Wonkhe @ Home: Skills to thrive

Today’s students have access to opportunities, tools and technologies that no generation has had in the past. But they also face a deeply uncertain future: the Covid-19 pandemic, digital disruption, widening social inequality and a challenging labour market.

Universities aspire to prepare students with the knowledge, skills and behaviours that will enable them to thrive as professionals and as citizens in a world that’s constantly evolving. Students need, in addition to a disciplinary grounding, an understanding of how to mobilise their knowledge to make an impact and shape their future in their profession and their community.

At this Wonkhe @ Home event, in partnership with Adobe, we’ll explore which skills, competencies and mindsets best enable students to succeed and how they can be made tangible in curricula. We’ll hear insight from students and academics on the skills students need to thrive and we’ll consider whether the current political framing of the value and quality of university courses adequately captures universities’ aspirations for their graduates.

09.30 Taking back the value debate

The public framing of the value of higher education is increasingly centred on graduate level employment. It’s widely agreed that a university education is a great deal more than that one metric – but how should the sector ground its claims to value? And where are the opportunities and risks for universities in engaging with the value debate?

10.00 Students’ hopes for their future

Our student panellists share their reflections on how they see higher education experience preparing them for their imagined futures.

10.30 Break

10.45 Strategies for making student development tangible

We’ll share the findings of Wonkhe/Adobe research into academics’ perceptions of graduate skills, and with the help of an expert panel, think through how universities can mobilise the curriculum and co-curriculum to bring student development to life.

11.45 A curriculum for a complex world

What skills, capabilities and mindsets does the world demand of graduates, now and in the future? What are the implications for the higher education curriculum?

12.30 Close