Welcome to the World Higher Education Ranking Summit, where industry leaders and educators converge to address the crucial topic of bridging the gap between industry and academia. In this insightful session, we explore strategies to equip students with the practical skills required to excel in their careers.

The Challenge: Skills Mismatch The university education system strives to prepare students for professional success, but graduates often face challenges in meeting industry expectations. Many employers express concerns about the lack of essential skills among recent graduates. These skills include critical thinking, problem-solving, self-management, leadership, resilience, and effective communication.

The Disconnect: Industry and Academia The disconnect between universities and industry has led to a growing divide between the skills students acquire and those employers demand. This mismatch not only impacts students' employability but also industry's ability to find suitable candidates.

The Solution: Collaboration and Customization To address this gap effectively, collaboration between universities and industry is essential. Higher education must be aligned with industry needs, staying updated on trends and emerging skill requirements. This collaboration leads to curriculum adjustments that foster agility and relevance.

Empowering Students: Industry-Relevant Exposure Partnerships between academia and industry can offer students invaluable exposure to real-world scenarios. Such experiences enhance their confidence, ability to tackle emerging job opportunities, and understanding of practical challenges.

The Urgent Need: Addressing the Skills Gap As the pace of technological innovation accelerates, a skills gap emerges within the workforce. Studies show that a significant percentage of industry professionals acknowledge the existence of a skills gap and anticipate its growth in the coming years.

Five Pillars of Skills Development To bridge this gap, universities and industry should focus on five key areas of skills development:

1. Complex Problem Solving: Enhancing analytical thinking, innovation, and critical analysis skills.
2. Self-Management: Strengthening mental wellness, emotional resilience, adaptability, and stress tolerance.
3. Working with People: Prioritizing leadership, management, interpersonal skills, and social influence.
4. Technology Use and Development: Developing technology-related skills, including programming and digital literacy.
5. Digital and Financial Literacy: Equipping students for success in a digital, networked economy.

Expert Insights In this panel discussion, thought leaders including Dr. Laura, Dr. Ajith, Dr. Ghassan, Dr. Dennis, Rai Nauman, Dr. J.R, Prof. Daniel, and Humam come together to share their insights on the strategies, challenges, and opportunities in aligning education with industry needs.

Join us in exploring the transformative potential of collaboration between industry and academia, as we work towards equipping students with the skills needed to thrive in the dynamic and ever-evolving landscape of the modern workforce.

Dr. Laura
Greetings, everyone, we're here at the World higher education ranking Summit. The topic of our conversation in this hour is how to bridge the gap between industry and academia. Ways to enable students with work-ready skills. The primary purpose of university education is to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for a chosen career and become fully prepared for the real world of work. Universities are failing to deliver a great financial burden to the student consumer and increasing dissatisfaction of industry employers who claim graduates lack basic skills in multiple areas, including critical thinking and problem solving, self-management, leadership, resilience and stress tolerance, interpersonal skills, intercultural and diversity, fluency, and communicating effectively verbally and in writing.
Currently, there is little collaboration between universities and industry to close this gap so students can be employable, higher education that is tailored and customized to meet the demands of the industry is critical for bridging this gap. In a dynamically changing environment, universities must be plugged into the needs of industry, and understand the trends and the kinds of skills that will be needed for roles. Collaboration of this kind would enable curriculum agility to meet the demands of industry, and collaborative relationships and partnerships would enable students to get industry-relevant exposure during higher education. Exposure enhances student confidence and ability to take on emerging employment opportunities. Industry benefits by getting candidates with work-ready skills.
The rapid pace of change and technological innovation is resulting in a workforce skills gap. A 2020 McKinsey study found that 43% of respondents reported a current skills gap in the industry, and 44% of respondents indicated a skills gap within the next five years. To meet this demand, universities should work with industry to develop and strengthen program curriculums in five areas. complex problem solving, for example, analytical thinking and innovation, critical thinking and critical analysis, creativity, originality, and initiative reasoning and ideation. self-management is also important. For example, mental wellness, emotional resilience, change resilience and stress tolerance, and active learning. Working with people is an increasing priority, leadership, management, interpersonal skills, and social influence should be priorities. Of course, technology use and development such as technology, design, programming, use monitoring, and control. And finally, digital and financial literacy in a digital networked economy. I'm going to kick off and turn off my esteemed colleagues here. We'll start with Ajith for some commentary.

Dr. Ajith
Thank you, Laura, I think it's a good topic that we are deliberating and the need of the hour, there is a gap between the academy and industry. So, we universities prepare students for the industry. But once they join the industry, the industry finds they are not ready for what we call it by applying their skills and starting the job. The main gap is there is a need for us to integrate the curriculum with that the industry requirements. That's number one. And also another important thing is to have faculty upskilling. And faculty who are training the students should have that industry exposure, they should be working with industries in short projects by which they also get the latest industry knowledge. And together if it can be taken to the classes, it will have a lot of impacts. And another important thing is having more internships, and live projects, for students to go into not only industries but even the communities, to find out the real-time problems and try to find solutions.
I think which will give them more skills, which all the skills that you're mentioning about they have to experience those skills by doing certain activities through their course. Now, it should not always be an exam at the end of the semester, having an exam during midterm and final term, it should be more of project-based learning where you identify problems, work on them, and then try to move on and get it done. I think COVID has given us a very good thing where you can teach different options of teaching different methods of getting things done. And today one of the most important things that everybody is looking for is innovation and entrepreneurship. And especially in countries like Nigeria, we need more job creators, rather than job seekers.
I think universities have to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurship. And I would like to talk about the academic entrepreneurship ecosystems that most of the universities across the globe have, where the academicians along with the students create what we call it startups on campuses, and they provide them, connect them with venture capitalists, ensure them to start up, and they go into the society. And that's a real contribution to the society where the Education, University education is being carried out. So, these are some of my few thoughts coming from Nigeria. And there's a lot of scope for what we call innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa. And even you find the government also doing lots of initiatives.
I think if the higher education institutions take up this and if you're able to align the curriculum with the industry requirements, faculty, upskilling, and also upskilling, the skills of students, not only having the traditional education system, you should have professional skills education program, also where students acquire skills, maybe they can use a blended way of teaching where you can use Coursera or open to study, you can have a combination of these things where you can create courses and programs, where the student can get a degree, also get the skills that will help him to be successful in future. And I think the education system will be changing in the coming years. I think not so far. We will not believe in only one university in one system. In the future students will have a combination that yes, I will do this semester here. I will do a couple of courses from Coursera. I will graduate from that university, and they will become employable and move forward. And that's going to be a challenge for all our university systems. But I think that's going to be the future tomorrow. That's it for now. Thank you.

