Opinion
What must universities become to help the people and places we serve thrive in a changing world?
I posed that question in my opening address at the inaugural 4GU Global Forum in Eindhoven, as Chair of a global community bringing together more than 200 universities from over 80 countries. It is a question that asks us to look beyond the academic performance of our own institutions and consider what we make possible for others. It sits at the heart of the Fourth-Generation University mission.
For decades, universities have been judged primarily by enrolments, research publications, citations, and rankings. These measures remain important. They tell us much about academic quality and institutional performance. But on their own, they no longer capture the full contribution society expects us to make.
Across the world, communities are navigating profound transitions in technology, industry, climate, health and work. Artificial intelligence is reshaping economies. Industries face changing skills demands. Healthcare systems are under pressure. Climate adaptation has become an economic as well as an environmental challenge.
Governments, employers, and communities increasingly look to universities to help them navigate these changes. They need knowledge and graduates, alongside partners who can turn ideas into action and build lasting innovation ecosystems that enable people, industries, and communities to adapt, survive, and thrive.
Universities have always evolved alongside society. Education came first, research became a defining mission, and later universities took a more active role in applying knowledge and supporting enterprise. Today, the challenge goes further.
The most pressing problems transcend disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Workforce shortages require cooperation between educators, employers, and governments. Advances in health depend on partnerships connecting discovery with clinical practice. Technology transitions succeed when talent, investment and expertise come together.
No university can solve these challenges alone. Nor can governments, businesses or community organisations acting independently.
That is what we mean when we say a Fourth-Generation University helps orchestrate an innovation ecosystem.
Orchestration is a form of collaborative leadership.
It means bringing people and organisations together around shared purpose and ambitions, connecting their strengths and sustaining partnerships that enable them to achieve more together.
It requires listening, building trust and sharing responsibility for outcomes. Communities must help shape the priorities at the outset, bringing their knowledge, experience, and aspirations to the table.
The ambition is to create lasting innovation ecosystems with industry, government and communities that strengthen our collective capacity to respond to change and create shared prosperity. Their strength lies in relationships and capabilities that endure beyond an individual project or funding cycle.
Addressing the workforce needs of industries in our cities and regions is central to this approach.
Universities must connect learning with emerging opportunities while helping people develop and renew their capabilities throughout life. For our graduates, this means preparation for career-long success. For people already in work, it means opportunities to build on their experience and navigate change. For communities, it means greater access to opportunity and stronger prospects for social and economic mobility.
The current 4GU framework and community grew from work by Eindhoven University of Technology and Elsevier exploring universities’ contribution to innovation ecosystems and how it could be better understood and measured. University leaders from around the world helped develop the approach. Today, more than 200 universities across more than 80 countries have come together around this shared purpose.
Our community’s strategy rests on three connected priorities: transformation, recognition, and sustainability.
Transformation begins with the needs and ambitions of the places we serve.
It asks how education, research and innovation can help partners address shared challenges and create new opportunities.
Recognition requires us to explain that contribution clearly and credibly. Communities, employers, governments, and funders should be able to understand and trust what our partnerships achieve and why it matters.
Sustainability asks whether we have the capacity and commitment to keep delivering. That means embedding impact in institutional strategy, leadership, governance, and investment, so that partnerships can endure and grow.
As a community, we help one another put these priorities into practice by sharing experience, testing approaches, and developing meaningful evidence of impact.
There is no single model of a Fourth-Generation university. A technical university supporting advanced manufacturing will look different from an institution focused on health, education, social policy, or the arts. What they share is an intentional commitment to place, partnerships, and impact.
This raises an important question: how should we measure success?
Research excellence matters enormously. So do student outcomes. But so do graduates who strengthen a workforce, partnerships that help businesses innovate, evidence that informs public policy and ventures that create jobs and opportunity.
These are often shared achievements. Understanding a university’s contribution means recognising its partners and the circumstances in which they work.
The 4GU community is developing and testing indicators to better understand these contributions across education, research, value co-creation, and governance. Good evidence should help us ask better questions. Which partnerships are making a difference? Who is benefiting? Are we widening opportunity? How can we improve?
The answers will differ by institution and region. Good measures should help us learn from those differences and improve our contribution.
Place matters, but it does not confine our ambitions. Universities are rooted in communities while connected across the world. That combination is one of our greatest strengths.
International relationships bring new ideas, talent, and opportunities to local priorities, while insights developed locally can help others elsewhere. Local commitment and global engagement reinforce one another.
At a time when higher education debates often focus on enrolment caps, migration settings and domestic priorities, this wider contribution deserves attention. Policy must recognise how global connections can strengthen the communities universities serve.
In Eindhoven, these ideas have a tangible expression. The Brainport region demonstrates what sustained collaboration between universities, industry and public leadership can make possible.
Each region must find its own path.
The lesson is that lasting transformation depends on partners working beyond their institutional boundaries and building the capacity to act together.
For university leaders, this requires aligning our decisions, resources, and incentives with the impact we seek to achieve. It also requires humility: being willing to learn from partners and allowing their perspectives to shape our direction.
Universities have always been places where people imagine futures beyond the limits of the present. As leaders, we need to do the same and help make those futures possible. Place sits at the heart of the Fourth-Generation University mission, recognising that meaningful impact is shaped by the unique opportunities and challenges of the communities we serve. This reflects the Quadruple Helix approach to innovation, bringing together universities, industry, government and communities to create lasting prosperity and build capacity for change.
That is the promise of the Fourth Generation University: the next evolution of our mission, connecting education and research with partnerships that improve lives and create lasting opportunity.
The test is whether the people and places we serve are better able to shape their own futures because of what we do and achieve together.
Professor Aleksandar Subic is Vice-Chancellor of Torrens University Australia