The ACU campaign, ‘The world beyond 2015 – is higher education ready?’, aims to raise awareness of how higher education can and should respond to global challenges beyond 2015. To this end, the Association posed the six questions below related to this topic and invited role players at universities worldwide to respond.

1.     Why does the post-2015 agenda matter for higher education?

2.     How are universities already addressing local, national and international issues?

3.     How can universities prepare to respond to the post-2015 agenda?

4.     What partnerships should universities establish to achieve their objectives?

5.     How can universities champion their contributions to the broader society?

6.     How relevant and realistic are the post-2015 goals likely to be?

As a research-intensive university, UP has an integral part to play in improving the lives of many people in our own country and on the African continent as a whole. According to Prof De la Rey, communication is absolutely key in helping universities to champion their contributions to the broader society. ‘I think that, compared to fifty years ago, universities are now more able to embrace the new media (social media) and other electronic interfaces, and I think our students are actually ahead of us in some respects. I recognise students as important communication agents for universities,’ she said.

On their website, the ACU states that higher education is an essential part of the response to some of the serious challenges the world faces. It is further pointed out that ‘the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire at the end of 2015 and a new set of international targets will be tabled at the United Nations early in 2016. Whatever goals emerge, higher education will play a fundamental role in enabling countries to achieve them.’

Despite the fact that higher education was never explicitly involved in the MDGs as either a development goal in its own right or as a potential agent to address other development goals, it is clear that universities and research institutions have the potential to play a huge role in terms of development. The ACU argues that, as teaching institutions, universities are responsible for producing the engineers, health specialists, teachers, policy makers, technologists and scientists whose knowledge and leadership are needed to improve people’s lives. As research institutions, universities have enormous power to generate the cutting-edge knowledge required to contend with issues of food security, disease, climate and environmental change, and the effects and causes of poverty.

Click here to watch the official campaign video.