Higher Education: Past,Present, and Future--A View from UNESCO

What follows is the edited Keynote Address, delivered by Sir John Daniel, the Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, at the opening ceremony of the UNESCO-CEPES International Jubilee Conference on "Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Its Role and Contribution to Our Common Advancement", Bucharest, 6-8 September 2002. The text briefly traces the history of the European Centre for Higher Education (UNESCO-CEPES) since its founding in 1972 and the involvement of the author in its activities, as of the 1980s, as a member of its Advisory Committee. He further evokes the involvement of UNESCO itself in education, particularly higher education, an involvement with roots stretching back to League of Nations days. UNESCO-CEPES, the vocation of which was to further co-operation in higher education across ideologically divided Europe, is now working in an entirely new context, both in Europe and worldwide.