Enabling innovative postgraduate research: critical foresight and strategic considerations for university leaders

Enabling innovative postgraduate research: critical foresight and strategic considerations for university leaders

Innovative postgraduate research is an outcome, not a means in itself. It requires necessary preconditions to flourish in the higher education system. Neither the system underpinning postgraduate research nor the students themselves can make this happen. Rather, the worldviews and assumptions of leaders as decision-makers who continually build, amend and deconstruct higher education systems, are critical precursors to nurturing innovative postgraduate research. There is almost universal agreement that universities are fundamentally important to the overall progress and development of a nation and are a collective barometer of global human progress. They are vital in shaping global, national and local futures. The impact of universities is broader than their traditional remit and encompasses a full diversity of ecological, social and economic outcomes. Universities have a pivotal role in achieving a shift from traditional sources of wealth to new service models, radical innovation and small and medium enterprise development. Disruptions faced by society are also disrupting traditionally monolithic and ‘slow to change’ university institutions.

This necessarily challenges university leadership. While many still regard the world as thriving in the Information Age, it has been suggested that we have already transitioned into a new age, the Conceptual Age. Universities will need to address this shift to economies dependent on conceptual workers through their education model(s). A new profile of university leadership is rapidly emerging to enable the emergence of innovative postgraduate studies to meet this need.

This paper explores the notion of ‘third generation postgraduate studies, how it works and what paradigms university leaders need to cultivate this critically important dimension of higher education to the advancement of communities, workplaces, innovation, the economy and ultimately societal advancement.