MFU Vice President Assist. Prof. Dr. Romyen Kosaikanont participated in the International Conference on "Strengthening the role of universities in developing countries- the contribution of leadership capacity building initiatives" which was jointly organised by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) from 27-29 November 2017 in Berlin, Germany.
The conference was in the framework of the DIES (Dialogue on Innovative Higher Education Strategies) programme aiming to offer 130 experts from industrialised and developing countries a forum to discuss common and specific challenges in university politics and management. The purpose of the conference was also to support concrete initiatives and projects in university management in developing countries.
Assist. Prof. Dr. Romyen stated that fast changing, interdependency, interrelatedness, digitalisation, demographic shift are the circumstances that universities have to face, according to the interesting talk by Lead, Global Solutions Group on Tertiary Education, of World Bank Group, USA Professor Francisco Marmolejo. The important thing was to find the new way to address all these changes while produce graduate with relevant knowledge, skills and ability to learn for themselves.
Moreover, Assist. Prof. Dr. Romyen added that the demographic change varied across different regions for example the African universities are experiencing circumstances that are different from those the SEA universities are facing. Additionally, in the group discussion of South East Asian countries, Assist. Prof. Dr. Romyen and other participants discussed the challenges and needs for university management and identified those challenge and needs into 6 clusters: digitalisation and new technology, political environment, globalisation, demographic shift and population, economic development level and funding and changes of eco system of the Higher Education Institution.
Notably, with this opportunity to exchange ideas with people at different function levels in university management from different regions of the world, MFU have shared and learned insightful information to strengthen institutional management in order to efficiently educate future generations and support national research and innovation systems.
