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AUN-QA International Conference

2025

Theme: “Fortifying Higher Education: Strategic KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Quality Assurance for Resilience and Institutional Noor Azuan Abu Osman
Immunity in ASEAN” Vice Chancellor
Universiti Malaya

“Charting the Health of Higher Education: From Past
Vulnerabilities to Future Fortification”

Distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, and dear friends,

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh and a very good morning.
1. The theme of this year’s conference — Fortifying Higher Education: Strategic
Quality Assurance for Resilience and Institutional Immunity in ASEAN — compels
us to look beyond frameworks and audits, and to ask a deeper, more existential
question: How do we keep education alive, relevant, and humane in an age where
the world invests more in conflict than in conscience? 171
2. The last decade has revealed how vulnerable higher education can be when the
world changes too fast, and when funding, trust, and attention shift elsewhere.
The pandemic taught us how fragile our systems could be when classrooms
closed and borders sealed.
3. But today, another challenge looms — the geopolitical redirection of global
priorities.According to UNESCO and the World Bank, global military spending
surpassed USD 2.4 trillion in 2024, the highest in human history — a figure that
has grown by nearly 10% in just three years.
4. By contrast, global spending on education has stagnated at around 4% of GDP,
and R&D funding in developing economies fell by nearly 5% in 2023, much of it
diverted to security and defence imperatives.
5. Even in advanced economies, university research budgets have plateaued. The
OECD reports that for every additional dollar spent on defence, less than ten
cents now go to education or basic science. The moral imbalance is staggering
— and dangerous.
6. We are living in an age where billions are invested to wage wars that destroy
lives, while millions are cut from research that could save them.This must be our
collective wake-up call.
7. This diversion of global resources is not merely an economic concern — it is a
civilisational one.When the engines of innovation are funded by fear instead of
hope, humanity loses its direction.
8. In Brunei earlier this year, I cautioned that education may soon become collateral
damage in a world obsessed with deterrence and competition.Every missile
launched is a scholarship lost; every drone deployed is a laboratory delayed.
9. We must remind the world that the most effective security strategy is not an arms
race — it is an education race.