Working Group 2: Drivers of Academic Transformation

Working Group Two

Drivers of Academic Transformation

Overview
Why This Matters
Key Areas of Focus
How the Group Works
Members

Overview

The Working Group on Drivers of Academic Transformation examines the major disruptive forces that have the potential to drastically change the global academic ecosystem and what these changes mean for academic responsibility, legitimacy, and public trust in science, with particular attention to health and medical education, population health, and well-being.

The group focuses on five interrelated drivers of academic transformation:

Privatization and Commercialization
Legitimacy and Trust
Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence
Geopolitics, Economics, and Law
Social Voices and Participation

It examines how these drivers reshape power structures within and beyond academia, influence funding flows and governance arrangements, and determine what knowledge is produced, prioritized, taught, and valued. The group also considers how technological innovation, market forces, and geopolitical shifts interact to redefine the relationship between academia, science, and society.

A particular focus is on global inequalities in research and training capacity, uneven access to digital infrastructure, and the emergence of "academic deserts": regions or institutions with limited research funding, weak infrastructure, low publication output, undertrained faculty, and minimal integration into global knowledge networks. The group engages with decolonization debates and questions of epistemic justice, examining whose knowledge is recognized and whose voices remain marginalized, and how these patterns could deepen in an increasingly unequal world.

These developments are viewed against the backdrop of longer-term shifts in global power since 1945, allowing the group to contribute conceptual clarity and policy-relevant options to the Commission's overarching framework on academic responsibility and trust in science.

Why This Matters

Academic systems play a central role in producing knowledge, educating health professionals, informing policy, and contributing to public debate. Changes in how academia is financed, governed, regulated, and increasingly shaped by digital technologies can therefore have consequences well beyond the academic systems.

The group recognizes how understanding these drivers is essential to examining how academia can maintain public trust, promote equity, and fulfil its responsibilities to society.

Key Areas of Focus

The group has two goals: to conceptualize the contemporary academic ecosystem as a dynamic, power-laden system undergoing rapid global transformation, and to understand how structural drivers reshape the responsibilities of academic institutions and affect trust in science and societal expectations. Based on this, the group addresses one overarching question: How do key structural drivers transform the academic ecosystem and shape academic responsibility and trust in science?

This question is broken down into five work streams:

Privatization and commercialization: How has the shift towards market logics (tuition, rankings, intellectual property, private provision) changed universities’ missions, governance, and obligations to society?
Legitimacy and trust: How is academia perceived by different societal groups (e.g., youth, communities, policy‑makers), and what forms of participation enhance or undermine legitimacy?
Digitalization and artificial intelligence: In what ways do digital technologies and artificial intelligence reorganize teaching, research, and evaluation, and who controls the resulting infrastructures and data?
Geopolitics, economics, and law: How have post‑1945 developments in global institutions, funding, and regulation shaped the academic ecosystem and its global power asymmetries? And now, given recent shocks to the system, what are the implications for the academic ecosystem we have and for what can be created?
Social voices and decolonization: How can youth, First Nations peoples, and LMIC actors be included as co‑producers of knowledge and policy within academic institutions and how do we address power structures that perpetuate inequities?

How the Group Works

The group will adopt a mixed-method (analytical) approach, combining evidence review, historical analysis, international comparison, and consultations to examine the five drivers of academic transformation. It will review relevant research and international policy documents, trace changes in the academic ecosystem since the post-World War II period and compare academic systems across approximately 30–35 countries, including patterns of inequality such as the emergence of academic deserts.

They will also develop an integrated academic ecosystem framework to show how these drivers interact across institutions and regions of power. Expert consultations, including with youth and other societal groups, will complement the analysis, alongside internal workshops to refine the group's definitions and scope. Thematic work on each driver will feed into the Commission’s overall findings and recommendations.

Members

Abdul Ghaffar

AKU Karachi

WHS Academic Alliance Member

Ilona Kickbusch

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva

WHS Council Co-Chair

Nelson Sewankambo

Makerere University College of Health Sciences

WHS Academic Alliance Member

Patricia Davidson

University of New South Wales

Philip C. Hill

University of Otago

Sofia Gruskin

University of Southern California

Valérie Amiraux

Universite de Montreal

WHS Academic Alliance Head of Delegation

Hiram V. Arroyo

Universidad de Puerto Rico

This question is broken down into five work streams:

Privatization and commercialization: How has the shift towards market logics (tuition, rankings, intellectual property, private provision) changed universities’ missions, governance, and obligations to society?
Legitimacy and trust: How is academia perceived by different societal groups (e.g., youth, communities, policy‑makers), and what forms of participation enhance or undermine legitimacy?
Digitalization and artificial intelligence: In what ways do digital technologies and artificial intelligence reorganize teaching, research, and evaluation, and who controls the resulting infrastructures and data?
Geopolitics, economics, and law: How have post‑1945 developments in global institutions, funding, and regulation shaped the academic ecosystem and its global power asymmetries? And now, given recent shocks to the system, what are the implications for the academic ecosystem we have and for what can be created?
Social voices and decolonization: How can youth, First Nations peoples, and LMIC actors be included as co‑producers of knowledge and policy within academic institutions and how do we address power structures that perpetuate inequities?