Dr. Laura
Beautiful, you said so many important things, focused on partnership and collaboration globally, that's very important. You also mentioned leveraging technology. There are new innovative ways to do things and educate students. I love the idea of faculty upskilling and faculty with practical industry experience is critical. Okay, because somebody that's been, at a university in four walls with no practical experience has a very different perspective than somebody getting on the ground and the grassroots, so many important new things that you said there. Ghass, you're next.

Dr. Ghassan
Thank you, for being in academia, since 1992, definitely bridging the gap between academia and industry has always been a major issue. Even though we try so many different ways to bridge the gaps, I think the gaps remain there. More serious work has to be done. First of all, we have to differentiate between developing countries and developed countries, of course, developed countries or industrialized countries, have more opportunities for jobs, and high-level jobs. On the other hand, in developing countries such as the Middle East, mainly we are consumption markets, the type of jobs are different for graduates. And that gives us a bigger challenge. I also believe in some issues like bridging the gap between industry and academia as serious issues that must be taken seriously.
I always believe in systematic procedures. I mean, nothing just comes by accident. Because we have tried so many ways, and many of the issues mentioned by Dr. Ajith, yeah, we try them. The issue of internship, senior projects, competitions, allowing students to compete outside, inviting industry, as participants in these companies, consultancies and all that stuff. We have tried so many different ways, hoping to bridge the gap, including, of course, focusing on the students.
I believe that every time we talk about a university or a school, every part of that school must provide their clear participation and the issue of bridging the gap that just cannot be done by the school itself, or the college itself. Rather than, I think the corporate office must be involved, the training centers must be involved, even the purchasing department must be involved in that because purchasing department or procurement, they deal with big companies, well-known companies such as well known companies, Microsoft, Oracle, they have ties, good ties, where we can use that, to benefit our students to benefit our conferences, any activities, they can rely on such companies, and the issue of innovation and entrepreneurship, these are issues that must be taken seriously, all the departments. And the university must work together, as I said, and Dr. Ajith mentioned the ecosystem, a complete ecosystem, which consists of different components.
Each component takes an input and gives an output. At the end I want my graduates to be well prepared for their jobs in the future. And I want not just that, not to have them prepared, but I want the industry whether inside that area where the school is, the universities, or outside that, to know that the graduates of this university are well equipped. I want them to say that yeah, we've been there. We've seen their curriculum, participated in many of their activities. The issue or the idea of the external advisory council where I think, this is something now standard in every school to have 10 or 12 or 15 members, consisting of well-known leaders from the industry or from the market, where they get involved even in that structure of the curriculum and programs itself, the outcomes of all that I think must be taken not just to try it here or there, but rather to flow and a complete system and a complete system where I know what what the inputs are. And at the end, what are the expected outputs? And I think this is what I can say right now. And we can discuss other things as we go.

Dr. Laura
Thank you, Ghassan, for so many important things that you noted especially that stratification of economies has to be a consideration. But what I found important about what you said is going back to Ajith, is this echo system, right? Where the industry is involved in the co-creation of curriculums, programs, and curriculums so that it is more community based for the betterment of society across the globe. It's a beautiful vision.

Dr. Dennis
Good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you're coming from, thank you. A few things that I want to do with this is looking at it from a layered approach, or at least that's how we've taken it over here at UF. And the first thing, Ajith spoke about is faculty diversity. How are you creating a good faculty diversity that includes individuals with good theoretical knowledge, and individuals with good industry knowledge? And there are multiple ways that we can do that so that we can engage our students properly, not only just bringing the additional faculty on, but destroying or disabling those silos that often happen in higher education that may inhibit the ability of these faculty to collaborate? And of course, you have to incentivize that as well.
The other thing that you want to look at is the macro curriculum, how are you creating curriculum on that macro level in terms of the courses that are being offered, in terms of the objectives from various minors or majors, and not just the curriculum in terms of academia, but co-curriculum in terms of student engagement outside of the classes is extremely important. Then, of course, the curriculum, what is happening inside the classes to engage those overarching themes, but maybe specifically within those particular course offerings, so that the students are being pushed.
I heard it said before, but this means going beyond the standard memorization and repetition that our students do, but looking at how they can apply themselves, and particularly with these next few bullet points that I have, how they can apply themselves in a way that industry is going to find appealing when they look at someone who has a specific course or specific skills that they've listed that they've achieved in those particular courses. That requires partnerships, and advisory. And because you spoke about that, you have your advisory councils. And that's something that we found incredibly valuable is any partner from small business to business, small business to business, maybe they have 50 employees or less out to companies that are well over 50 years old, with 1000s of employees, so that we can get again, that diversity of what experience matters, not just those hard skills, but the soft skills that can pivot around those hard skills, as our world continues to change, and what we're doing, and that that final piece would be alumni engagement, how are we continuing to engage our former students so that they can communicate what they saw as deficiencies, once they've left the academy once they've gone out, and have been out for five years and can reflect and say, I wish I had this skill in the class. But also, the skills that you developed here really enabled me more so than my co-workers.
I look at it as that five-layer approach to how we can ensure that our students are meeting the expectations of industry, but also able to pivot, be agile, able to work around things such as COVID, as what's happening in Europe right now. And the drastic changes that happen to bring those things happen to our business environment or business in case of what I teach.

