IAU conference to grapple with loss of public trust in HE

Culture war-style attacks and government threats to withdraw funding unless higher education toes the line are only politically viable if the longstanding trust in universities is broken, global sector leaders will be told when they meet in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to discuss how to build – or rebuild – trust in higher education.

The task now is to shake higher education out of its “inertia” and “up our game” to restore the “symbiotic relationship between universities and liberal democracy”, Professor Patrick Deane, the vice-president of the Administrative Board of the International Association of Universities (IAU), is set to tell delegates to this year’s annual conference at the University of Rwanda, from 21 to 23 October 2025.

Deane will be one of the speakers at this year’s conference, which is returning to Africa for the first time since the 2017 international conference was hosted by the University of Ghana in Accra, a gap extended by the COVID pandemic, although the IAU has held several other meetings in Africa in the meantime.
Despite United States President Donald Trump grabbing international headlines with wild attacks on science and universities, the IAU conferences’ organisers are determined to look at the bigger picture when it comes to rebuilding trust in higher education and research; the need to restore public confidence and trust in universities is as relevant for African countries as it is for other nations around the world.

Global South partnerships

The IAU is celebrating 75 years since it was created as UNESCO’s partnership organisation for international higher education at its annual major gathering, which moves from continent to continent each year.

Hilligje van’t Land, secretary general of the IAU, told University World News it was an ideal time to meet again in Africa, as there is increasing commitment to “build and develop North-South collaboration and more South-South cooperation between higher education systems and institutions” and reverse the tendency for African scholars and students to move to the Global North.

Van’t Land said that host country Rwanda sees a strong higher education system as one of the means “to transform the country and make it stronger today and for the future”.

She said: “Over recent decades the government has invited scholars and higher education leaders from different countries around the world, and in particular from the United Kingdom, to rebuild the higher education system to help the country educate the kind of people who are needed to lead the development of the country.”

Associate Professor Didas Kayihura Muganga, vice-chancellor of the University of Rwanda, told University World News: “The IAU’s strength, its convening power, lies in focusing on how university leaders can best support each other.”

He said the University of Rwanda is honoured to host this year’s IAU conference, adding: “As a participant in the IAU Executive Leadership Programme, I know that the issue of trust in higher education and its leadership hinges on the values of the institution and the capacity of its leaders to articulate, defend, and implement these values.”

Employability focus comes with a cost

Van’t Land said among the many issues currently challenging trust in higher education is the pressure to focus on skills and employability.

She told University World News: “Of course students want a return on investment in higher education and a job and a better life, but the skills discourse, which has been growing for the last few decades, comes at the expense of the other important missions of higher education.”

She singled out the importance of humanities and cultural values to critical thinking, which is so vital in educating future generations and creating well-rounded citizens.

“Yes, we need highly skilled and qualified people in engineering, physics and mathematics, and the like; but we need to go beyond the skills side of higher education and educate a democratic value-based citizenship able to address the global challenges locally and beyond,” said Van’t Land.

Deane, who, as well as being the association’s vice-president, is the vice-chancellor and principal of Queen’s University, Canada, and president of the Governing Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, is expected to return in his keynote address to some of the arguments he made earlier this year.

He gave a tour de force keynote address on democratic engagement in higher education at the Global Forum on Higher Education 2025: Renewal of the Democratic and Civic Mission in June, which was co-organised by the IAU, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States and the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy, and hosted by Charles University, Prague, in the Czech Republic.

In his speech he drew parallels between what happened when he was a young student in apartheid South Africa in the 1970s during the “electrifying” build-up to the Soweto Uprising and the cynical attacks on universities within liberal democracies in North America and elsewhere these days.

His message to higher education leaders is clear: “Resist appeasement” in the current culture wars on academic freedom and university autonomy.

Broken relationship

Deane will be taking part in a session looking at the importance of defining and living values when he speaks at the IAU Rwanda conference on 23 October.

As well as looking back to the dark days of the struggle against apartheid, Deane will warn of the dangers of “the loss of public trust in venerable institutions like universities” today.

Never one to be afraid to speak out when necessary, Deane is expected to draw these parallels as liberal democracies once again watch their governments withdraw subsidies and grants “in an attempt to curb institutional autonomy”.

Deane believes this could only happen in a country like the United States if trust in higher education had been so far eroded that Trump was confident he had popular support to make such an attack politically viable.

