UNU to Host Regional Conference on Higher Education
The United Nations University (UNU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Japan's Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, and the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (AUAP) will hold a major regional conference on higher education at UNU Headquarters from 8-10 July 1997.The conference is entitled "National Strategies and Regional Cooperation for the 21st Century." It aims to design academic cooperation and human resource development systems in the Asia-Pacific region for the next millennium. It will achieve this by providing the participating Education Ministers and high-level government and university officials with a forum in which they can accomplish four things:
. exchange ideas on how to reengineer higher education in Asia;
. encourage collaboration between higher education stakeholders and help mobilize the resources that they need to make improvements;
. promote the internationalization of higher education; and
. adopt a Tokyo Declaration on Higher Education.One of the UNU's contributions to the three-day event will be a video-conference seminar on the topic "the Future of Higher Education." The speakers will be located at UNU Headquarters, Tokyo's Keio University, Bangkok's Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Jakarta's Bandung Institute of Technology (BIT). Anyone with Internet access will be able to take part in the 8 July video-conference. The speakers will each have a computer terminal in front of them and will be able respond to questions that are sent in through the Internet.
Also taking place on 8 July will be a keynote speech entitled "the Future of Asia and the Pacific and the Role of Higher Education" by Mr. Takashi Kosugi, Japan's Minister of Education, Science, Sports and Culture. The conference will also be attended by Mr. Federico Mayor, UNESCO's Director-General.
Regional conferences similar to this have been or will be held in Africa, Europe, the Arab States, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The results and recommendations that come out of these meetings will be discussed in Paris at UNESCO's 1998 World Conference on Higher Education.
Media representatives are cordially invited to attend. Simultaneous English-Japanese interpretation will be provided for most of the sessions.
Additional information is available at
http://chcd-0005.ias.unu.edu:8888/hedu/ , or from the UNU Public Affairs Section:
Tel.: (03) 5467-1243, -1246
Fax: (03) 3406-7346
