Working together to address challenges

Students wearing protective face masks have their temperatures taken while entering their college campus in Manila. - AFP

I WAS in Helsinki, Finland a few weeks ago attending the “Top Management Programme” organised by Advance Higher Education. With me on the programme were leaders from 20 other universities from the United Kingdom, Australia and China.

We were on a learning trip to explore what makes the Finnish education systems, and the Finnish society in general, innovative and highly productive. Besides discussing policy, academic innovation and universities’ funding, what was one of the key topics that all these university leaders, and the Finnish hosts, spoke about? Yes, you guessed it, it was the Covid-19 (coronavirus) and how our universities are responding to this global health emergency.