Friday 20 December 2019

Keynote Speech @ 2019 MTMI International Conference on Emerging Issues in Business, Technology and Applied Sciences

The title of the presentation was "Digital Workforce Needs, and the Role of Universities in the New World - The Case of the University of Mauritius". The 21st Century workplace requires individuals with different skills and competencies to operate in rapidly evolving technology-enabled environments. As per the World Economic Forum these 7 technologies are actually changing our world – and this is what is being termed as the 4th Industrial Revolution. These are Big Data and AI, Digital Health, Large Scale Digitization, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Digital Learning and Wearable Internet. Traditional curricula dispensed by Universities are seen to be too static and rigid to respond to these needs. Industry often criticizes academia for not doing enough to address the skills gaps, while Universities often counter-argue that their role is not to produce a workforce for the short term but to prepare individuals for life. Both stands of industry and academia are not wrong per se, but they can only be seen as half-truths as long as they each maintain their stand without a critical introspection.

However, it is important to recall that Universities in the developing countries were mainly developmental, to produce a workforce capable to contribute to the socio-economic development. It is a fact that the requirements for current jobs have changed and the new workforce has to operate on the frontiers of disciplines. Furthermore, state of the art technologies such as Internet of things and artificial intelligence changing the way professionals work in different sectors. It is therefore imperative that Universities review their curriculum models to address these emerging needs and prepare individuals for the jobs of the future. Universities are also facing other types of challenges with respect to their long-term sustainability with the emergence of other credible alternatives (for e.g. MOOCs and open badges as credentials) to higher education. Many employers are no longer requiring formal higher education qualifications as pre-requisites to be hired for jobs. Technologies such as augmented/virtual reality, video-conferencing and digital learning platforms are changing the way students learn. The content is no longer at the centre of the teaching and learning process. High quality content is available as open educational resources in a variety of formats. Therefore, Universities cannot keep on teaching using the same traditional methods. 

Universities, especially in developing countries, are therefore bound to be disrupted in the digital world driven by knowledge societies and economies. The key question therefore is how can Universities in the developing world adapt to these evolutions and address the key challenges they are facing to still be relevant in the digital age, sustainable and prepare the workforce for the future of work? The rethinking of the role of our Universities is therefore important and it is clear that the status-quo can no longer be envisaged. In so doing, Universities can bridge the skills gap and prepare the digital workforce of the future in collaboration with industries and embrace innovation while at the same time maintain a balance within the so-called “ecosystem of disruption” so as not to deviate from their core values, independence and academic freedom. In this presentation, we look at the digital transformation of Universities within the triple helix model to promote public-private-academia collaboration and the new approaches to teaching, learning and certification using the University of Mauritius as example.

from M I Santally

The polemic surrounding University Ranking of UniRank (4icu.org) : The case of UoM being 85th in the African Top 100

This is an interview I gave to the News on Sunday paper that appeared on 26th July 2020. 1. There is a controversy about the ranking of ...