Higher Education Global Evidence Summit: Evidence on Higher Education and Private Sector Engagement
Private Sector Engagement Day Summary
About Private Sector Engagement Day
Higher education’s connection and collaboration with the private sector and partner country governments are critical to ensuring teaching, learning, research, and innovation meet local and global needs. Question 7 of USAID’s Higher Education Learning Agenda asks: “How can HEIs collaborate more effectively with the private sector to enhance the relevance and quality of teaching and learning, and research and innovation?” In eight summit sessions, we heard directly from higher education institutions, government representatives, and private sector actors who have successfully engaged in mutually beneficial collaboration, the success of these collaborations, and the challenges that are a part of creating and sustaining them.
An additional resource that helps to address this learning agenda question is the USAID Center for Education’s Higher Education and Industry Collaboration Evidence Primer. This document provides an overview of the existing scholarship to strengthen evidence-based activity implementation to assist USAID Missions, implementing partners, and other practitioners in better supporting higher education programming in collaboration with the private sector.
Click here to visit our YouTube playlist with all recorded sessions from Private Sector Engagement and Convergence Week.
Private Sector Engagement Plenaries
Five Key Words to Build Trust, Make Friends, and Strengthen Academic and Industry Collaborations
- Mir Tillah, Senior Education Advisor, USAID/Philippines
- Rafaelita “Fita” M. Aldaba, Undersecretary for the Competitiveness and Innovation Group, Philippine Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
Establishing strong linkages between higher education institutions (HEIs) and the private sector are critical to support higher education’s role in innovation and employability. To be effective and relevant, development assistance in higher education needs to address the fundamental but complex relationship by working with HEIs, the private sector, and governments. Framed around five keywords, this Fireside Chat explored what successful higher education and industry collaborations look like and how governments and development assistance can support these initiatives. This session spotlighted higher education industry collaboration in the Philippines.
Conversations Outside of the C-Suite
- Evelyn Rodriguez-Perez, Country Representative, USAID/Paraguay
- Muffy Koch, Senior Regulatory Affairs Manager, J.R. Simplot Company
- Sibusisiwe Makhanya, Research Scientist and Manager, IBM
- Roeland Roelofs, Global Marketing Head Heart Failure, Novartis
There is a widespread push for higher education to become more relevant through collaboration with the private sector. Despite the rhetoric, many higher education institutions (HEIs) struggle to find ways to engage in such collaboration. Evidence on “what works and what doesn’t” would be valuable to both HEIs and to donor agencies seeking to nurture higher education-private sector linkages. In this panel, the audience heard from three different private sector industries who have collaborated with HEIs and USAID about the who, what, where, when, and how of successful collaborations. This panel focused on how these companies have approached these collaborations, why they engage, and how they think about this collaboration in the context of their other business goals.
Private Sector Engagement Day Closing Plenary
- Angélica Natera, Executive Director, Laspau and Member, USAID Higher Education Learning Network Steering Group
- Mike Hernandez, International Affairs Officer, Universidad Autónoma de Santa Ana
Audience Takeaways
Visit our sub-page to view content from all the Private Sector Engagement Day sessions:
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