Wednesday 15 March 2023, 14:00-15:30 (Paris time)

Dr. Alaa Shatnan, Director of the UNESCO Chair at the University of Kufa, announced the launch of the third virtual Seminar of the UNESCO Chairs Network under the title : Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education
Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, Report from the International Commission on the Futures of Education, UNESCO 2021.
UNESCO Chairs Seminar 3: Reimagining our Futures Together: A new social contract for education 15 March 2023 Over 420 experts attended this Seminar on the implications for higher education of the Report from the International Commission on the Futures of Education, Reimagining our Futures Together: A new social contract for education. Two interrelated themes ran through the discussion. First, the harmful ‘fetish of competition’ in higher education and how it might be addressed. Second, the value of cooperation in higher education, including through the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme, to advance the proposals and visions for sustainable futures contained in the Report.
Professor António Nóvoa, chair of the drafting committee, recalled that the Report is ‘an invitation to think and act together in building the futures of education together’. It calls for a new social contract for education strongly based on an enlargement of human rights, and the realization of education – including higher education – as a public endeavour and a common good. In his view, ‘higher education institutions are different from all other social and economic institutions – their strengthen lies in their difference – therefore it is a mistake to bring business or commercial logic into higher education’.

Responding, Professor Rajani Naidoo described the ‘fetish of competition’, as one of the gates preventing the co-construction of sustainable futures. Whether expressed as market competition, government excellence contests, or rankings, the belief in competition is a problem for achieving common good goals. Professor Naidoo called for alternative economic perspectives that recognize people can organize beyond the market to share and sustain the planet. Publicly funded research and its applications need protecting. Space for critical analysis and dialogue should be safeguarded. People in higher education should recollectivize – with each other and with society – to work together to propel the visions contained in the Report.
Also stressing collaboration, Professor Jocelyne Gacel-Ávila noted that, ‘Higher Education Institutions should be responsible for facilitating collaboration through the integration of internationalization and internal cooperation as a transversal dimensional in all programmes and organizational units…’. In relation to environmental sustainability, Dr Dorcas Otieno highlighted the central role of university education, stating that, ‘A green economy requires the reorienting of public policies supported by improved information systems for tracking and communicating higher education progress for sustainable futures’.
Challenges identified include the structures of research and teaching that often rely on competition, linked to funding. This also creates competition between the humanities and natural sciences. Higher education systems may even maintain global inequalities, if the purpose of higher education is reduced to tradable knowledge and skills. It was observed that humanist values are being relegated at a moment that requires global solutions and cooperation. Concerns were also expressed about the uses of technology and the embedded biases of artificial intelligence.

The UNESCO Chairholders who spoke were keen to propose and find solutions, recognizing that today’s global challenges require scholars to work together across disciplines and internationally, such as through South-South cooperation. Universities need to transform themselves to be able to fulfill their transformative power in education and society, including in local communities. Inspired by the call for a new social contract for education, there was interest by UNESCO Chairs to act collectively to counter prevailing neoliberal policy and funding regimes in higher education.

Despite so many challenges the conversation was open and constructive. The UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs network reflects the idea of our common humanity. Where people are collaborating for the global good this needs to be celebrated. In a surprise contribution, Mr Federico Mayor, former Director-General of UNESCO (1987 to 1999), said, ‘We must make a personal resolution to be actors and not to be a spectator of what happens in the world’. Mr Mayor affirmed that as a network, UNESCO Chairs can have a very important role to redress the present trends.