The year 2020 began with grand ideas about building future higher education. Thereafter universities have been through a constant swirl of uncertainties and confusions as they respond to a novel suite of radically reconfigured fundamentals and prospects. This essay charts this journey in order to document 2020 experiences and to clarify evolving circumstances. We present our personal situations as the basis for articulating perspectives. We discuss shifts with higher education systems, education reconfigurations, research developments, the mobility of students, and faculty members. Finally, we explore the need and opportunity to design future higher education. Engaging with transformed fundamentals provides a means, we propose, to design a new, global hybrid higher education.

This exploratory paper articulates the development, characteristics and nature of global university presidents and their leadership. It draws insights from a growing project which so far has involved in-depth interviews with 18 presidents of major globally focused universities. Analysing and reporting these interview results reveals the enigmatic world of presidential leadership broadens this field of research beyond the Anglosphere, helps build interpretative frameworks and perspectives, and furnished insights for guiding leadership development. The exploratory findings reinforce the particular value of studying university presidents, as these people have enormous authority, expertise and prominence.

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