Higher education is enormously well-served for professional development opportunities including in-house training and development, the pursuit of teaching accreditation or other recognised qualifications, and support for participation in one or more of a range of thriving professional networks.
As a sector we can be proud of how we support university staff to learn and develop. However, today we are seeing academic careers increasingly diversify and universities become ever-more sophisticated in their strategic ambitions. The demands on university staff are thus becoming more complex and the range and focus of development opportunities will need to reflect this.
In the summer of 2023 we commissioned Wonkhe to interview a small number of heads of institutions from across the globe to explore how their institutional strategies in the years ahead are likely to inform their people and skills needs.
The report, Looking outward: the changing people needs of higher education, found heads of institution articulating a greater external orientation, as universities in their different ways pursue research impact, enterprise, graduate employability, internationalisation, and closer engagement with their places and civic mission.
