APEC CCHE 2019

Description

The VIII APEC International Conference on Cooperation in Higher Education was held on September 4-5, 2019 on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum at FEFU. More than 100 delegates from the countries of the Asia-Pacific region took part in the discussion: ambassadors, ministers of education and their deputies, directors of specialized departments, rectors and vice-rectors of leading universities, experts, and scientists. The main topics of discussion were the building of networks between Russian and Asian universities, the prospects for scientific and technical cooperation between the APEC economies, the development of universities as competitive scientific centers of the world level. The conference included a plenary session "APEC in the 21-st century: a new Look at Education for Politicians, Educators and all Stakeholders" and three sessions: "Higher Education and the Digital Generation", "Regional and Global Educational Networks: New Tools for Cooperation", "Academic and Scientific Achievements in the Field of Environmental Management".

Results

Recommendations and conclusions provided throughout the Conference’s sessions formed a comprehensive vision of education in Asia-Pacific. Noteworthy, the project was attended by a non-APEC economy that broadened the picture along with the prospects for future cooperation. One of the main outcomes was that the participants made recommendations on applying digital technologies to higher education and shared best practices. As a result, participants managed to reach a joint assessment of the ongoing education process in APEC.

The experts at the Conference were mostly talking about the challenges of digital education and their best practices.

The Russian experts highlighted the key challenges for Russia as the following:

How to make universities teach their students the skills that are demanded by the industry?

What is the role of education, particularly higher education, in the context of socio-economic development?

Apart from the challenges, the representatives of the National University of Science and Technology (MISIS) and Higher School of Economics shared their experience in applying online courses to the educational process.

The representatives of Japanese universities Tokyo Tokai and Tokyo NODAI described their best practices in cooperation with FEFU. Dr. Kiyoshi Yamada, the President of the Tokai University, told about the Vladivostok Educational Cruise, and Dr. Kanju Osawa, the Chairman of the Tokyo Nodai Board, mentioned the Strawberry Project – a greenhouse in FAFU Campus where Japanese and Russian students grow strawberries.