Deane believes universities are partly to blame for the public's indifference and points to their failure to realise that the integral relationship with democratic institutions is “an ongoing project requiring work, dedication and commitment” and not something to be taken for granted.

“We need to up our game, or else,” said Deane, and that means “restoring and re-energising the symbiotic relationship between universities and liberal democracy” and making sure all students are “deliberately educated in the core precepts of democracy”.

The open hostility to universities, with the US vice-president happy to call professors “the enemy”, is a clear sign of universities finding themselves “in a broken relationship with society”, said Deane.

Building democracy

The answer isn’t the kind of ‘appeasement’ shown by Columbia University, which in March responded to the demands of the Trump administration by agreeing to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern Studies Department after threats from the government to withdraw US$400 million of funding.

Instead, the example of Harvard, which launched a lawsuit against Trump’s funding cuts, has made it crystal clear that when war has been declared on the very values, principles and practices of the university, “there can be neither accommodation nor appeasement”, said Deane.

“We must renegotiate the relationship between the academy and the world, recognising that the price of academic privilege is human responsibility and that our institutions must be engaged actively in the ongoing project of building democracy.

‘There is no option but to resist,” said Deane.

“It is not enough for university leaders to hold their hands up in horror and say ‘if only their story were better told, public trust would be restored’,” said Deane.

“The positive university narrative will command attention only if it is embedded in a larger cultural story that supports it,” he noted.

Market logic

Dr Andreas Corcoran, deputy secretary general of the IAU, told University World News that attacks on academic freedom and university autonomy are only one part of trust-distrust discourse in higher education and that the value of universities is being increasingly questioned, particularly after more countries moved to a product-client relationship between universities and students at the start of this century.

“Treating students as customers and not just scholars changed the relationship, especially as tuition fees became more expensive.

“While higher fees are largely an Anglo-Saxon model, commodification and rankings have helped to turn higher education into a product to be marketed,” he stated.

“The idealised view of academia, emphasising its openness, its universality, its reliance on self-criticism and self-correction and most of all its ethical commitments to trustworthiness, is that of a force for good,” he added.

Yet people are openly questioning whether universities are the best route to gaining the skills and competences that the labour market requires and are unsure whether a university degree is still key to personal and collective economic growth and societal advancement, he said.

“Take the humanities, which is on a very slippery slope at the moment, lost in a mismatch between humanities degrees and the job skills required to secure work anda labour market shortage of skills associated with the humanities,” argued Corcoran.

Universities are also struggling to convincingly demonstrate the merits and benefits of higher education to politicians and policymakers, and governments – whether they are populist and nationalist or just wary of any criticism – are seizing the agenda and turning their fire on universities.

Corcoran said digital innovation and the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media are making matters more complex.

“While higher education has woken up to AI, it isn’t adapting fast enough, partly due to institutional inertia. Many universities are exploring AI’s potential in research, teaching, and administration, yet too often the response is reactive rather than strategic,” Corcoran told University World News.

“AI is forcing higher education to confront fundamental questions – about what it means to be human, what skills matter in a world where machines predict and automate, and how knowledge should be generated and shared.

“The danger lies in treating AI as if it ‘thinks’ like we do, when in fact it is driven by probability, not understanding.

“Trusting AI won’t lead to true knowledge, and its spread risks widening the digital divide, concentrating advantages among those with access and resources,” he noted.

“That’s why universities have a responsibility not only to harness AI’s benefits but also to educate society about its limits – and ensure that human judgement, ethics, and purpose remain central to what we do,” said Corcoran, who pointed to the IAU’s new online lectures with UNESCO on “The Academic Conscience & Artificial Intelligence”, led by Trine Jensen, manager, digital transformation, at the IAU.

“Ideally, universities serve as trusted and independent institutions that critically accompany and scrutinise the forces of politics and the market, but this can no longer be taken for granted,” he explained.

How to build trust

“So, given the inextricable relationship between universities and trust, the IAU conference in Rwanda will ask: What is it that creates trust in higher education?

“What must universities do to retain trust across all their missions, ranging from their governance, administration, research practices, teaching methods and learning processes, admissions procedures, and knowledge-sharing approaches?

“And how can they strengthen their engagement with the dynamic and diverse world beyond their institutional boundaries to build better and just societies?

“After all, it is trust in higher education where it starts and ends,” concluded Corcoran.

The IAU secretary general said she and the vice-chancellor of the University of Rwanda are “very much looking forward to welcoming the participants to the important discussions to come”.

Details about the conference and the full concept note can be found here and here.

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.