PASCAL

The first keynote at the 9th PASCAL International Observatory conference in Gaborone, Botswana was presented by Professor Olusola Oyewole of African Union, Addis Ababa on the topic of Regional Engagement for African Universities: Challenges and Prospects. This presentation complemented a series of excellent welcome sessions from the Mayor of Gaborone City, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Botswana and the Chair of the PASCAL Advisory Board.

The supporting keynote presentation outline appears below:

This Hot Topic paper returns to a central theme for PASCAL, which is the development and implementation of lifelong learning.    Unlike earlier HTs on the theme, Jarl Bengtsson is concerned less with the concept of lifelong learning but much more with those factors at national level which need to be addressed if substantial progress is to be made in making a reality of the widespread policy commitments which are in place in most EU countries and amongst OECD member countries around the world.

PASCAL European Network of Lifelong Learning Regions (PENR3L)

The issue of the engagement of universities with civil society, and inevitably within this with their local communities, is a generic concern internationally. All over the world we observe a huge emphasis being placed on the encouragement of a new set of relationships between universities and their communities. However, whilst we may represent this as a global trend, accelerated perhaps by an exchange of experiences and processes of policy imitation, the form of engagement retains considerable variation.