Institutional challenges and implications for HEIS: transformation, mission and vision for the 21st century

Abstract

In the 21st century, higher education institutions (HEIs), as well as the sector in general, face many challenges related to achieving a balance between responding to and initiating change. Their problems are further exacerbated by the necessity to serve national needs as well as to be world players who can meet global needs. Government initiatives to reform higher education systems focus on transforming institutions to meet national needs and to make their nations competitive in a global world. In contrast, most institutions focus their transformation on survival and competition with other institutions in the sector as well as outside the sector. Meeting national needs has been relatively easier to achieve because the institutions were set up with that requirement in mind. What remains a challenge is to redefine higher education and its role in a globalized world in which global challenges need global solutions. Institutional initiatives to address global problems, however limited, have been essential for linking institutions to the global development agenda, although their contribution to sustainable development at a global level has been inadequate. There is a need for new types of institutions that will tackle global issues and focus on an agenda for human and social development.