In the wake of World War II, the nations of the world thought seriously about the relationship between education and peace. One of the outcomes of that thinking was the creation of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations – UNESCO, for short – whose founding charter states: “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. And, since higher education was part of that mandate, that arguably makes UNESCO the world’s oldest higher education organization.
UNESCO has long been a voice for higher education as a public good. But the world has changed a lot since the 1940s. In most of the world, higher education is viewed a great deal more pragmatically than it used to be. And along with the increasing sophistication of the higher education sector and the increasing density of expertise around higher education, there are a lot more organizations and forums that can advise nation states on the development of their higher education systems. So what’s UNESCO’s role in higher education these days?
With us today to answer that question is Noah Sobe, UNESCO’s Chief of Section for Higher Education. We cover a lot of ground in this interview, from UNESCO’s history, to its current activities. Contra my suggestions that UNESCO is perhaps too idealistic, Noah makes a strong case for the need for an organization that can make the normative case for the values of higher education and lets us in on some UNESCO’s lesser-known activities which really do deserve a wider audience and greater understanding.
This episode is a great way to open up 2026, and so without further ado, let’s throw things over to Noah.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 4.15 | What Does UNESCO Actually Do in Higher Education?
Transcript
Alex Usher (AU): Noah, let’s start with UNESCO’s role in higher education and where that comes from. Obviously, in the 1940s, in the wake of World War II, the United Nations had some lofty goals about education and the way it could contribute to world peace. What were those original objectives? How was UNESCO supposed to operationalize that, and how has its role evolved over time?
Noah Sobe (NS): Thanks for the question, Alex, and let me just say it’s a pleasure to be a guest on your show. I admire your work and really appreciate the contributions you and your team make.
Education, science, and culture were seen as the basic building blocks of sustainable peace and shared prosperity. In one sense, I think the objectives have not changed. The strategies and approaches we use have probably shifted, but the core mission endures, and its relevance definitely endures as well.
One thing you can say about our world today is that UNESCO is needed more than ever. As you know well, the post–World War II era was guided by a certain technocratic, engineering spirit — the idea that we could design a better world. I still believe we can design a better world, and I think everyone at UNESCO does. But we recognize now that this needs to be co-constructed; it needs to be a much more democratic process.
Related to that, we have a very different orientation toward youth involvement — a commitment to intergenerational co-leadership that’s quite different from our founding moment. But I think our basic objectives, our basic understanding of what our functions are, still endure.
Just quickly to review, at UNESCO we talk about five functional areas. One is normative standard-setting. The second is working as a laboratory of ideas. The third is working as a clearinghouse — sharing best practices, research, and examples. We do a lot of work on educational data, and we also provide technical assistance to member states. Finally, we consider international cooperation and exchange to be one of our key functions.
And there, I suppose, that’s because we’re irredeemable optimists. We have this somewhat naïve belief that talking together, being together, is a good thing — and that it will lead to good things.
AU: You talked about those five areas. Of those five, are there two or three that are more prominent for higher education right now?
NS: I think probably the normative standard-setting function is the lead for what we do. But that work is often not just normative; it also has a strong operational component.
AU: One of your roles, as I understand it, is to provide policy advice to member countries. Back in the 1950s, UNESCO more or less had that space to itself. Today, though, there are many more actors — global consulting firms like KPMG or McKinsey, as well as multilaterals like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. What is UNESCO’s niche now? Where do you feel UNESCO still adds unique value?
NS: Let me start with the niche, Alex. I think there are a couple of things that go together that make UNESCO enduringly important in today’s world. One is our convening and networking power. Another is the kind of legitimacy that we possess.
We have 194 member states, and I think over the years — and this is a credit to everyone who’s been in roles like mine over the last decades — UNESCO has become known as a trustworthy, trusted partner. And I agree with you: the international development space now has a huge diversity of partners and stakeholders, including private actors like the consulting firms you mentioned, each bringing different types of expertise, resources, and experience to the table.
At the same time, the ecosystems of education have become increasingly complicated — very different from what they were when UNESCO was founded. I don’t think anyone at UNESCO would claim that we have a monopoly on development expertise. On the contrary, I think what we’re good at is plugging into this diversified landscape.
Something we’ve always done well is acting as a partner and a mobilizer of stakeholders — for research, for resource mobilization, for capacity strengthening, and for serving as a clearinghouse of good practices, as I mentioned earlier. But I also think we have a unique role in promoting normative frameworks and convening actors in education to discuss the challenges and opportunities in front of them.
