The Profile
Reflection and resolve
APEC’s higher education outlook
Shortly after hosting both US President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping at the 2025 APEC Summit in Seoul, Eduardo Pedrosa sat down to talk trade, education and his organisation’s goals for higher ed.
By Anton John Crace
"Is [the traditional degree] enough to get by? Is even a Master's degree, PhDs? Is that what we need in today's world?"
"But fundamentally, the question that we're beginning to grapple with is how do you match skills with the changing jobs?"
After a particularly tumultuous and uncertain year, the 2025 APEC Summit in Seoul saw the easing of trade tensions and renewed focus in the region on collaboration to overcome challenges. Eduardo Pedrosa, Executive Director of APEC, sits down with QS Insights to reflect on the success of the summit, and his organisation’s goals to engage with higher education.
QS: What are you looking forward to for the upcoming 2025 QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific?
Eduardo Pedrosa: We're going through this tremendous period of change. We have AI coming up; we have a certain amount of volatility in the Asia Pacific region and the world, and other megatrends like climate change. Having the chance to interact with leaders of universities gives us a chance to better understand what the education sector is doing to respond to those changes, and how are they providing those services to students.
This is pretty basic, but it's fundamental to the path forward if we are going to make sense of the next 10 to 20 years.
QS: It's interesting you bring up transformational change. I've noticed in some places within the Asia Pacific, there hasn't been necessarily a pushback on AI, but there has been a discussion being a little bit more thoughtful in the way we approach it. Are there any perspectives that APEC has in that regard?
EP: the phrase that comes out a lot in APEC meetings is human-centred, or people-centred. So we hear a lot about the technology, we hear a lot about its power to solve problems and so on, but there are ethical dimensions and just understanding what is the data that lies behind that? These are a couple of the things that that APEC looks at.
There are regulatory dimensions to this. These include privacy questions, and it also includes intellectual property questions. So, we tend to touch on all of these issues across the board in everything we talk about.
QS: How do you see higher education and international education advancing APEC's mission?
EP: We need to change the old education model that you and I went through. Is [the traditional degree] enough to get by? Is even a Master's degree, PhDs? Is that what we need in today's world?
Technology is moving so quickly, just keeping up with it is difficult; keeping up with the skills needed in the workforce, impossible. So how education is delivered, what is being delivered, and how it's being delivered.
We're trying in the policy space to think, what are the frameworks that we need to do? How does regional cooperation help? These aren't the easiest questions for us to wrap our heads around. As policymakers, we come from Ministries of Education or Ministries of Human Resources, but how close are we to the education sector and, of course, the employers as well?
QS: While we consider different type of models, the current model essentially comes with a guarantee from a government over its quality. Small and medium enterprises hire the vast majority of students, and most of their job listings ask from a bachelor’s degree as minimum. How does APEC see that shifting?
EP: Well, it's already changing. There's a lot more of focus on vocational training. It's almost back to the future; it's hands on experience. It doesn't really matter whether you have a degree or not, really the question is can you do the job? That's something that we look at. The key word you see is vocational technical education.
The other bit of the story is, as you said, recognition. “Do we recognise these degrees?” comes with a whole load of other questions for the traditional university.
QS: Where do you see the biggest opportunities for engagement for higher education between APEC and its partners.
EP: At this point in time, we're really trying to get to grips with the big trend that we've talked about this year in APEC, which is changing demographics, and what does that mean for all the whole of society. Korea is the most aged society in the world, but China is coming up, Japan we've known about, but Thailand as well. As we move through that process, what do we do about the aged populations?
But, if you look at the flip side of that, then you've got a whole cohort of students who are going to be leaving. There won't be that many 18-yea- olds anymore. What do you do with those facilities that exist? That's sort of a question we're beginning to get to. What do we need to do with that those universities? What do we need to do with the teachers? Where do they go?
But fundamentally, the question that we're beginning to grapple with is how do you match skills with the changing jobs? How do you bring together business and academia in that space? APEC tries to facilitate a framework for that cooperation, and it's one of the things that we do relatively well, because business is built in to the work that we do today. The APEC policy APEC Business Advisory Council gives its recommendations every year to APEC leaders, but we don't have the counterpart on the educational side.
QS: Let’s reflect on the weekend that’s just happened. The 2025 APEC summit has completed and it was quite successful in easing some trade tensions. Are you happy with it?
EP: I'm very happy that it was a successful summit. It could have been a lot worse! The role of regional cooperation, I think it's less regional cooperation, per se, and more about how you do it. We're used to a world of sort of binding rules, treaties and so on. APEC members are very supportive of a multilateral system, but it's not quite working as we'd like it to.
What I'm particularly happy about is APEC leaders showed up, including the leaders of the two biggest economies, as well as a whole lot of others, and they continue to engage. It might sound like a low bar, but it's actually an incredible achievement at this point in time.
I have this feeling that this is the time for more soft cooperation and that just the dialog in itself is helpful.
To be frank, there's a backlash against globalisation. And, so, what is it that’s driving it, and what are our responses to it? What my take home from that was, was maybe we are over focused on trade. It sounds counterintuitive for a trade-centred organisation, but we’re actually more economic.
QS: The overall theme of the summit is achieving intergenerational potential. There is a massive opportunity for the Asia Pacific to harness its demographic strengths and educational excellence. How do you see bringing all this together to drive equitable growth?
EP: With a few exceptions, those economies that have aged quickly are quite wealthy. But we have some economies in our region that are still emerging. So how do you balance that out? What is the role of education in sort of bridging that demographic?
We also have our connectivity blueprint, and that has certain metrics, job flows and tourist flows. Another big part of this is education. How many intra-regional students do we have? Is that increasing; is it decreasing? This is a sort of indicator of whether or not we're moving closer towards our final goals in connectivity.
QS: How are increased flows a net positive in this blueprint?
EP: Connectivity helps increase our wellbeing. It helps increase economic growth. We have physical connectivity, bridging between the hard infrastructure, then the institutional, which is policy alignment, and then we have the people-to-people.
One of the highlights of Korea's year has been looking at the creative industries. The excitement this year was about K-Pop, [but it’s also] Korean soft power and soft culture. People get to know K-pop and they’re interested in visiting Korea. It's that dynamic between different industries that increase globalisation at a time where globalisation is not that popular. At a people level, it may well be more successful, rather than the policy level or the institutional level.