Legitimacy for change
Say what you believe alongside schools, employers and public leaders—not as a lone institutional voice asking others to follow.
Get InvolvedUniversities
Give the change you believe in the power to move.
For university voices who know higher education must evolve—and want to help identify what that change is, put it on record and build the alliances that empower it.
3–5 March 2027 · Bratislava, Slovakia
IdentifyDeclareEmpowerTurn private conviction into shared direction.
What reform-minded universities gain
You do not need a finished answer.
You need the will to engage the question.
Allies downstream
Build relationships with the schools whose choices your signals shape and the employers whose changing needs strengthen the case.
A commitment on record
Use the Bratislava Declaration to turn an internal conviction into shared direction that carries beyond the room and into the year.
Contact with the future
Work directly with the students the change is for—listening to their expectations, testing assumptions and building more honest pathways.
A room built for serious engagement
Bring the argument. Bring the doubt. Bring the willingness to move.
The filter is engagement, not agreement. A sharp sceptic arguing in good faith belongs here. The purpose is not applause or institutional positioning—it is to make the change question precise enough to act on.
- 01What should a degree now make possible?
- 02What must universities continue to protect?
- 03What should they value, admit and signal differently?
- 04What can they release schools from having to preserve?
- 05Which new relationships can give change enough power to move?
Identify the change
Help name where higher education goes next.
The Forum does not begin with a predetermined answer. It creates the space to decide what universities should protect, what they should value differently and which commitments would give the rest of the system permission to move.
Admissions signals
Clarify what readiness really means—and align what universities admit, ask for and value with the capabilities they say matter.
The purpose of a degree
Define what the credential should still promise when knowledge is abundant, careers change repeatedly and learning never ends.
Learning across a lifetime
Build a relationship that people can return to as they update, redirect and rebuild capability throughout changing working lives.
Learning partnerships
Connect with schools and employers around learning and talent as seriously as universities already connect externally through research.
Public value
Reassert how inquiry, expertise, formation and trusted judgement contribute to society—not only to individual credentials.
The university is the unlock
Change the signal, and schools are free to change.
The credential universities hold is what the wider system organises itself around. Schools often believe they cannot change because universities will continue to ask for the same things.
When a university commits to admit differently, value differently or ask for something different, that excuse begins to disappear. It can also tell high schools what genuine readiness requires: independent learning, judgement, reasoning, communication, persistence and responsible use of knowledge.
The allies change needs
No university has to carry reform alone.
Universities ↔ Schools
Release the signal.
Schools organise around what universities ask for. Define readiness honestly—and give schools permission to prioritise learning, thinking, reasoning and communication.
Universities ↔ Employers
Build the case together.
Place the university’s change agenda beside real shifts in work, talent and capability so each sector can reinforce what the other is asking for.
Universities ↔ Students
Test the promise honestly.
Listen to how students understand higher education, work and purpose—and help them see both the possibilities and responsibilities of the pathways ahead.
Universities ↔ Public Leaders
Give reform institutional reach.
Connect credible commitments with the policy, funding and delivery structures that can help change travel beyond one willing institution.
The people change is for
Meet students as thinkers. Let them test the future you are proposing.
The Future of Learning Assembly gives universities direct contact with students deliberating about the systems they are preparing to enter. Their questions, expectations and realism belong inside the university change conversation.
University participants can listen, contribute questions, clarify pathways and scholarships, share expertise and engage with the Future Impact Challenge—helping students understand both the possibilities and responsibilities of higher education.
Explore the AssemblyUniversity ↔ Student
Direct contact.
Honest signals.
Better pathways.
The Bratislava Declaration
Give the change a vehicle that outlives the room.
At the Forum, university voices identify change alongside schools, employers, students and government—then place specific commitments into a shared public record.
The Declaration gives institutional gravity to what reformers already believe. It carries the commitment into the year, gives allies something to organise around and turns a private institutional intention into permission for others to act.
At BFLF
Four ways to turn conviction
into influence.
Traditional opportunities—students, pathways, scholarships and research—still matter. Here, they grow from a relationship with purpose. They are outcomes of collaboration, not the opening transaction.
The Declaration
Place a recorded, collective commitment to specific change beside the commitments of schools, employers and government.
The future-skills table
Define what graduates need with the people who prepare them, hire them and experience the changing demands around them.
University partnerships
Build pathways, scholarships, research and school relationships as outcomes of serious collaboration—not as the opening transaction.
The student Assembly
Contribute questions, pathways and expertise; judge the Future Impact Challenge; and meet students as thinkers before they become applications.
Who this seat is built for
Bring the people already asking what a degree is for.
- 01Reform-minded institutions already asking what a degree is for
- 02Rectors, presidents, deans and senior leaders ready to engage the question
- 03Admissions and international-office leaders who set the signals schools follow
- 04Higher-education researchers and tertiary-reform bodies
- 05Access, scholarship and pathway programmes with a genuine change agenda
- 06Liberal-arts and specialist institutions working beyond the standard model
- 07Strategy, innovation and external-engagement leaders
- 08Good-faith sceptics willing to test the argument seriously
For university voices ready to engage