Dr. Laura
Lots of important stuff that you said there, Dennis, and faculty diversity, of course, is always a common topic and how do you integrate theoretical and practical faculty experience? Is it always an interesting topic? I liked your idea of knocking down silos in higher ed. I think a lot of us in higher ed are confronted with that on a regular basis. And it's interesting because we teach our students in our business courses how to break these silos down, and we are shackled, and can't do it in the higher ed space since.
I liked that. I liked your idea of the alumni engagement. This is obvious, it's so obvious, why aren't we doing it? Our students go into the work world, and then we don't leverage their experience post-graduation. There is just a clear path to how you experienced in your first job, and how you experienced in your second job, which leads us to this partnership with our students throughout their career, right, through something like Career Services. And again, all of these things I'm sure you met, can happen, macro, locally, and micro, because many of our students are working for corporations offshore, and what learning can occur through that relationship. Amazing stuff. Thank you, Dennis. Nauman, you are next.

Rai Nauman
I wanted to echo and commend my colleagues for getting this started. I think I'm going to dovetail a bit on some of that information and make some unique points as well. I'm taking a slightly different but similar approach to Dennis. And looking at it from four specific perspectives: a student and faculty perspective, the alumni perspective, and the industry perspective. When we think about the student perspective, it's very easy given the fact that this is a World Higher Education Conference, to look at it from a higher education lens. But I think it's equally as important to take it to step back and look at it from one step behind. And that's the secondary education perspective, as we refer to here in the United States, and that's high school, and how is that a proper pipeline into higher education? For instance, Laura, you kicked us off very well with some key points before this discussion regarding soft skills.
Soft Skills has a place in every industry, how are high school students been preparing themselves knowing that before they even enter college, here in Washington state where I'm located here on the west coast, the United States, I think about the graduation requirements, financial literacy courses, and even culinary skills are not a requirement upon graduation. Oftentimes, people might ask, what do culinary skills have anything to do with higher ed skills and soft skills, and hard skills? It does. Because the better equipped they are to be independent living on their own, the less likely they're spending their funds, constantly purchasing food, financial literacy skills is equally as important as the difference between credit and a savings account, I put it in a debit card, a checking in a savings account, when someone has taken out a loan, for instance, the difference between a subsidized loan versus the unsubsidized loan, that is an extremely vital point.
For instance, in Undergraduate Studies at the University of Washington, when a student takes out a loan, predominantly it is subsidized, meaning that it does not accrue interest when they take it out. For graduate professional students. Typically, it is unsubsidized, it means that it accrues interest while they're in school. That is a significant factor that students need to be aware of as they navigate the education system. When I think about financial literacy skills, the better informed they are upon graduation from secondary education, the better transfer, they can still make those skills in higher education as well. In terms of internships, that's another great example that many of my colleagues just mentioned, oftentimes here in the United States and have been to schools and attended universities, like the University of Washington, the University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, I'm using that as my sample size, I would say, typically, internships happened in the third and fourth year of the student's undergraduate studies, I look at that and say, these soft skills that we've talked about today, the same soft skills that you kicked us off with the word pride discussion are directly applicable to end the industry, we should be moving these internships up to the freshman and sophomore year.
Regardless of whether the student knows what they want to do post-graduation or not, they can still generate and develop these soft skills, like complex problem solving, working with people these interpersonal skills that regardless of ministry, they need to have Dennis talk beautifully about alumni perspective, at the University of Washington, we have a well recognized and established program called the Huskies at Work program. It often follows this pattern. And in the post-COVID-19 era, this is something that we can maneuver and apply I think very well across the country. It appears one alum with one to three students at the University of Washington, and they're able to meet through zoom, on the phone, in person or some mixture of those. What's so unique about that program is that students can since shadow the lawn in the industry, have an informational interview, and also develop the soft skills and hard skills that they need to know prior to graduation.
One of the biggest problems All students face is especially first-generation students, those that have not had their parents but a college, and those that may not even know how to fill out a FAFSA, which is the Federal Application for student aid in the United States, they don't even know how to navigate that. If they're equipped with the knowledge base and skill set to do some of those things, they're able to then transfer those skills in higher education. And that mentorship program has been going on for five years, it's been done well, what we've noticed is every year, the bandwidth of alums are here. But the bandwidth of students is here, meaning the demand exceeds the need, or excuse me, the need exceeds the demand. That's a challenge that every university faces. We have wonderful alumni, but we don't have enough alumni to mentor the students.
We can cultivate that through strategic partnerships, and engaging students when they're in the campus setting so when they graduate, this mentorship is second nature to them, because they're thinking about how they have mentored themselves. I also looked at it from the industry perspective. We have soft skills, and we have hard skills. I think about some of the highly demanded reasons for Washington State and United States medicine, computer science. I would even make an argument, accountant, you need to have specific hard skills in place. For instance, in medicine, the field that I'm in, you need to have a proper diagnosis and history case, management, treatment, and physical examination, those are absolute hard skills you need to have, however, as of late in the last five years on the board exams, both before medical school, and in medical schools, they've noticed that physicians into some additional investment, and bedside matters, quote, unquote, and their soft science skills and their interpersonal skills. So they integrated that into the admissions test, the MCAT, the Medical College Admissions Test, and the board exams in steps one, two and three board exams because they realized that even though hard skills are greatly emphasized in telemedicine, they need to put the same emphasis on soft skills, you can make the same argument for computer science and accounting as well. So, I look at those four specific layers. I think about faculty in their role, not only as professors but as mentors as well, all of those components come together. And I think you emphasize how we look at higher education.
I, frankly speaking, I think just starts in secondary education that then feeds into higher education. I thought that would be helpful as context does matter. Thank you.

