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Speaker: Jamil Salmi, Global tertiary education expert
About the talk: The world of tertiary education has changed significantly in the past fifteen years. Developing countries have seen tremendous enrollment growth, especially in the private sector. Many nations are facing an exponentially rising demand as more young people graduate from high school as a result of the successful implementation of the Education for All agenda. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations in September 2015 has given renewed consideration to the importance of education for development and the urgency of putting in place viable financing strategies.
Against this background the presentation will explore the crucial role played by tertiary education towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It will underline that tertiary education finds itself at a crossroad today, as national systems are pulled in several directions by a combination of factors—crisis factors, rupture factors, and stimulation factors—bringing about both opportunities and challenges. How these forces in the tertiary education ecosystem play out in each country will determine the new “perils” and “promises” that are likely to shape the contribution of tertiary education to economic and social development in the years to come.
About the speaker:
Jamil Salmi is a global tertiary education expert providing policy advice and consulting services to governments, universities, professional associations, multilateral development banks and bilateral cooperation agencies. Until January 2012, he was the World Bank’s tertiary education coordinator. He wrote the first World Bank policy paper on higher education reform in 1994 and was the principal author of the Bank’s 2002 Tertiary Education Strategy entitled “Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education”. In the past twenty-three years, Dr. Salmi has provided advice on tertiary education development, financing reforms and strategic planning to governments and university leaders in about 95 countries all over the world.
Dr. Salmi is a member of the international advisory board of several universities in Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America. He is also a member of the CHEA International Quality Group Advisory Council. Dr. Salmi is Emeritus Professor of higher education policy at Diego Portales University in Chile and Research Fellow at Boston College’s Center for Higher Education.
Dr. Salmi’s 2009 book addresses the “Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities”. His 2011 book, co-edited with Professor Phil Altbach, was entitled “The Road to Academic Excellence: the Making of World-Class Research Universities”. His latest book, “Tertiary Education and the Sustainable Development Goals”, was published in August 2017.