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SINGAPORE : The global education industry, worth an estimated US$2.3 trillion a year, is at the point of transformation.

That is the view of industry leaders who attended the Forbes Global CEO Conference on Wednesday morning.

They said that increasingly, universities are finding that they have to take on a more global focus.

Are universities preparing people for the real world?

That is the key question that dominated the minds of the world's leading educators and the business community at the Forbes Global CEO conference.

Joseph Aoun, President, Northeastern University, said, "Students are no longer going to face one career but multiple careers, therefore the purpose of education is no longer to prepare you for the first career as in an industrial setting, but for the second, third and fourth, and you cannot predict which careers they are going to be. Therefore based on that, it is time to rethink our models and see whether they fit in this new environment."

Students now face a global business environment when they graduate, and educators are struggling to keep pace with the change.

Top schools are requiring their students to work across time zones, with researchers based in other countries.

They are also taking in more foreign students to provide diversity on campus. Some have gone on to set up overseas satellites.

But industry players say that more needs to be done.

Angel Cabrera, President, Thunderbird School of Global Management, said, "I believe we are at the breaking point in our industry, we are great at looking at trends and preaching to others what they need to do, and we're terrible at applying our wisdom to ourselves. So for 500 years, the notion of the university has been a unity of location.

"Even though many universities are setting up operations in other parts of the world, these are small, very small satellite operations... If you look at other knowledge industries, like for example, consulting services, all of them have become global organisations with a real global presence."

Education is the second largest industry in the world after healthcare. And as countries develop, this sector is expected to continue to grow.

The issue is how to ensure relevance of education.

Leaders in this field say the key strategy is to move towards more experiential learning, through more attachments with companies. - CNA/ms