Dr. Laura
So, many important things you said there. You're spot on. We often get students in higher ed. And there's no previous experience with some of the stuff. Which is interesting, because we go to school, to get educated and learn how to live life effectively. So, it does start before higher ed, for example, this is mental health, how do we deal with self-awareness and communication? It should be right K through 12. And just continue through secondary and higher ed. Important that we start early with the soft skills management and the hard skills, and it's a balance. I have 25 years in the healthcare administration space, and I am smiling so big because you are integrating soft skills into medicine. So, we have to stop with this either-or approach and integrate for a holistic, well-balanced educational experience. Thank you, Nauman. That was excellent stuff. I agree with everything. Dr. J.R.

Dr. J.R
Yes, thank you. It's been really interesting listening to all the other speakers. And I think I can build upon many of the comments that they've had. If I've had the pleasure of having two different careers, one in the private sector, during high tech and management consulting, and also in academia as a professor and a vice dean, both in the US and South Korea, where I'm at now. And interestingly, when I hear when I was on both sides, but I would hear when I was in the industry, I wish the people that were coming to us were better prepared from the universities. And in university, what I would hear from my colleagues was, I wish we knew what industry wants so we could teach better. And even though there were lots of advisory panels and connections on both sides, there would there's an invisible wall almost. And there's a mistranslation of what is being communicated on both sides.
I think that's important to understand. In that, it seems like there is sort of this transfer of information across the wall a lot. And not the integration that I heard the other speakers imploring, which I think is important. If we go deeper into that particular area, how do we get more integration? How do we get more real integration that matters? So both sides get what they want, and we know what to teach. And we know that the students who are coming to us in the industry have those skills that we want. And what I've seen is some new models happening. And I think that a really important point is, particularly for academia, are they willing to adopt new models, not just the teach, from a syllabus, teach a semester kind of model that is sort of becoming the anti-solution, if you will.
I want to point to one example that we picked up on that started to change that dynamic that I discussed, that came from the University of Waterloo up in Canada. And what they did for their high-tech students was not only talk to companies in the high-tech industry, but they integrated those companies into their curriculum. I'm talking about Apple and Microsoft, and Google, and they also then changed the semester format. So became three weeks of learning, in particular, very specific needs described by those high-tech companies, and then three weeks of internships or externships. And it would continue. What we saw was breaking that model of, hey, we'll have a panel, we'll have an advisory group and all those things, but more of integrated cross pollination right in the classroom. And then using what they learned, as on-the-job experience, not after they graduate.
But while they're learning. I think this idea of trying to change the model that we've had for almost millennia of the semester format in the classroom, when you graduate, then you go to work and learn the extra stuff that you need. And changing that to inviting the companies into the classroom, letting them help shape the curricula, and having the students have the training while they're learning. I think that's maybe new paradigms that we can think about in bringing these two areas together.

Dr. Laura
JR, so many important things, I have the same benefit as you one foot in academia and the other in health care management, Healthcare Administration. And, it’s interesting, there is this mistranslation when the conversation happens. So it's very important to get targeted and specific and keep the conversations going. Clear communication. I love that you brought up new models and new paradigms. Higher Ed is facing increased competition and pressure from Massive Open Online Courses. Right, who are partnering with the Ivy League, and folks are getting certified with a sort of certificate from Yale and it's happening in six or seven weeks. This old model of 15 weeks is painful. I teach in online and traditional settings. Recently, I was asked to teach something ground that I teach online in seven weeks. And I kept thinking to myself as I'm preparing the course for the ground setting, who would schedule 15 weeks?
Well, I could take this in seven. It doesn't make sense from an efficiency standpoint. So we have to start looking at microlearning and other tools and technologies. Where this learning can occur, can be immediately applied in the work environment and the feedback loop immediately. You talked about the beautiful partnerships. We have to start shifting in that direction or the value will be even more significantly decreased in the higher education space. Thank you so much for that. Daniel.

