Welcome Address to QS HE Summit: Asia Pacific 2024

20th QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia-Pacific Welcome Address 09:00 Tuesday 5 November Salutations Kong Chi Meng, Director of the Education and Youth Development Bureau, Macau SAR Joseph Hun-Way Lee, President and Vice Chancellor, Macau University of Science and Technology Joe Qin, President, Lingnan University Jessica Turner, Chief Executive Officer, QS Quacquarelli Symonds Patrick Brothers, Executive Director, QS Quacquarelli Symonds Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen As chair of the QS Global Advisory Committee, I am very honoured to have been involved in the preparation of this year’s QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia-Pacific, co-hosted by Macau University of Science and Technology and Lingnan University. This year, we are celebrating our 20th annual QS Higher Ed Summit in the Asia-Pacific region. Can you believe it? The first QS-APPLE conference, as it was originally known, was held at Nanyang Technological University in 2005. It was launched a year after the first QS World University Rankings were published in 2004, which ushered in a new era in global higher education. Ben Sowter – we are talking about you. 20 years ago, universities across the Asia-Pacific were beginning to actively internationalize, embarking on proactive international student recruitment drives, seeking global opportunities to exchange students and staff and looking for new academic partnerships with international peers. The QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia-Pacific met the growing demand across the region for a new international event at which universities could meet with current and future international partners, learn from emerging best practice in the sector and share market intelligence. Initially intended as a networking conference for universities from the Asia-Pacific, from the start the event attracted delegates from North America, Europe and the Middle East – all keen to engage with the world’s most populous and dynamic region. On a personal note, I attended my first QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia-Pacific in 2006. I must have been a bit too outspoken about the ways in which I thought the event could be improved, because I was invited to a debriefing session afterwards. I was asked to chair a conference track entitled “The Big Picture” for the 3rd conference, hosted by Hong Kong Baptist University the following year in 2007. As Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and a former board member of the European Association for International Education at the time, I immediately recognized the critical importance of an annual conference in the Asia-Pacific for the development of the region’s international higher education. A year after launching the “The Big Picture”, I began chairing the conference organizing committee for the 4th conference at Yonsei University in 2008. Although my involvement has evolved over the years since, this year’s QS Higher Ed Summit marks the 18th successive year I have been part of the QS extended family. Thank you to QS for allowing me to come along on this amazing journey of building a global community of higher education practitioners and policymakers. Over the last 20 years, there have been far-reaching changes in our sector. Some have been positive: the growing interconnectedness of the world’s universities; advances in digital communications that have made video conferencing and online education universal; the growth of cross-border transnational education; and the growing awareness of the need to make internationalization more sustainable and socially responsible in the light of the Sustainable Development Goals. Others have been more negative: the insidious effect of social media, in terms of creating vacuous “echo chambers’ and fuelling the spread of misinformation and the rise of nationalism; the uncertainties created by artificial intelligence (AI); and the reemergence of geopolitical tensions between the new superpowers and the old world. I think we all conscious that Americans go to the polls today and, depending on the outcome of the US Presidential election, we could be looking at an even more unpredictable global landscape in a couple of days. Whatever happens this year, as over the last 20 years, the QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia-Pacific will be there to support the international higher education sector, and to bring conference delegates the authoritative thought leadership that stems from rich market intelligence and deep insightful analysis. This year’s 20th anniversary conference has already opened up new conversations. Last week, I was privileged to be part of the pre-summit in Almaty, hosted by Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The dramatic advances taking place in higher education in Central Asia, which is reaching out to the world and attracting university partnerships from East, West, North and South, are startling – as is the vision of the Kazakh government to make Kazakhstan a new, but alternative, education hub for Asia. And on Friday, for those of you who can join us, we will reconvene for the post-summit at Lingnan University, a university which is truly exploring the full implications of the AI revolution for the arts and humanities and the different ways it may force us to reimagine the future of higher education. But for now… On behalf of the QS Global Advisory Committee, I would like to thank you, our delegates and supporters, for attending this year’s 20th QS Higher Ed Summit Asia Pacific, and to thank our hosts, Macau University of Science and Technology and Lingnan University, for making this landmark event possible. Xièxiè. Thank you. 1