As encouraged by the participants in the 2010 IAU International Conference on Values and Ethics held at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, IAU collaborated with the Magna Charta Observatory (MCO) on these Guidelines for an Institutional Code of Ethics in Higher Education. The joint IAU-MCO Working Group aimed to offer institutions a set of comprehensive Guidelines for the development or review of their own Code of Ethics rather than attempting the impossible – preparing a single Code that would be relevant in highly diverse higher education contexts. Thus, the purpose of the Guidelines is to serve as an instrument to develop, improve or strengthen policies and ethical codes in higher education institutions worldwide. The Guidelines were approved at the 14th IAU General Conference in 2012, as well as by the MCO Council.

A well-educated citizenry is the foundation of social equity, cohesion and successful participation in the global knowledge economy. As a result, most countries have set goals to increase the share of the population with higher education and/or broaden access to higher education for individuals that are under-represented because of socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, [dis]ability or location.

Academic Freedom and University Autonomy are essential prerequisites for universities to meet their responsibilities to society and, at the same time, a means of strengthening the principles of pluralism, tolerance and academic solidarity between institutions of higher learning and between individual scholars and students. In 1997, UNESCO asked IAU to lead an initiative that aimed to protect these principles on an international level. In this context, the IAU statement advocates the elaboration of a new Social Contract between university and society and calls for a broadly recognised International Charter of mutual 6 IAU SPEAKS OUT rights and obligations, including adequate monitoring mechanisms for its application. The Statement was formally adopted by the IAU 11th General Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2000.

Responding primarily to World Bank policy on higher education funding, as first outlined in the Bank’s 1987 report entitled The Financing of Education in Developing Countries and reiterated in the 1994 guidelines document entitled Higher Education: the Lessons of Experience, the Buenos Aires Statement, adopted by IAU in 1994, articulates the Association’s opposition to the key thrust of these policies.