On this Platform, there were many invited speakers from international/national organizations, national authorities, and universities, whose contributions enabled us to see their thinking and focuses.
It's really obvious that mobility stands out when discussing IZN and it could mean different things to different countries, e.g. for Unesco, it links with SDGs while Australia could see it on the more commercial side and DAAD sees it as friendship and peace.
In this gathering, it was great to discuss research and how each country/university has been striving to excel in more collaborative research projects. China, Japan, and Malaysia seem to have a strong grip on them. I'm glad to learn more about a Unesco project on IZN that is being undertaken with Japan and Mahidol has also conducted quite a bit about it. We should see some common IZN indicators we can pick and choose from.
Another speaker I really liked and in fact had talked with him personally was Professor Tan Tai Yong, President of Yale-NUS college. Both institutions agreed to create a liberal arts college from scratch to produce graduates for the future world. It isn't like many others that are set up with domination of one institution or to serve as a satellite campus or franchise type of thing. The college has been extremely particular with recruitment of faculty and selection of students. For students (all required to stay on campus throughout the 4 years), potential applicants are asked to write 5 essays and the college interviews each and every student they've pre-screened (face-to-face, skype, etc.) Half of the students (250 for each class) will be Singaporeans and the rest will be for ASEAN and others (not sure if it's around 25% each). Students are required to take 1/3 of the courses both in science and social sciences that the college finds needed, 1/3 electives, and 1/3 for their majors. The designs of curriculums and facilities is all to promote learning which go along with the college's vision on 'A Community of Learning....'. Students design their projects together with their professors that can include study abroad too (80% of students go abroad). Professor Tan said the college tries hard to inculcate desirable attributes especially empathy and to lessen their egos and entitlements. How I wish I could visit his college some day soon!
Two more issues I'd like to share here too ka! Many sessions mentioned ranking with frustration. As the ranking race needs abundant resources, some universities jumped in or had to (because of their national standing) for funding support and didn't think it was favorable. It confirmed Jamil's belief to go for benchmarking, not ranking.
When a Japanese speaker shared that the IZN related funding support has led to unnecessary competitions among local universities, I thought about it a lot and the role of ministries has to be reconsidered in terms of the use of funding that could cause backfire.
Will be back with my reflection as the conclusion for this Platform tomorrow ka.
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