Prof. Daniel
Thank you. It's been fascinating to hear what everyone's said, and it aligns in big picture terms and aligns with my work on 21st-century skills and preparation for them. I'm going to share a couple of models that I think to tie together a lot of the themes that we've heard today, and suggest that if we talk about the problems, and we identify a set of tools, honestly, I feel like we've got all the tools we need, we can solve this. I don't think we need anything new to solve this. I think, if we were going to solve it using the business as usual approach, it would have been solved, we wouldn't be talking about it. So we do have to change the way we consider things. On a micro level, I want to talk about a learning modality that I use in many of my classes, and that is a partnership with companies and organizations to provide a learning opportunity for students. Typically, it goes something like this, I'm teaching a certain amount of skills during a term. My terms are seven weeks. But throughout the term, students in groups or individually, are working on a semester-long project, in partnership with a company or organization. We call them learning partners.
And this is a good way for students to learn and apply in a safe and supportive atmosphere. The students sometimes will recruit their learning partners, particularly if it's a group-based activity. And in other cases, the faculty will also recruit learning partners. The good thing about this is that the individual faculty who's teaching can compare the things that the student needs to learn with the things that the organization wants, and find a zone where there's Happy learning and happy delivery, and everybody gets something valuable out of the experience. The weakness with this model is that it doesn't scale. It's up to one faculty member to make that effort, or maybe in a department, it's hard to get across the board faculty members who are at that level of engaged and to ensure consistency of quality or consistency of learning experience. And that doesn't mention anything at all about constantly calling the same companies. I will get called by the engineering department this time.
Next time, it's the different part of the technology group or it's the business students and they all want projects. So I think that there's a weakness in that, in that model, as successful as it is on a class-to-class basis. I think there's a weakness there. So, I propose something else. A lot of universities have a career services office, some don't, but a lot of them do. And traditionally, it looks like the career services office functions as a place to post ads for jobs. Nothing substantially better than that. They may have workshops on how to write a CV, they may have workshops on how to conduct an interview, or prepare for an interview. But a large majority of Career Services offices at universities are just sort of sitting there at the coordination level from when I got an announcement and I need to announce it. I'll host some people here in my office for on-campus interviews. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not optimized. So, I suggest that Career Services offices be rethought that they become something called a Center for Career or Professional Development Center for Professional Development.
That comes with a higher set of responsibilities, to think more holistically about career development, and to become the place that coordinates with our outside constituents, the stakeholder groups that we've been talking about today, the employers that the Center for Professional Development becomes the place to go back and forth between the curriculum and the industry. So that there is more to it than that one single practitioner like I was mentioning, who cares, and that we can systematize as Ghass said earlier by having it be another tool that we can do, nothing will change. If we don't systematize this and make somebody purposely responsible, a team or an organization within our higher ed institutions, if we don't make that change, then it'll just be another one of the initiatives that have come and, and it worked a little bit here, and it didn't work in most places. So, my example of how we might tackle this is to take everything that we've talked about and to make it the responsibility of a designated organization that evolves from the concept of a Career Services Center and becomes a Center for Professional Development. So that companies can come and say, this is what we're looking for. And instead of the response being, oh, you need to talk to this student, or this student, the response becomes, let's make sure that you and the faculty from that department get together so we can evolve the curriculum. It goes beyond matchmaking. And it goes well into breaking down the silos, it goes into upskilling the faculty because now the faculty can talk almost directly to the industry partners. But there is a champion in our organizations who is tasked and responsible for facilitating that. And that becomes the bigger mission of the career services office of the future, which is a Center for Professional Development.

Dr. Laura
And that is just a beautiful model. And I did look into that a little bit earlier through one of your posts, it would be so meaningful if we could develop that model so that it was scalable. And it approaches things from an ecosystem perspective. But how beautiful would that be, if those centers for professional developments at different universities, were collaborating and sharing the knowledge and the information from a global perspective? So, this is, connecting the dots. The other important thing that you said was, that we should draw attention to the changing nature of faculty. It's not the old days for faculty, we do so much more.
I remember my freshman year, sociology class, he came in twice a week with a pot of coffee, and a pack of POW. And he just lectured and walked back and front and the of the room. Today, we are so interactive and involved in our student's schoolwork, and some of their life problems. And sometimes we don't have enough tools, even though these tools exist. And that's another important thing you said. This is not rocket science. We have the tools, we have the technology. And we probably could capture the willingness because it's changed or died at this point for a lot of universities to make this happen. Amazing stuff. I wanted to tell you that I love your model. Has everyone gotten an opportunity to speak first round? Is Humam here?

