(bright upbeat music)
- I'm Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft,
and welcome to our Higher Education Reimagined Event.
At the outset I wanna know that
I think there are few institutions
that have had to persevere through bigger challenges
than our higher education institutions
around the world over the last year and a half.
For so many of you, you had to suddenly change course
and go remote without the preparation
that typically one would want to have.
You basically had to pick students up.
And in some cases they had to move physically.
They all had to be connected virtually.
And for so many of you
you've then had to bring people back in a new way.
There've been many institutions that are residential
and people are on campus
but not necessarily attending classes in person.
And there are so many institutions where
some people are participating one way
and others are participating another.
It has been an extraordinary time.
And I know that for an entire generation of students
this is not the higher education they imagined,
but it is a hair education that thanks to all of you
has served them as well as one could possibly hope
under some extraordinary circumstances.
Now we look to the future.
And that really is why we're entitling this
Higher Education Reimagined.
We're not going backwards, we're going forward.
And I think there's a few things that are clear.
The world post pandemic will in some important ways
be different than what it was before.
We've seen the pace of digitization advance and accelerate.
We've certainly seen virtual tools, I think, here to stay
and that will reshape the world of higher education.
We've seen the need of our students change as well.
The skills they'll need when they graduate
and go out into the workplace.
In fact that Microsoft, during all of this time
we've taken literally around the world
a global scaling initiative.
An initiative we launched last June
with the goal of reaching 25 million people worldwide.
And we exceeded that goal.
We reached roughly 31 million people in 249 continents
countries, territories, even 91 people in Antarctica.
And what we've learned, I think speaks to not only us
but I suspect so many of you as well.
A new generation of learners regardless of their age
is hungry for a new set of skills.
In some ways, these are new skills,
skills around digital transformation.
In some ways, these are traditional skills,
the kinds of soft skills that have for generations
been important to people's lives.
And in many ways, they reflect the changing world,
skills around how to succeed and work better
with people in a world that is more diverse
that needs to be more inclusive for more people
from more backgrounds, from more places.
And in addition to that, there's many harder skills
that people are needing to master as well.
So as we look to the future,
the courses that have been important
for universities for years will remain important
but new skills will need to be layered on.
And I think the preparation of students for success
after higher education
will need to bring these things together.
That's why we at Microsoft have created a new career coach.
It's a Microsoft Teams app.
It's powered by LinkedIn.
It uses artificial intelligence.
It's an additional tool that career services
and other offices in universities,
in colleges and community colleges can use
to help students track their own progression
and identify the kinds of things that they need to master
so that they will be as successful when they leave college
as when they're in it.
When I think about the course of colleges over time
it's really been a history of constant innovation.
There's been a need for constant adaptation
to changing countries in a changing world.
And at times this goes faster and other times less so.
But what I think is clear is
that if we look to the next year or two or three,
we're hopefully going to be entering a better world,
a world where we can look beyond the pandemic
but it's going to continue to be a rapidly changing world.
And higher education will of course
need to continue to change with it.
That's where you come in.
That's where so many of you
will play important leadership roles.
That's where we at Microsoft hope to do what we can
to support you with the kinds of technology tools
that can make all the difference.
Thank you for joining this.
I hope you'll find some other interesting things
that you can take back to your work every day.
It's my pleasure to be with you.
- Thanks Brad.
It's a great pleasure to join all of you
at an important time for really what is historic change
taking place across higher education.
This event will give us an opportunity to reflect
on our opportunity to embrace and reimagine
higher education going forward and reflect on and build on
the learnings of the last 12 months.
I wanna thank you for the leadership
that you've demonstrated to support your students
and faculty during these tough times.
I have seen amazing examples and frankly been humbled
by the global experiences that I've seen
of faculty jumping in to digital and remote learning
for the first time in many cases
with very little time to prepare,
leaning on each other as a source of inspiration
and learning to improve and be self-reflective
on how they can be better facilitators in this remote world.
I've seen faculty in many ways who didn't provide
that sort of reflection on their own teaching
in years of physical classroom instruction
being more self-reflective
and improving their ability to impact and really create
more immersive and impactful student experiences.
I've seen students in embracing this change
and building on the opportunity to collaborate
and connect with each other.
We're truly facing a new world of how technology
can expand the boundaries of of a classroom
and what it truly means to be enrolled in a university.
We were seeing much pressure on all of you
to deliver a more digital experience for your students
that was more flexible and self-serviced for students
that created more flexibility
in terms of how they consumed content,
experienced campus life beyond just the physical experience
and connected with their peers,
with the market as they sought jobs.
That experience and that pressure was on
the environment that you are providing for your students.
All of that with the dynamics of inclusion
and accessibility across your campus, tools and resources.
Now, as we've embraced remote learning
those same pressures are starting to emerge.
Where students are wanting far more synchronous
and asynchronous flexibility, more purposeful use
of connect content and connection inside lectures.
How do they expand their relationships
beyond the course and the delivery.
How do they keep collaboration
and insight fueling their progression forward?
Those pressures are also building on all of you.
And one of the things that we've got to start doing
is released the tension between the dynamics
of the end value of our campus experience,
our traditional learning models, as well as the pressure
on this remote learning as a new thing
and really embrace a world where the dynamics
of how we experience our university
includes the ability to be connected across campus,
as well as having remote learning and remote connectivity
being a part of every aspect and facet of a university life.
