The 7th Annual Higher Education Summit (2009)

With unemployment on the rise, governments need to ensure that universities can cater to the growing number of people going back to study.

Director for Higher Education Strategy, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in the UK, Martin Williams said it was important that there were opportunities in universities for people who wanted to further education.

The Government can, of course, make some extra funding available in either the form of loans or grants, he said. In the UK, we have expanded the amount of money in our career development loans about $45 million and we expect quite a lot of people will benefit from that.

While important areas including the culture industry were doing well despite the global financial crisis, the knowledge economy in the UK had been suffering.

Mr Williams said the key to a successful knowledge-based economy was the acquiring and communication of knowledge.

Youve got to have a large number of people of all ages in the economy, educated to at least the degree level, he said. You need the capacity for them to communicate that knowledge so you need a really good knowledge infrastructure, communication infrastructure, so things like high broadband capacity for example, are absolutely integral to a knowledge economy.

Mr Williams said countries needed to create incentives and opportunities in their economy to motivate people to exploit the knowledge they had.