Humam
So I'm just gonna give a few points. First of all, I'm glad that I'm at least the youngest round here and I'm proud to hear different analogies and different points of view over here. So, I'm going to give a different perspective in terms of the industry itself and some type of analogy regarding vocational training and practicality of the industry itself. So thoughts about stuff other than just education? I'm going to start with different points of view from developing and developed countries since I've studied both well. It was a simple and going back to the basics and we're going to be straightforward. While studying in developed countries, a student is not is not asked to seek permission for leaving the class, whether it's for a phone call, or even for going to the toilet doesn't matter. If he's an adult, she's an adult, it doesn’t matter, but in developing countries, such situations are emphasized, no, you still need permission to leave a room, how the hell are we expecting different students and young professionals to seek different practices if going back to basics, and basic human needs, those aren't covered, hence, different practices other than just normal academia.
Another point is I'm also going to focus on the perspective of a young professional, and a student. Students usually seek belonging and seek communities, they need to focus further on their lives. I know it sounds a bit theoretical, and it sounds a bit more like a life coach. But this specific point is what usually drags a student to go towards self-learning or going towards other industries, it could also affect what they truly want, instead of pushing them towards engineering, and management, most of the, and sometimes medicine as well, in every single country, and we're not talking about only developed or even developed countries. So another point that I have been realizing throughout the previous years, is coaching, the need for further coaches, and every industry.
That being said, those coaches are integrated within every university, hence having more and more coaches than just educators, coaches in terms of having the students. And that starts even from the school perspective, and not just the universities and higher education have more coaches, more counselors, and people that could understand day-to-day life instead of having tons of students and not being able to. Something solely to TAs in most universities. But in this case, we're talking about further practices, whether it's leadership or team building, I'll get back to that in a second, and further emphasis on different projects.
That has also been a gap between different countries, emphasis on projects, and not just for senior year and not for a specific curriculum. No, having more projects, more practicality, would have the mindset pivoted towards project management is a small example that I loved. And I bumped into a big global firm, just a few days ago. And they have this new employee acting as a project manager but in a legal firm. Hence, project management should also be integrated into different courses. And again, coaching and project management instead of just educating. So project management, no matter what the industry we're talking about, would be a critical thing to learn. Having different catalysts, and-industry, networkers, different organizations, sometimes those might be even startups. I'm going to give a few examples from even developing countries that I have been working with, throughout the past several years.
Now, another point that I loved that was brought up, was entrepreneurship, and every university and the entrepreneurial zone. But what skips the mind usually, is the idea of having intrapreneurs having people that could collaborate in every industry, whether it's corporate, traditional small businesses, or micro businesses, doesn't matter. But having employees, being employees isn't a bad thing. Not everyone was born a leader and that is normal. And if you cannot be led, you cannot lead, and that comes from a perspective. I am a business and management consultant.
Another thing that I would want it to emphasize, was the idea of having students learn how to self-learn. This is tough, and again, this is usually educated or taught back in school, but not enough emphasis was ever made. I'm giving the normal situation to most young professionals. I started my consulting career and coaching career when I was 17. I entered university when I was 17. I started in pre-med and then what? I decided to go towards business as my choice. But the idea of mentioning that was the idea of my struggles. And the same way that I've seen people usually say that theory is not the same as practice. And that's where I say, You're wrong. What helped me a lot, starting as a young consultant, was the idea of taking theory since I was in university, and putting that into practice every single day, giving back to society again. This goes back to creating a community belonging to every university student. Then another point would be having more coaches.
I did mention that, but organizations and startups, I'm gonna give a small example as there was a startup foundation a few years ago, which was called EIC Engineering International Corporation. And the idea behind that was to integrate different engineering students with factories and solving those problems. And I was surrounded by engineering students while they were in university. Another small example would be Beirut today. I did mentor them very recently. And the idea of both of them are super young founders and what they're trying to integrate right now, which is working with young journalists and having them outsourced. And hence, the idea of side gigs, the idea of hustling is taught even further to university students. And it doesn't mean that all of them are entrepreneurs, per se, but all of them are trying and thriving in the same industry.
Another small example would be the International Youth Ambassadors Foundation, which started by integrating different models of the United Nations, globally with different university students and different universities. And that being said, up until today, whether aluminized or different, different students, right now, schools, universities, they're still active, and that turned them towards an entrepreneurial accelerator than just being a Model United Nations Organization, or integrating Model United Nations. So different industries need different catalysts and different networkers. And I'm just gonna finalize the idea of leadership, and team building. It is more crucial than said, and I cannot emphasize this enough. In team building and communication, most individuals cannot write a proper email. I know it's called a soft skill. But for today's market, and even previously, we should start calling them as hard skills, whether again, team building communications, the idea of financial literacy, integrating the idea of ROI, why are you currently studying University? What are your intentions? It sounds cheesy, but it is what is needed currently for students. And again, I'm giving from a coach's perspective, mostly. That is my current analogy for the current question.

Dr. Laura
Thank you, Humam, so the many things that you said there echoed a lot of what our colleagues are saying here. But one thing I'd like to point out about what you said, which is very important, you said, teaching students how to learn, which is the bottom line here. I was told years and years and years ago, by a teacher, that if you can write well, and you can speak well, and if you can learn. There's nothing you cannot do. And that's the bottom line here. How do we do a better job of that? I love your focus on coaching, mentoring, and counseling because it looks at a student holistically. I have so many students that have stress, anxiety, depression, and all kinds of accommodations. And it can get a little tricky to manage 60 students that all need special consideration, but we do it on the corporate side. I did regular one on ones, build these into the courses and the curriculums.
So that we have a pulse on where our students are. If a student is hungry, we have students in the US and universities that do not have enough food to eat. If a student is hungry, it's going to be challenging to learn. So again, you point out to take a holistic look at each individual and focus on this coaching, mentoring, and counseling, which is really at the heart of education, if we define it that way. Beautiful stuff. Thank you so much for your contribution. Thank you, everyone, for your contribution. We're getting close to the hour
So we're gonna go around the room. Thank you, everyone, for your extremely valuable participation, and commentary goosebumps. If we could just go around one more time and get some last-minute commentary. I see it in my Zoom Room. Daniel, you're first in my queue here. Last minute comments.

Prof. Daniel
Sure thing, I think there's a broad agreement here on the types of problems and challenges that we face. And I think it's going to take concerted efforts to break through because the conditions that got us here as an industry aren't changing. The direction the industry is going as a sector and the context in which we find ourselves are changing dramatically. So we have to think differently, we have to really change the model, structurally, to make sure that we have that bridge built between academia and industry, whether we're talking about small business or big business doesn't matter. We need to make sure that we're thinking faster than we used to.