Let me give you a concrete example that might be of interest to your listeners. One is our work setting international standards for faculty members and other higher education teaching and research personnel. In 1997, UNESCO adopted a recommendation concerning the status of higher education teaching personnel. It addresses entry into the profession, learning and teaching conditions, contains a strong definition of academic freedom, and talks about the importance of institutional autonomy.
That recommendation is now entering a two-year revision process, and in the end it will be put before the 194 member states as a recommendation. It’s not a binding piece of international law, but assuming it’s passed by consensus — which is the norm for UNESCO normative instruments — you end up with something quite powerful in shaping education practice. So I’d say: watch this space, and watch for opportunities to consult and engage on that work.
AU: You talked about mobilizing partner groups and networks of institutions or national governments. I guess it’s to that end that you have a series of regional offices, right — some of which focus specifically on higher education? You’ve got IESALC in Venezuela, there’s the office in Bangkok, and there used to be one in Bucharest. How do these regional offices contribute to the organization’s work, and how do their priorities align with those in Paris?
NS: UNESCO is led by three key bodies. We have the General Conference, which meets every two years, with all 194 member states present. They’re the ones who decide our priorities, make budget allocations, and approve normative instruments. There’s also an Executive Board that meets more frequently and includes a smaller group of member states. And then there’s the Secretariat, headed by our Director-General.
Our headquarters is in Paris, but we have 53 field offices around the world, and 138 specialized institutes and centres. That includes education, but also culture, science, and communication.
You mentioned UNESCO IESALC, which is hosted by Venezuela. It’s our regional centre of excellence for higher education and the promotion of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s what we call a Category 1 institute and does a lot of work on South–South cooperation. I know you’re familiar with some of their knowledge and research work, because I’ve heard you discuss it.
Thailand — and Bangkok — is an example of a regional office. It’s hosted by the government of Thailand and is responsible for a group of countries in the region. Bangkok is similar to offices in Jakarta, Beijing, and Delhi. In Africa, we have five regional offices — Dakar, Yaoundé, Nairobi, and Harare.
These offices are where we coordinate the implementation and operationalization of the work we’ve been talking about — the clearinghouse function, the normative instruments, and so on. Honestly, all of them work on higher education. The work is, of course, adapted to the specific context in which each office operates.
AU: One of the things UNESCO does in higher education is hold a major world conference once a decade. There was one in Paris in 2009, and another in Barcelona in 2022. I’m guessing you’re not really thinking about the one for the early 2030s yet — maybe you are — but what’s the purpose of these conferences? Do they still have a place in a more internet- and Zoom-friendly world? These big get-togethers — is there a future for them? How do you see the next one playing out?
NS: I think they’re a great example of how our convening power and our normative standard-setting role converge. You’re right — since the late 1990s, we’ve held a world higher education conference more or less once a decade.
The purpose is to bring together a wide range of stakeholders: government policy folks, university leadership, faculty, students, the private sector, research units — a whole range of people. The idea is to do a kind of landscape mapping: what’s the state of the field, what challenges are on the horizon, and what higher education should do to address them.
I think it’s a very useful exercise. In fact, we’re about to launch — I think in February or March — a follow-up to the Barcelona World Higher Education Conference. It’s a publication called Transforming Higher Education: Global Collaboration on Visioning and Action. It lays out some of the guiding principles and lines of transformation that were discussed in Barcelona.
That includes things like committing resources to equity and pluralism, promoting the freedom to teach and research, to learn, and to cooperate internationally. These are all ways in which UNESCO shows its unique value — bringing people together to focus on what they can agree on, and what they can agree to work on together.
AU: I have to ask — because I’ve been to some of the regional conferences that lead up to these, though I couldn’t go to Paris in 2009 because my daughter was born that week — but it does seem to me that a lot of these set pieces end up focusing on the normative side of things.
A lot of what you’ve been talking about is that higher education should be more about diversity, that there should be more global cooperation, and so on. And it does tend to focus on that normative stuff. In particular, one of the biggest normative elements in discussions of higher education is the issue of markets — fees, right?
It seems to me that a lot of UN publications — some from IESALC and some from other parts of the system — take a pretty dim view of markets. I’ve noticed it in the GEMS publications as well. And there are lots of parts of the world where that view is the norm — Latin America, Francophone West Africa. That’s how higher education is often thought about there.
But a third of all students are in private higher education, and a lot of public higher education has market elements in it too. So I’m wondering whether that particular position might be problematic for UNESCO. If you take the view that higher education has to be, in effect, market-free, doesn’t that leave out a lot of higher education systems around the world?
NS: I think what’s important to note is that in all cases UNESCO is pro–public good. That doesn’t mean it’s anti-market, for sure. There are a lot of things we could unpack in what you just laid out there.
