The Asian University for Women seeks to graduate women who will be skilled and innovative professionals, service-oriented leaders in the businesses and communities in which they will work and live, and promoters of intercultural understanding and sustainable human and economic development in Asia and throughout the world.
The story of AUW began well before its inaugural Access Academy class entered in 2008. The idea for the University grew out of the World Bank/UN Task Force on Higher Education and Society. In 2000, the Task Force published its findings in a report entitled “Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise” (more information available at http://www.tfhe.net/), which concluded that developing countries must improve the quality of their institutions of higher learning, in both governance and pedagogy, in order to compete in today’s increasingly globalized, knowledge-based economy.