Dr. Laura
Beautiful agility and transformation. Ghassan

Dr. Ghassan
I want to conclude like this, I think when you look at the United States educational system, and industry, even though many of that finalists are from the United States, I think we can learn a whole lot. I'm talking about other countries, because many of the universities, the big ones that are well known, I'm not talking about Stanford, and Berkeley, I'm talking about most universities there, have realized what we were talking about, not just today, but many years ago. And there is a lot of work that has been done. There is a big trust. This is one thing, by the way, that is lacking in developing countries, when you compare it with the United States, the trust between industry and education, or academia, and the United States from what I have seen since I started there, from my bachelor's to the Ph.D. The trust is where there is no university without any industrial links. Whether it was NASA or CBath for other corporate, huge governmental, or non-governmental institutions. So, yes, the issue of alumni. Also, in the US I have never seen any country that focuses on alumni, as I've seen, the American universities. I wish I could see that here we try. We are trying to get in touch with our alumni here. But I don't think we had that much success. Yeah, we do some invitations for some of the alumni every two years. But no, not just as I've seen that they have a complete alumni system that connects graduates,
I still receive emails from the school where I went in Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, till today. Every week or two weeks, I receive an email that system, I think, even though you could criticize whatever you want, today, the educational system that but from my point of view, I think as someone who teaches or who works in a country like the United Arab Emirates, or in Jordan as when I was teaching, I can learn, I'm still learning from just visiting many of the American universities. I don't want to be prejudiced to that state's education, but I am to a certain extent. Thank you.

Dr. Laura
Thank you so much. And I love your focus on this knowledge sharing, sharing our experience across the globe, across different industries, across layers. It's sharing and the relationship of trust through sharing of information experience. and innovations beautiful. Thank you. Humam?

Humam
As a final point, I would usually focus on creating the idea of what are your current interests. What are your current hobbies for different students, and university students, again, I usually love to go back to basics. And most young professionals choose either their career path or their social life. But you could collaborate in both regarding interests and hobbies. Most university students and most young professionals lack hobbies, they do not have any hobbies or interests or feel lost. This could help a lot towards again, accessing different or approaching different industries.
Another point that I forgot actually to mention and is worth mentioning, is people usually say, and I've never focused on this up until recently when an economist from the US came to Jordan, and he stated, people, keep on saying “ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem”. And he's like, What, which ecosystem are we talking about is supposed to be ecosystems, plural. And again, integrating cross-industry, and other methodology that is also worth mentioning, which is shadowing, shadowing, which is usually found in different corporates. But this could also be implemented with startups in different industries. And again, looking at innovation and looking at innovation from a different perspective, for example, opening up a venture that supports legal students or law students, a different perspective. So instead of giving advisory and consultancy, you could start creating different ideas, startups, or, again, whether you're an employer or an employee, creating a new venture, and an innovative way of new methodologies. Right now, post-COVID has shown us different methodologies, and different needs. Some of them are a bit challenging but are worth mentioning, as well. Hence discovering whether as educators or individuals, young professionals seeking a new career path. This is also worth mentioning, again, your methodologies as opposed to COVID using technology utilizing technology. And yeah, that's it.

Dr. Laura
Thank you, Humam. Again, restating the theme of partnership collaboration, making it meaningful for students, meeting them where they are beautiful. JR, did you go you haven't gone yet for the final. There you go.

Dr. J.R
Thank you. Just to add on, to the conversation one thing that strikes me is this trend that the industry has of, in some cases, not even requiring a degree to get hired. It says, and I've heard it described this way, for academia now, our competition isn't always other universities anymore. Our competition is YouTube. And there's a grain of truth in that, in that I had one professor describe a conversation he had with the student, the student who would go to class to get credit, but he would go home and get on YouTube to learn what he needed to learn or wanted to learn. So the sense of urgency and a sense of importance for us to push these ideas that we talked about today is very strong, good because the industry now is saying we may not need what you offer, we may not need your degree. And students are saying we may not need your which you have in the classroom, I can get it somewhere else. It's not that we aren't able to give them what they need. So I think we have to change what we, how we deliver it, and what we're delivering.

Dr. Laura
So important, I created a university on the corporate side myself to customize what we need for our employees. So, you're talking about this competition, we need to do a better job. My students tell me that if they don't know what to study, and when they do study, they often go to Google or somewhere else to get the information and I'm like, wow, so this is the delivery. So we got to work on innovation here very quickly to increase value for the student dime, what they're paying for is so important. Who's up next? Ajith.

Dr. Ajith
Thank you, Laura. Yes, I think the one important aspect is also a change of mindset from both academia and industry. Because industry says, This is what we want, Academy feels No, this cannot be done, this cannot be integrated into a semester system, we find still some gaps being there. So the need of the RS is how to use the technology, and integrate this gap between industry and academia. Because everyone feels yes, you are training students for us they feel they need to know the basics and standards. But in the process, a lot of things have changed as somebody was talking about information available on YouTube information available on somewhere. So we shouldn't be able to take something to the classroom. That's not that there is not available easily for them on social media. And it adds value to them to face future challenges.
So today, for example, I go to a class I select a case study whose teaching notes are not available on Google first, I search for myself first, then go and give it to the students because there's no point in giving the same case study for giving them and all the material is available to them. So that's one thing. And when we talk to industry, they say no, this is not what we expect. The academician says this is not this cannot be done in this way. So I think there is a huge gap as Dr. Ghassan said or all of this set. But I think the corporate, the carrier guidance cell should come in and we shouldn't have it. So at this juncture, what we are trying an experiment at Skyline University in Nigeria is getting all the government organizations like small and medium enterprises Ministry of Commerce, we are getting them on the table, the National Incubation Center. And we are also getting the local prominent companies together and linking with our skyline Innovation Entrepreneurship Center. And we are asking them, see, these are our students, these are this is we are these are the skill sets that they have, we will make them present their ideas and proposals.
And we'll ask them what is missing. And they will ask us to give input on how we have to create the curriculum and see that it fits them. Hope it works, we are trying to link all of them together and get there because at the end of the day, yes, we want to be an international university. But we also have to meet the local needs. So we believe in thinking global acting local, a lot of conversations you have and I think that works for us here. And we are trying to do that here. And I think we have to use the technology. Now we don't have the option of not and the Academy also has to change the word the way we teach. As somebody said, the methodologies that we follow, I think there'll be a complete transformation in the coming next 5-10 years. And in the process. I think the topmost priority should be the industry requirements. Because the at end of the day, if Industry Skills, we know what skills the industry needs, and identify those skills. And first upskill, the faculty again, I feel because faculties are somebody with 30-40 years back, if you don't upskill, the faculty, and you want the students to be ready for the future requirements, it becomes an all our educational institutions have to invest a lot on upskilling the faculty because that's the need of the art. After all, new technologies have come where faculty have no idea how to theme it. So unless you train the faculty and upskill, the faculty, I think automatically it will go to the students. And we'll be able to achieve something by having the right skills and the students to move forward. That's my conclusion. Thank you.

