Professor Vincent Chang, Vice-Chancellor and President of BRAC University spoke at the World Academic Summit organized by Times Higher Education (THE) earlier this month at New York, USA. This year’s theme was ‘Trajectories in higher education: Meeting rising expectations’. The summit was attended by some of world’s most influential academic leaders and researchers to discuss where higher education is headed and how it will contribute to the multiple trajectories at the individual level of student success, at the institutional level of pedagogical and research excellence, and at the sector level of meeting the needs of society.
Professor Chang was a panel speaker in one of the major panel discussions of this summit. The topic of this panel discussion was “Leadership reflections: What are you doing to counter the range of inequities?” Other panelists in this discussion were - Lisa Coleman, Senior Vice President for Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation, New York University, Meric Gertler, President, University of Toronto and Mark Scott, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Sydney.
The panel discussed various ways to handle inequity issues in education. It also talked about students from generation Z and emphasized on the fact that the universities have to go through big transformations in coming days to cater to the need of tomorrow’s world.
In the discussion, Professor Chang highlighted that the issues facing the developed countries and the issues for the developing countries are different and they need to be addressed accordingly.