of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP), spoke about the new challenges that they have faced after the pandemic. Shengelia has post-graduate studies in business administration, is the current President of the Board of Directors of IAUP and directs the university that was established 1998.
Khan and Shengelia, as well as the more than 50 executive officers who visited UNAB, were able to share their own experiences of empathy, quick reaction, innovation and best practices to deal with an emergency, such as the closure of universities due to Covid-19. The roadmap presented at the last UNESCO conference on the future of higher education, as well as how universities lead and promote digital transformation in the world, were among the other topics addressed.
