New Opportunity for Global Connection

• Impacts from the pandemic have expanded virtual connections, allowing business schools to nurture globally aware graduates through international collaborations.
• Business educators need to prepare students to balance global awareness with their understanding of local challenges.
• Leveraging technology for virtual interactions and knowledge-sharing will be key to increasing mobility and further globalizing higher education.

Transcript

Geoff Perry: [0:15] One of the major changes over the last few years has been the increased globalization of higher education. It's coming a number of ways. It's not only the mobility of business school faculty to move around, also of students, of learners, the increased overseas exchanges, and abilities to study abroad.

[0:40] One of the things that COVID has done is increased the virtual connections that we have across the world. There are some wonderful examples already of how business schools are using that to create leaders who graduate, who have an awareness, and understanding any connection with people in other countries. There are some excellent examples where business schools would set up virtual teams across countries, working on real projects for organizations across countries.

[1:15] As we move forward, it's interesting because the global and the local, both are really important. We need to develop leaders who have an awareness of the world, who have connections, and understanding, but also have an understanding of their local area.

[1:30] One of the positives that's coming out of COVID is it's identified some more effective ways or driven us to more effective ways that we can prepare our leaders to be global.

[1:45] I'll give you an example. The data in the University of New South Wales in Australia, it said, "During COVID, we could get top people from North America and from Europe to come in and talk with our students, which historically, you would have had to try to fly them out. It takes too long, you couldn't get them."

[2:04] The understanding of how we can use technology in a really effective way to link, to prepare our leaders for global roles, and to expose them to thoughts from people, leaders, and issues around the world has been a valuable contribution.