What if universities led the future? Insights from Dubai Future Foundation

In this episode, we examine how universities can move beyond reacting to disruption and become institutions that actively shape the future with Dr Heba Chehade, Head of Foresight Research at Dubai Future Foundation.

We unpack how universities can use foresight to rethink their value proposition, strengthen partnerships, and design more resilient approaches to learning, research, policy, and public value. From AI and funding pressures to lifelong learning, modular education, and future-focused collaboration, the conversation explores how universities can become more intentional engines of progress in a rapidly changing world.

You can read a summary below, and listen to the full interview in our podcast:

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Summary

At a time when artificial intelligence, funding pressures, changing learner expectations, and rapid shifts in industry are testing the foundations of higher education, Dr Heba Chehade, Head of Foresight Research at Dubai Future Foundation, is asking universities to think far beyond the next programme update. Her perspective is rooted in foresight: the practice of identifying signals of change, imagining possible futures, and helping institutions make deliberate choices about the role they want to play in society.

The core message is urgent because universities are facing questions about their value from multiple directions at once. Students are asking what higher education will mean for their careers and lives. Industry is reassessing how it brings early-career graduates into fast-changing workplaces. Governments are looking for institutions that can support resilience, prosperity, and wellbeing. In this context, Heba argues that universities have an opportunity to become more intentional engines of the future, shaping learning, research, partnerships, policy, and public value with greater clarity.

Rethinking the university’s value proposition

For Heba, the future of universities begins with a fundamental question: what value are they here to create? That question reaches beyond employability, research output, institutional reputation, or technological adoption. It asks universities to examine who they serve, what kind of future they are contributing to, and how their strengths can be translated into long-term public benefit.

It’s very important to be very clear as to what that value proposition is and what it looks like in the future as well.

This clarity matters because universities operate within a wider ecosystem. Their stakeholders include students, faculty, governments, industry partners, schools, funders, communities, and society at large. A future-facing university therefore needs a value proposition that can speak across these relationships, while remaining rooted in its own mission and capabilities.

Heba nstresses that this work is demanding. It requires courage, honest reflection, and a willingness to revisit long-held assumptions about why universities exist. The challenge is to define the contribution that only a university can make, then organise learning, research, engagement, and governance around that purpose.

Using foresight to navigate uncertainty

Uncertainty is one of the defining conditions of higher education today. Heba points to several forces shaping the sector, including AI, funding sustainability, global collaboration, quality assurance, and accountability. Each of these could develop in different directions, creating a range of possible futures for universities.

Her argument is that universities do not need to predict a single outcome in order to act. They can define a desirable direction, understand the uncertainties around it, and build strategies that remain resilient across several scenarios.

We cannot predict the future, but we can definitely work towards a desirable future.

A foresight-led approach helps university leaders move from reactive planning to intentional strategy. It encourages them to ask what kinds of futures their programmes, research priorities, partnerships, and policies are preparing for. It also helps them identify which activities are serving today’s needs, which are preparing for tomorrow’s, and which may need to be redesigned or retired.

You might not capture a hundred percent, but you’ll capture a lot of the different scenarios that will come your way.

In practice, this means building a futures agenda that brings people across the institution together around shared priorities. Heba suggests that universities could create focused research agendas over two or three years, aligned with emerging fields, institutional strengths, and the future they want to help shape.

Designing learning for lifelong, modular pathways

Heba sees the learner journey as one of the areas most in need of fresh thinking. Future learners will not fit a single profile. They may be school leavers, professionals returning to education, people changing careers, or experienced individuals seeking new capabilities at different stages of life.

This requires stronger connections between schools and universities. The transition from K–12 education into higher education is changing, and students are arriving with different expectations about purpose, value, flexibility, and future opportunities. Heba argues that universities need to pay close attention to this changing relationship.

The handshake between high school, K12, and university, that needs to be strengthened.

Flexibility is central to this vision. This modular mindset also supports lifelong learning. It allows universities to serve people at different ages and career stages, while protecting the depth, rigour, and purpose that define higher education. The aim is to make learning more adaptive while keeping the university’s core contribution clear.

Heba describes a modular approach in which universities can build, adapt, and remove learning components as needs change. This is especially important when knowledge, technology, and labour markets are evolving quickly. A course or programme may remain valuable, yet universities need regular moments to ask whether it still serves the future they are preparing learners for.

Bringing research, policy, and society closer together

Universities already contain much of the knowledge needed to understand the future. Heba points out that research into future technologies, work, industry, science, policy, and society is often already happening within universities. The opportunity is to recognise this work more explicitly and connect it to a broader futures agenda.

That connection requires close collaboration with policymakers. As universities generate knowledge about emerging technologies, social change, environmental challenges, and new forms of work, they can help governments think ahead and design policies that are better prepared for what may come next.

Social sciences have a crucial role in this process. Heba emphasises that technological transformation always has a societal dimension. Whether universities are working on AI, engineering, environmental science, health, or future industries, they also need to understand human behaviour, social values, public trust, ethics, and wellbeing.

This human-centred lens prevents the future of higher education from being reduced to technology alone. It reinforces the university’s role as a producer of knowledge, a convenor of expertise, and a space where society can examine the consequences of change before those consequences fully arrive.

Turning constraints into innovation through partnerships

For universities facing severe funding limitations, declining enrolment, or scarce resources, Heba points first to partnerships. Collaboration with industry, government, schools, communities, and international peers can help institutions extend their capacity, share expertise, and create new forms of value.

She also encourages universities to rethink delivery models. Online learning, in-person engagement, blended formats, and international collaboration can each play a role, depending on the institution’s mission and context. The key is to protect the core experience that matters most, while allowing other elements to be delivered in more flexible and sustainable ways.

Constraints can also become a source of creativity. Heba suggests that institutions under pressure may be especially well placed to develop new models of learning, engagement, and public value because they are already being forced to innovate.

Because when you’re faced with all these stresses and all these challenges, you naturally need to innovate.

That makes courage one of the most important leadership qualities for the future university. Leaders need to ask whether programmes, courses, and research areas are adding value for current and future stakeholders. They also need to be prepared to make choices, build partnerships, and focus institutional energy around the futures they want to help create.

The future of universities will be shaped by how clearly they understand their purpose, how intentionally they use foresight, and how courageously they redesign learning, research, and partnerships around long-term public value. Heba Chehade’s core insight is that universities already have many of the tools needed to shape the future; the task now is to align them with greater clarity, adaptability, and ambition.

As higher education enters a period of profound change, the universities that thrive will be those that treat the future as a shared responsibility, and a field of action.

Ready for more?

If Dr Heba Chehade’s insights on universities as future-shaping institutions resonated with you, you might also enjoy our podcast episode, Securing the future: Why universities need to stay innovative and engaged, with Andrew Petter, former President and Vice-Chancellor of Simon Fraser University. This episode explores why universities must stay engaged with society, entrepreneurship and community partnerships to secure their future relevance.

Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!