Morning, all. It being the first of April, it’s time for a quick look at the past three months of higher education stories from around the world. Let’s take a brief look at the issues that preoccupied the sector worldwide.
The most important story of the last few months, obviously, is happening in Iran and the Persian Gulf. The year began with the regime massacring thousands of citizens, including hundreds of students on the night of January 8/9. After 40 days of mourning, protests began mounting again in late February, at which point dissent became impossible because Israel and American began bombing and made public life extremely difficult. Iran retaliated with drone strikes on American allies in the Gulf States, which led to educational institutions of all kinds being forced to move online. Over this past weekend, when American and Israeli jets deliberately bombed a number of Iranian universities, the Iranian government declared American educational establishments to be legitimate targets, which led not just to the immediate closures of campuses in the UAE (where hitherto classes were online but campuses still open), but also in Lebanon, Jordan, and Armenia (the latter only temporarily), all of which are well within Iranian drone-range.
The impact of all this is fairly profound. Locally, the bombing stopped the student protests in Iran from evolving into a situation more like that seen in Bangladesh in 2024 when the regime was actually toppled. More broadly of course, the war in Iran threatens a lot of what were believed to be certainties about the UAE and Dubai and their status as future education hubs. If the war ends quickly, it would be possible to imagine the sector moving quickly back to normal, but if stability proves elusive, it’s hard to see how Dubai in particular retains the mix of insouciance and luxury that has made it the world’s longest-lasting property bubble, and sans that, why would anyone move there? Other countries, particularly Malaysia and Kazakhstan, might see this as an opening to move into the offshore education space.
The move to online learning in response to crisis went far beyond the Middle East. Iran’s choking off the Straits of Hormuz led to fuel shortages in many parts of Asia, which in turn led to campuses moving partially or fully online as a fuel conservation measure in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. But national switches to online learning in fact became incredibly common this quarter. Cuba moved its universities online in late February during its own fuel crisis, Oman moved classes online because of extreme heat while Egypt did it because of rain; parts of Mexico’s higher education system went online in early March because of violent confrontations between drug cartels and security forces.
There were few national budgets so there was not a lot of “new” news. Most of the stories about financing had to do with long-running sagas: the ongoing vandalization of science funding in the United States, the continuing battle between Argentina’s President Milei and Congress over university funding, the slow-motion financial collapse of universities in Kenya and reports/inquiries into the stability of universities in places like Colombia and France. Among the countries that bucked the bad-news trend were Ireland and – surprisingly given the ongoing demographically-driven decline in enrolments – South Korea; in the Netherlands a new and more centrist coalition government chose to undo the previous government’s cuts. In a weird form of symmetry, right-wing governments in Ontario and Madrid, both of whom had long been funding laggards, both decided to give their universities a boost with substantial multi-year increases in funding which nevertheless still left both jurisdictions last in their respective countries for per-student funding.
Financing problems have given rise to a large number of labour actions around the world. Technical staff at universities in Brazil have been off the job for about a month now. French academic staff did a one-day strike this week to protest a reduction in the number of new staff posts available – a consequence of strained funding. Things have been particularly bleak in Africa, with strikes in Ghana, Cameroon and Sudan. In Nigeria, which endured a 10-week academic work stoppage in the fall, strikes may be set to resume because the government is not releasing the funds necessary to fulfill the agreement. Faculty in Morocco have also been on strike periodically, though in their case political opposition to university reform, not pay, was the cause.
In India, the biggest story was probably about caste discrimination, the University Grants Council’s move to prevent it through the creation of specialized committees at each institution, and the backlash and subsequent Supreme Court injunction against any attempt to try to convene such committees. You’re allowed to make comparisons with the US controversies against EDI as it is pretty much the same politics of elite grievance.
The country where policy has been set closest to ultra-hyperactive (and not in a good way) has been Georgia. Late last year, the government introduced a “one city, one faculty” policy which gave the government wide powers to meddle with institutional affairs. The government used these powers to try to force a merger between Georgian Technical University and Tbilisi State University. It eventually backed away from this proposal but then decided to take an axe to liberal-leaning Ilia State University and reduce its enrolment quota by 92%. It also withdrew subsidies from private universities and made public universities free, a move that can be explained less by a desire to expand access and more as a way to exert greater control a sector the government fears.
Branch campuses remain in vogue. Earlier this year the new President of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, invited the UK government to set up ten specialized health universities to help deal with the country’s shortage of medica specialists (UK universities, unusually, were reluctant to commit). Australia universities continued piling into Sri Lanka; Charles Sturt University opened a campus in Colombo while southern Cross university introduced a new business degree. But North-South branch campus activity can be seen as a little passé; what about North-North (Temple University opens a second campus in Tokyo)? Or South-South (Pakistani institutions in Ghana)? Or even – this is the exciting one – South-North (IIT Bombay to open a US Campus by 2030)? Again, faint stirrings still, but global competition could get a lot more interesting.
Despite government stinginess towards institutions, students are getting a boost in many countries. France is moving forward with plans to offer €1 meals to all students. Hungary has ordered its institutions to roughly double bursary funding; Ukraine is doing the same out of its central budget. Germany wants to raise funding through its very restrictive Bafög system, but the coalition government can’t agree on how to pay for it. It’s not all roses of course: the UK student loan system remains a titanic mess whilst in the US there’s an $11 Billion shortfall in the Pell grant system and the Trump administration looks set to crash large parts of the student loan system in late June as it forces millions of borrowers to switch loan repayment plans simultaneously. Good luck with that.
Though the story has not received a lot of attention outside Asia, perhaps the most consequential development of the last few months has been the increasing number of top scholars heading/returning to Chinese Universities. If you keep tabs on the South China Morning Post and some of the key Vietnamese news outlets, you’ll know there’s basically a story every week; here’s one, here’s another, and another, and another…you get the idea. No single story or single researcher matters of course, but the constant flow week after week, month after month…but it’s definitely going to change the face of global academia.
If you’re looking for a region where things look likely to kick off over the next few months, my best guess would be Latin America. There is, of course, the usual nightmare in Argentina. In Colombia, outgoing President Gustavo Petro has imposed a tax on private universities which could conceivably drive a few such institutions to the brink. The new far-right administration of José Antonion Kast’s initial moves to slim down the Chilean system of gratuidad have been relatively tame, they probably won’t stay that way. Mexico is still living in a system where funding is down over 30% from where it was eight years ago, while the government keeps opening new universities. And in Brazil, where the federal government has difficulty sticking to a funding policy for more than a few weeks at a time, and where the system of medical education was thrown into chaos after a high number of students did poorly on the national exit exams, well, let’s just say the run-up to the October elections could be very, very interesting.
As the world as a whole has become more dangerous over the past decade, the world of higher education has become a lot more volatile. And it is never, ever dull. See you back in this space in June.
