UKZN Delegate Joins Global Conversation on Student Affairs and Services

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UKZN’s College of Health Science’s Manager: Student Support Services, Dr Saloschini Pillay, attended a Global Summit on Student Affairs and Services in Rome.

Pillay was one of 60 selected senior student affairs and services staff members from 37 countries across the developed and developing world who represented six continents to formalise key goals and strategies to address critical challenges for Higher Education worldwide.

Pillay is the President of the Southern African Federation of Student Affairs and Services (SAFSAS) and was specially selected to ensure that the global conversation on student affairs and services included African voices.

Reflecting on the Summit, she said: ‘Student affairs and services in the Higher Education sector are poised to play a key role in shifting the attention of universities towards developing responsible and responsive global citizens.’

The Summit was held to initiate high-profile debate on how student affairs and services can promote access, inclusion and integration, support and development and employability.

The issue of soft skills and civic engagement for employability was the main topic of  Rethinking Education, which is an initiative launched by the European Commission to encourage student affairs and Higher Education to take measures to ensure that young people’s development is articulated into their civil lives and labour markets.

Mr Jigar Patel, Principal of McKinsey & Co in the United Kingdom, presented the EU report titled: “Education to Employment, Getting Europe’s Youth into Work”.

The McKinsey report is one of the most important cross-national studies on Higher Education’s relationship with employment and is based on rigorous research that involved more than 8 000 participants in eight countries.  It also highlights the articulation gap between Higher Education and the labour market providing suggestions for closing the gap.

President of EUCA-European University College Association, Professor Gianluca Giovannucci, said: ‘The years at university are fundamental for academic engagement but are also the time when young people can best develop all the complementary competencies needed to meet the challenges of living an active civil life and making contributions to the national and global economy.’

MaryAnn Francis