As a consortium spanning the Pacific Ocean, it is APRU’s objective to partner with its member institutions and other stakeholders to help realize the “promise of place.”
So, the question arises: What is APRU’s leadership role in 2024?
A key advantage of APRU as a network is its geographic focus on the Pacific Rim, the Asia– Pacific. APRU’s geographic remit is virtually identical to that of the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), one of our major partner organizations. The realities of this vast, disparate space provide the framework for APRU’s operations, realities which have dramatically changed since our establishment in 1997, be they political, socio-economic, environmental, or technological.
Within its geographic orbit, APRU’s activities can be conceived as being multilateral in terms of engagement, bilateral in terms of its value proposition, and unilateral in terms of its impact.
Multilateralism is APRU’s strongest operational asset to deflect bilateral geopolitical discord. All of our annual approximately 40 activities include participants from different parts of APRU’s network. In turn, the value proposition APRU offers is determined bilaterally, between APRU and each member university. Finally, the concrete impact that APRU’s initiatives create, from capacity building to research collaborations, is unilateral, and focused on specific deliverables.
The past 20 years have witnessed a distinct transformation of universities to assume corporate social responsibility and to promote sustainable development. As a network of leading universities, APRU fully embraces this responsibility. We aspire to have deeper and wider relevance for our members, and to create positive, lasting impact on the planet. Five commitments essential to this mission are:
- For a network that brings the leading research universities of the Asia–Pacific together, it is paramount to lead the debate about the university of the future;
- For a network representing more than 2 million students, it is essential to enhance student engagement and success;
- For a network committed to tackling the big challenges of the Asia–Pacific, we should aim to have broader and tangible impact;
- For a network consisting of 62 large and multifaceted institutions, we should also aim at mobilizing underutilized resources.
- For a network that works on and promotes sustainability, we must become more sustainable in our own operations.
In view of APRU’s diverse range of constituent economies and member institutions, as well as the complex nature of Asia–Pacific challenges, it is indispensable for APRU to be comprehensive and diverse — to offer a substantial choice of value propositions to its members.
How does this requirement translate into a framework for APRU’s offerings? And how does this allow us to reconceptualize APRU as an organization? In what follows, I will use (1) a holistic shape — the APRU Pentagon — to conceptualize what informs our thinking in terms of the internal structure of APRU’s activities, and (2) a holistic concept — the meta-university — to conceptualize APRU’s external institutional role.
The shape of a pentagon expresses the ambition to assume a holistic perspective in which education, research, and policy about and within the Asia– Pacific intersect and inform each other. Of the five segments, some comprise well-established areas while others are more aspirational in nature.
- One Pacific is an umbrella for APRU’s research- informed programs relating to the grand Pacific Challenges, including Multi-Hazards, Global Health, Biodiversity, and Sustainability, to which a new focus area on Food Security — a new APEC priority — was added in 2024.
- The newly established University of the Future working group responds to the need to address collaboratively common challenges facing higher education in the Asia–Pacific, and find and implement solutions to acknowledged challenges. A first project initiated in 2023 and supported by Microsoft focuses on Generative AI and Higher Education; a second, on creating a micro-credential in Asia–Pacific Studies.
- The Pacific Student & Careers Center aspires to increase student engagement and facilitate student success. We also intend to look beyond graduation — to create professional pathways, consortium-wide credentials, and life-long learning passports valid across the network.
- APRU Culture & Diversity includes well-established programs such as the Asia Pacific Women in Leadership and the Indigenous Knowledges We are also identifying the common values that underscore our activities, the “APRU conscience”. Incrementally, we consider using underutilized resources within member institutions, such as museums (“the APRU Museum of the Pacific”), presses, libraries, orchestras, sports teams, hospitals etc.
- APRU Connect comprises our large governance meetings, an envisaged consortium-wide exchange of staff, as well as collaborations with other university networks.
As to APRU’s external role as an NGO, a possible way to capture its mission is a concept proposed in 2007 by former MIT President Dr. Charles Vest who coined the term “meta-university” for distributed and decentralized university networks. Such meta- universities would share scholarship, increase access to education and create societal impact.
Recent assessments of the concept have described meta-universities through the lens of a “value net”, picturing market relationships between a network (the meta-university) and other stakeholders, and emphasized their role as a catalyst for new systems thinking — integrating different perspectives into a higher, general level of understanding of complex systems.
Strikingly, none of these contributions mentions any of the existing university consortia as models, precursors, or approximations of meta-universities. Yet, APRU presents the key characteristics of a meta-university, facilitating both education and systems thinking through a multilateral value net.
APRU offers a comprehensive range of programs, informed by multiple academic disciplines, including health sciences, natural sciences, social sciences and cultural studies and engaging with most of the UN SDGs. It utilizes the collective research power of its members which translates to 12% of the global scholarly output.
APRU expands access to education and online internationalization through a wide variety of educational formats, builds professional capacity, enhances student engagement, and furthers progress in sustainability and key DEI areas.
Its systems thinking, universal integration of perspectives from across the 18 economies of its member institutions, makes APRU a multilateral model of a 21st century meta-university, championing “Place and Promise” through its multiple global and regional partnerships.
APRU’s ultimate value proposition is to leverage the vast collective research power, the extensive resources its institutions hold in education and culture, and the profound socio-economic impact of its member institutions towards educational and planetary challenges.