Co-organized by: UNESCO’s Secretariat for the Global Convention on Higher Education and the International Association of Universities (IAU)
Date and time: 24 November 2025 from 13:00 to 14:00 Central European Time (CET).
Format: Zoom webinar. Prior registration is required.
Target audience: Higher education institutions, policymakers and higher education stakeholders
Languages: English and French, with simultaneous interpretation
Background
Higher education is tasked to drive innovation, equity, and social transformation. At a time of global uncertainty, conflict, and transformation, UNESCO’s Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, the first UN treaty on higher education, offers a bold, forward-looking framework for engaging institutions to improve access, facilitate mobility and ensure fair recognition of qualifications.
While governments are the formal signatories, higher education institutions are critical actors in implementing the convention into practice. Higher education institutions make recognition decisions by assessing applicant’s qualifications, admitting students, recognizing prior learning, hiring faculty, and building partnerships across borders. Their engagement and alignment with the convention are essential to realizing its goals and ensuring fair and transparent recognition of qualifications. This webinar wishes to focus on the crucial role of higher education institutions as both guardians and executors on these processes.
Objectives
To raise awareness about the Global Convention on Higher Education and its implications, higher education leaders will explore trends and challenges they face around learner mobility and fair recognition of qualifications that must be addressed to deepen institutional engagement.
Raise awareness of the global and regional conventions among higher education institutions and their role in implementation
Explore institutional perspectives on recognition, mobility, and collaboration across borders
Identify practical challenges higher education institutions face in aligning with the global and regional conventions
Demonstrate the interdependence between recognition and data, and the State Parties’ responsibilities in terms of data collection and data provision extending to the universities
Foster dialogue between policymakers, researchers, institutional leaders, and practitioners.
Speakers
Noah W. Sobe, Chief of Section, Higher Education, UNESCO
Andreas Corcoran, Deputy Secretary General, International Association of Universities
Stig Arne Skjerven, UNESCO Chair for the Global Recognition Convention 2023-2027, Norway
Nopraenue Sajjarax Dhirathiti , Vice President for Global Partnerships and University Council, Mahidol University, Thailand