Futureproofing or future-changing? What higher education must give up

At the Higher Education Summit 2026 in Bordeaux, Noah W. Sobe made a distinction that stayed with me. The challenge, he argued, is “not to imagine the future university or future-proofing the university but ensuring that higher education becomes a future-changing force.” The difference matters. Futureproofing is essentially defensive. It asks how our institutions can adapt to a changing world, respond to disruption and remain relevant. Becoming future-changing requires a very different posture. It asks what role higher education institutions can play in defining change.

Most of us in higher education would probably say we want to do the latter. But I think we need to be honest about how often we are still doing the former. Transformation is an agenda, not an achievement Sobe’s framework, reflected in UNESCO’s 2026 publication Transforming higher education: Global collaboration on visioning and action, sets out a transformation agenda for higher education.

Sobe outlined several shifts that higher education needs to make: embracing plural forms of knowledge, establishing human-centred roles in relation to AI, moving from exclusion and scarcity towards inclusion, developing lifelong learning and flexible learning pathways, and replacing hierarchy with greater collaboration. It is an ambitious list. More importantly, it should be read as an agenda rather than a description of where higher education stands today.

Some of it closely reflects what we have been building at EMA. Inclusion, for example, is already part of how we work at EMA. We want to make management education accessible to students from different backgrounds and academic paths.  Many of our students have taken less conventional routes into higher education. They may have changed direction, taken time away from education, studied in international systems that are difficult to compare directly, or returned to education after professional experience.

These paths should not automatically be treated as weaknesses. Our role is to recognise their potential, provide the right academic environment and support students through to employment.There are also areas we still want to strengthen. Lifelong learning is one. We need to take things further by offering executive education and shorter, modular programmes that can meet learners at different stages of their lives. If we believe education should continue throughout a lifetime, our structures need to make that possible.

Acknowledging what remains to be done is as important as recognising what has already been achieved.
Higher education cannot transform society from a distance. There was another line from Sobe that particularly stayed with me:

“We don't change the world by acting on it, but by being a part of it.”

I agree with this, but I think it also presents higher education with an uncomfortable reality. Higher education institutions can be important hubs for societal change. They are places where minds are formed, assumptions challenged and perspectives transformed. But higher education is not all of society. Remaining genuinely part of society requires deliberate and ongoing effort. Institutions cannot simply talk about openness while continuing to engage with the same people, organisations and ideas.

According to me, this means being willing to explore unusual partnerships and engage beyond the sector’s traditional circles. It means taking lifelong learning seriously and becoming more open to different ways of learning and different kinds of knowledge. It also means recognising that higher education may not always be the most impactful model. That is perhaps not the most comfortable thing for someone who runs a school to say. But if our objective is impact rather than simply preserving institutions, we should be willing to ask where higher education adds genuine value and where another approach might do more.That also requires us to examine our own blind spots and biases. Being part of society means allowing ourselves to be challenged by it, rather than assuming that change must always originate within our institutions.

"What gives us the capacity to change the world?"

Michael Yang of the Copernicus Alliance posed another question to the room:

"What gives someone the capacity to change the world?"

A part of the answer lies in experiencing more than one world from the inside.My experience across four countries and in both the public and private sectors has shown me that the same challenge can look very different depending on where you stand. The value is not simply in observing those differences. It comes from participating in different environments and allowing them to challenge the assumptions we bring with us.

Perhaps the same should be true for higher education institutions. If we want to contribute to change, we need to remain connected to the worlds outside our own. Bringing the conversation back to EMA. A conference is only useful if some of the questions follow you home. One of those questions is how we can make sustainability more present in the everyday life of EMA, not only in what our students study, but in how our students and staff experience the school.

For the 2026/2027 academic year, we are renewing that commitment by integrating sustainability more deliberately into student and staff life, beginning with the European Sustainable Development Week in September and October.

While sustainability policies may be developed at an institutional or executive level, it is teachers, staff and students who bring them to life every day. They need to be part of the conversation, not simply asked to implement decisions made elsewhere. At EMA, we want to keep creating space for that conversation.This is a starting point and there is still more we can do. But perhaps becoming a future-changing institution starts there: by questioning our own role, being willing to change and staying connected to the society we are part of. Now, the challenge is to keep turning that reflection into action at EMA.