The panel will focus on the challenges higher education is faced with, and discuss what can be done to best prepare future students to become competent members of our changing society, and how universities therefore will need to transform themselves.

It is no longer a question of whether our present work structures will be confronted with radical transformation processes, we need to discuss how this transformation is taking place, and which consequences it will bring. Undisputedly, developments in the fields of automation, digitalization, artificial intelligence or further globalization will have a significant impact on labour: Human workers will particularly be needed for tasks that (at least for now) cannot be carried out automatically – requiring competencies like creativity, unorthodox thinking, innovative networking between different fields and disciplines, etc.

Contributors

• Gerald Bast, President of the University of Applied Arts Vienna

• Eve Lewis,Director of SPARQS – Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland

• Hans Pechar, Department of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, University of Klagenfurt

• Bill Price, Speaker of the Council for a Progressive Economy

• Ingeborg Reichle, Head of the Department of Cross-Disciplinary Strategies, University of Applied Arts Vienna