Upcoming Session by Observatory for Higher Education Transformations to Focus on University Financing post Covid-19

On March 25, a cohort of experts in various strands of higher education scholarship will meet online for this year’s second open session by the Observatory for Higher Education Transformations, an initiative to advance HE research and networking that spans IOE alongside a number of other leading academic hubs from across the globe. This time, the special theme of the session is, ‘Money Matters: University Finance in a Post-Pandemic Reality.’     

 

We are happy to invite you to an online expert session by the Observatory for Higher Education Transformations titled, ‘Money Matters: University Finance in a Post-Pandemic Reality.’

Thursday, March 25, at 15:00 Moscow time

For a link to join the Zoom meeting, please register at https://ioe.hse.ru/en/polls/452343587.html.  

There is barely a dimension of life that has remained intact in the aftermath of the global Covid-19 emergency. Policies deployed to tame down the pandemic just could not but propel drastic shifts in supply–demand patters across sectors, against the backdrop of a massive economic halt, disrupted labor, and rising jobless rates.

The crisis environment saw millions of households worldwide face more financial pressure or even find their finances completely in tatters, with many having to cut back on or drop their plans for education spending. In HE, too, institutions witnessed their financials suffer as the crisis lockdown afflicted R&D, commercialization, and international agendas across academia.

Now that we are in for a new post-pandemic reality, there is more rationale for the expert community in HE to push the frontiers of networking so we can track and share firsthand evidence about how HE systems and individual institutions worldwide have been doing in the novel environment, specifically when it comes to the financial dimension of the operational agenda.

In the upcoming session, the Observatory experts will primarily focus on the following:       

• How impacts of the Covid-19 emergency on the labor market and other domains of socio-economic life are related to university finance
• Shortcomings and weak spots in university financing at various levels that came to light in the aftermath of the pandemic
• Trends in demand for higher education and academic R&D that are most likely to take shape going forward  
• HE funding post Covid-19: Challenges and opportunities. 

The Observatory session will include three presentations by the speakers, about 15 minutes each, followed by a brief Q&A and a subsequent expert discussion. The working language is English.

Speakers

Tommaso Agasisti

Director, School of Management, Politecnico di Milano

 

Pedro N. Teixeira

Head of the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (CGHE), University of Porto

 

Wang Rong

Director, China Institute for Educational Finance Research (CIEFR), Peking University

 

Moderator

Harry Patrinos

Practice Manager for Europe and Central Asia, World Bank

 

About the Observatory

With its conception and imperatives essentially framed and put forth by IOE and Politecnico di Milano, the Observatory for Higher Education Transformation (OHET) was established in late 2020 on the ethos of empowering critical debate to underpin research-informed policy and practice in the university sector. Drawing upon diverse expertise brought by its member institutions that are a superb cohort of globally recognized hubs for social and educational R&D, OHET provides a reinvigorating cross-border venue for various stakeholders and experts to:

• Share firsthand evidence of how university systems have been steering through headwinds of the altered reality
• Follow the changes that have been unfolding across the system domains
• Reflect on best-practice/most likely development scenarios going forward.               

The OHET agenda primarily focuses on the following:

• Inequality in higher education (a challenge that has persisted through time and has only been growing more acute in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis)
• Internationalization: hurdles and incentives
• Student experiences and outcomes
• Rethinking policies in higher education financing and other dimensions of sector administration
• Fostering meaningful liaison and high-impact initiatives among stakeholders in academia.         

Check out videos of the past sessions by the Observatory experts on YouTube.