20 years of DIES – virtual anniversay conference „Higher Education Management for Sustainable Universities”
More than 160 people from over 40 countries took part in the virtual anniversary conference on 09/10 November 2021. Among them were many DIES alumni from the three DIES partner regions Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, German university representatives and international experts in higher education management.
Higher education institutions worldwide are impacted by the corona pandemic and currently have to cope at unprecedented speed with transformational challenges in digitisation, higher education management and the further development of research and teaching. Reliable partners are required to successfully shape such upheavals. It is therefore very gratifying that for twenty years we have been collaborating with the HRK and in cooperation with German higher education institutions to promote professionalism in higher education management and processes in the countries of Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. Even after two decades, its partner-based approach means that DIES is still the right programme for developing the higher education sector in the countries of the Global South’, said DAAD President Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee.
The event, entitled "Higher Education Management for Sustainable Universities - 20 Years of Dialogue on Innovative Higher Education Strategies (DIES)", took a look back at the past twenty years of the DIES programme, which is jointly coordinated by the DAAD and the HRK and since the beginning in 2001 funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The event focused on the discussion of future challenges for higher education management worldwide and their significance for the further development of the DIES programme.
After the keynote by Professor Philip Macnaghten from Wageningen University, DIES alumni and a German university representative discussed the question "What can higher education management contribute to establishing sustainable universities? The panellists agreed that a common understanding of sustainability must be created, but that the development and implementation of concrete measures must always take local needs and circumstances into account.
On the second day, the DIES alumni, including many university managers, had the opportunity to discuss various central university management topics (leadership, internationalisation, quality assurance) with a view to creating sustainable universities in supra-regional workshops and to generate concrete impulses for the further development of the DIES programme. Initial ideas included implementing modules on Sustainable University Management in DIES training courses, virtual dialogue events on the topic, and conducting a study to survey needs. Even after twenty years, DIES thus remains true to its motto of developing new innovative formats of university management in dialogue and is thus also very well positioned for the next twenty years.