Dr. Laura
It's great as you so you're talking all about change, changing mindsets, changing models, changing faculty. But what's important is leveraging technology. Leveraging information technology, simulations, and machine learning. It's here, it's been here, and we have to leverage it. Beautiful. Nauman.

Rai Nauman
Thank you, as suppose for speaking, I was reflecting on a quote that takes a village to raise a child, I think in many ways, you can directly transfer that it takes a village to help navigate a student through the higher education system, and ultimately enter the industry. When we think about faculty, staff, students, the administration, the community partners, we oftentimes have to ask ourselves, especially in the United States, at public institutions, how do we continue to remain relevant, we have to look at public institutions and think about the funding model. And this is why it's so crucial that as much as we focused on this conversation, and public institutions, we're also thinking about how we remain relevant, and that's through funding, so reaching out to our state legislators or federal lawmakers and saying, Hey, if we want to have these soft skills on these hard skills within students as they ultimately graduate, we have to continue to invest in higher education. That means having that conversation about the importance of it, making sure that folks understand that a student that's more educated is less likely to be reliant on social services, less likely to be incarcerated, less likely to be in debt, more likely to contribute to the state's economy.
These are conversations that are a part of this discussion, because in order for us to continue to solve these measurable outcomes. To solve these questions, we have to continue to have the funding as well, on the private side of things, we need to make the same argument to donors and community members to continue to invest in higher education. And lastly, I wanted to thank Majeed and Linda for reaching out to me to speak today. And Laura, for you to help us facilitate a conversation across the globe, it's one of the most challenging things to do, I would say in any is to think about that from a global perspective, and then to bring that to the forefront as you have today. So thank you.

Dr. Laura
Thank you. It's a pleasure. Nauman, so many important things you said, relevancy, that continued investment, from government, from the private industry all over the place. The goal here is to improve global society. Right. We're all in this together, we have to start sharing.

Dr. Dennis
Thank you, Laura. I'm gonna try and keep this quick. But one thing that I do want to mention, especially for our audience out there is we've offered a lot of why. And we've offered a lot of these high-level ideas and a little less in terms of granular how to do it. That's something that I want to encourage you to take this stuff back to your faculty back to your Dean's or whoever your governing structures and say, let's see how we can do this and make this work for us. Remember, what works here at the University of Florida may not work at Washington may not work in Nigeria. A few things I wanted to comment on are addressing Laura, what you said, with your online courses being accelerated, and especially what we're talking about, how are we competing with YouTube? Well, let's embrace this idea of what YouTube is. This semester, I experimented with something, and it went very well, the students loved it. And I got to say this class, I did not deliver it as a fluff class, I use the flipped classroom approach.
They watch the lectures offline, and they came ready to discuss. It's that discussion, that is half the value of college, I use Harvard cases, as another example, you can write your cases, you don't have to do that. The other aspect is always when it comes to college, I encourage the co-curricular, the organizations, that's where a lot of their soft skills are built if you can't build them in that in the classroom, which I have managed to do. Speaking to Newman, I love that you identified financial and culinary skills are required. We've done that here. And speaking to those alumni, what we have found is that it reduces some of that stress on adjusting to real life so they can focus on their career success. You're you hit the nail on the head with that, gosh, you asked something about alumni.
I gotta tell you that Alumni Engagement starts freshman year, if you can make sure that you're offering customer delight, if you will, to those freshmen to their engineer, they're going to want to give back. I think that is also really important. Daniel, you mentioned Career Services not working very well. We just basically bucked the trend. We have our campus career services and what they don't do. Our college, our business college has their career services that start offering workshops presented by industry. That's and of course, we use a sponsorship approach, which allows us to also generate additional revenue, so we don't have to worry about incurring more cost to the student on that. And teaching students to learn, I just want to underscore that, again, having a teaching assistant, and a mentorship style approach to what you're doing can do that. And there are absolutely ways, especially with projects, especially with working with industry to help build a lot of those soft skills, and just echo what someone else said, Thank you for your time here and I appreciate the audience's time in engaging with us and hopefully taking some of this stuff back to their homes.

Dr. Laura
Thank you, Dennis. All points were excellent. I flipped the classroom all the time. And the students love it. They are so engaged. There's so much to be said. You learn through teaching so I love your flip-the-classroom idea.

Dr. Laura
Folks, this was an amazing session. Amazing, truly amazing, amazing, and goosebumps. I can't wait to start working with you on empowering higher ed.