This is going to be necessary
as we embrace this new change going forward,
and really untapped the potential technology can provide
institutions to help learners be at the center
but provide a value that that could extend
the impact higher education can have.
There's no worry about the disruption of higher education
if we embrace the opportunity
that this new experience provides.
Now, we certainly have the tools at our disposal.
In addition to the historic times of transformation
in higher education, we are facing
historic paradigm changing technologies
fueled by the arrival and the presence of the Cloud.
And truly Cloud technologies were a game changer
in dealing with this pandemic.
The ability to scale remote learning solutions
very, very quickly globally was only made possible
through the availability of Cloud computing.
These technologies, whether it's AI,
Mixed Reality, IOT solutions, the arrival
and certainly the main stream of Blockchain
which we're living through right now.
And the emergence in the future of quantum computing
will all have dramatic implications
on the solutions that you deliver
and the world of work your students will enter.
I wanna focus specifically on artificial intelligence
because this is one of the areas
that we're seeing rapid focus and improvements being made
to deliver real impact to campuses and universities.
One of the things that we want to reflect on
is that there's really two areas of focus.
There's recognizing that the world of work
the dynamics that your students both drive, create and enter
in terms of the future workplace is a world where the power
and potential of AI needs to be unleashed.
Every business, every industry
is looking to take their insight
their data, their tooling, their resources
and apply AI to do a better job producing products,
serving customers, or solving solutions.
Your students need to be equipped
in the work that they do on campus
to embrace this new reality.
But so too, you need to understand the value AI can have
in the industry of higher education.
How are you breaking down the silos
of data across your campus,
and moving not from just displaying data,
and not even just putting it into action
but to provide insight and intelligence
that we can actually put data aside
and actually use insight to fuel outcomes.
AI has a great potential
to not only personalize learning
to unbundle and create more flexibility for learner pass
but to give you real insights to improve efficiencies,
safety, and security, and the ways in which you maximize
every resource and staff member in your institution.
We've got to work more closely together
to drive and unlock that potential going forward.
It's really about unlocking
and amplifying the human intelligence.
Really the opportunity that we can have to bring AI
to make us better educators,
make your experience more connected and valuable to students
and bringing experiences that can be real.
It's not about the value of an algorithm.
It's about how we're using AI
to provide real services across your campus.
There are a couple of examples.
We certainly want to bring AI
into applications and experiences
that everyone can see and contribute to.
This not only provides real value today with AI
but it brings a data-driven where people are consuming value
that data and AI is creating,
but also contributing to experiencing
and building a culture that appreciates data
and the richness that it provides.
We need AI to help us be resilient.
And certainly this was something that schools
dealing with COVID-19 response benefited from
and will need to continue to benefit from going forward
as we face new challenges down the road.
We also need to unlock the real asset that you have
all across your campuses with data.
We are trying to build data lakes with many institutions.
And I would say many institutions
don't even have data puddles.
Where the data is unknown or missing
people don't have real transparency
of the true potential that's going on,
and how do we harness the real insight
that data can provide.
And in many ways, maximizing data.
Really this currency of data is going to be
really what drives institutions forward.
Increasingly the prestige
and the history of education institutions achievements
is going to be diminished by institutions
are forward-looking and do a better job
of providing outcomes to students more efficiently
and more effectively as it relates to job readiness,
developing and building skills
and creating a campus experience both on, in present
as well as remote that is really reflective
of the needs of a student
and maximizing the power of digital engagement.
This is gonna be a critical piece to prioritize
in your journey forward.
And one of the things that we do at Microsoft
is look at the education transformation framework
which is a tool we use in higher education
and starts by understanding where data sits
across all the stakeholders or institution.
And no longer is it valuable to have data pockets
within departments or disciplines within your institutions.
We need a holistic understanding
of what's possible as we go forward.
Now, as we think about this new world of data,
it's certainly connected to the new world of work
and the new economy is going forward
in this fourth, digital, industrial revolution.
Many jobs are becoming more digital
and this is something that will accelerate
and expand post COVID-19.
And the ways in which these institutions are using data
will drive new types of jobs and skills
that you'll prepare your students for.
This is all happening in a world of historic unemployment.
We're reaching levels really that have really come to
our times in the great depression
as it relates to folks looking for work.
Now, one of the challenges that we have is not,
do we have talent?
Do we have expertise?
And do we have potential across the world?
That's certainly not a question that we should ever ask.
It's really about providing opportunity to fuel learners
and individuals who've been displaced from work
with the skills needed to address jobs.
We truly have a global skills gap.
But there's ways in which all of you can provide insight
and relevance to what's going on every day in class
to help students unleash their potential,
unlock their connection to jobs and industry
and build the skills every day
in a purposeful way to prepare them for the future.
We certainly have a tremendous opportunity
to leverage technology
to help you expand your value proposition
to become more relevant in that job,
economy seeking value that institutions
can provide to students.
But we also need to recognize that the students
on your campuses, in your institutions
will truly fuel the future of work.
Fuel the future of GDP in countries around the world,
build the solutions
that are gonna need to stop the next pandemic
and really be the hero for our future.
And so we've got to work closely together
and Microsoft is committed
to helping your success in that area.
(bright upbeat music)