Are we talking about the proliferation of student loans as a way for young people to access higher education in countries where even public higher education involves high costs? Are we talking about higher education offered by private — and sometimes not-for-profit — providers, whether campus-based or online, which of course has supported the massification of higher education? Or are we talking about collaborations?
What we try to do is co-design, with invested and important players, the normative and ethical guardrails that ensure these changing landscapes of higher education systems and institutions don’t do harm to different stakeholder groups, and that they remain inclusive, equitable, and fair to all users.
I’d emphasize two things. First, at UNESCO we’re committed to a human rights approach and to a vision of higher education as a public good. We work toward ensuring equal access for all women and men to affordable, quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university.
Second, I think you and I can both point to numerous examples of high-quality private universities and fruitful private sector collaborations with public sector universities. Private actors clearly have an important role to play in higher education.
At the same time, we also have many examples of public higher education systems with free or nearly free access that are high quality and able to achieve widespread participation. Financing through loans can be an alternative for expanding access, but of course it comes with costs — potentially increased inequality and potentially inadequate provision of public goods.
I think some kind of mix is probably inevitable, and probably desirable. But speaking for myself, I would still see private financing as a second-best alternative to public funding.
AU: What’s the coolest thing UNESCO is doing right now in higher education that almost no one knows about? What’s your gem in the rough?
NS: I love that question — and I’m almost embarrassed to say I didn’t know enough about this myself when I moved into this position as Chief of Section for Education. It’s the work we’re doing on qualifications recognition.
On one level, it’s pretty technical — a kind of infrastructure policy-building exercise — but it’s actually fascinating. We’ve essentially created a global higher education ecosystem that promotes academic mobility, advances access and inclusion, and strengthens the quality of institutions and programs.
I’m talking about the Global Convention on Higher Education, which was adopted by UNESCO in 2019 and now has 40 states parties. I’m also talking about the constellation of regional recognition conventions, starting with the Lisbon Recognition Convention for Europe in the late 1990s. That convention became the backbone for the Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area. There are also regional conventions for other parts of the world, which I won’t list in the interest of time.
Together, this is an ecosystem that’s both normative and operational. The conventions specify legal frameworks for cross-border recognition of qualifications, and they also establish institutions and networks for sharing information that allows people to have their qualifications recognized.
What I find particularly beautiful about this work is that these conventions establish a right for individuals to have their academic qualifications evaluated for study or professional purposes. And what’s really significant is that the burden of proof is placed on the nationally designated authorities.
You don’t have to establish exact equivalence between a foreign and a domestic qualification. Instead — and this appropriately recognizes the rich diversity of higher education systems globally — recognition is granted unless there are substantial differences between the foreign and domestic qualification.
That’s a really important protection for individuals, and a really important way in which we live out what I mentioned earlier — that perhaps naïve optimism that international exchange and cooperation can, in fact, make the world a better place.
AU: Let me ask you for a best-case scenario for the next decade or so. If we come back and have this same discussion in 2035 or 2036, where do you think UNESCO might make its biggest impact on global higher education?
NS: Thanks, Alex. I’d say that together we’ve succeeded in making higher education great again. We’ve made it more inclusive, better protected, better connected. It’s better resourced, more critical, more creative and innovative. It’s more relevant and more impactful.
I can also imagine some things that higher education will be less of — maybe less hierarchical, for example. And since we’re talking about 2035 now, I’m happy to report that the UN is stronger than ever. We’re five years into a new development agenda, the successor to the SDGs.
One place where I see UNESCO potentially having real impact over the next ten years is in closing the distance between SDG 4.3 and SDG 9.5. SDG 4.3 is about fair and equitable access to quality higher education, and SDG 9.5 calls for increasing the number of people employed in research and development, as well as increasing spending levels.
It’s always struck me as strange that those goals are treated as being so far apart, when we know that higher education institutions are where we create the knowledge and capacities that underpin the technologically advanced world we live in. So in 2035, I’d like to say that the research and innovation agenda and the inclusion and access agenda have been brought closer together — because people have realized that both succeed when they are aligned.
AU: That sounds like something UNESCO could play a fairly big role in. And given the timing — an early-2030s conference right after the adoption of new SDGs — is that a…?
NS: Let’s plan it, Alex. Let’s plan it.
AU: All right, you’ve got it. Noah, thank you so much for being with us.
NS: It’s been a pleasure, Alex. And again, thank you for all you do.
AU: It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and you — our readers and listeners — for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, or suggestions for future ones, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com.
Join us next week, when our guest will be Philip Steenkamp, President of Royal Roads University in British Columbia — one of Canada’s most intriguing institutions — talking about how his university is adapting to challenging financial circumstances and opening new campuses abroad. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
