The year 2020 proved what we could have only imagined could happen overnight. Like many, we feel that the transformations we see happening right now were bound to happen eventually but that the pandemic has prompted acceleration. In a fast-forwarded future, many of us have barely had time to adjust, let alone look ahead. On 19th of November, 2020, we hosted The Class Graduation Conference: Fast-forwarding Our Future with some of the most provocative thinkers and practitioners to challenge over 900 delegates from higher education, real estate, technology, investment, co-working, coliving, and of course, student living for exactly that reason: to look ahead to make a better future happen faster for our global talents.

The past decade has brought extraordinary growth and change to university cities. Universities have stepped up investment in internationalization and the student learning experience. Visionary investors, developers, and operators have introduced flexible and community-oriented living concepts for global talent to markets across Europe. Billions of equity and institutional funds have been deployed on campus, housing projects, and regenerated districts. Global talent mobility has accelerated vibrant city development and economic success in return. But how resilient are we? What will tomorrow and the day after look like? How can we recover from the current crisis and prevent the loss of progress we have achieved and reshape the future for the better? At The Class, we believe that crises can be a powerful engine to fix things. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, we were confronting a housing crisis, often worse than that of 10 years ago. Higher education and student mobility are neither accessible to all nor necessarily providing the right competencies to the labor market in a changing world. The rise of blended living and learning is here to stay, and students make it clear that they still value experience and community. At The Class Graduation Conference, we convened some of the most provocative thinkers and practitioners who challenge our community to make a better future happen faster. We asked them to envision the new knowledge ecosystem in an era of paradigm shifts. And with you, we explored what our community can and should do to provide opportunities for global talent and save our beloved university cities.

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