I’m trying something new today.  Every second Friday since last September, HESA’s Matt Doyle and I have been putting together the Fifteen – a list of interesting stories on higher education from around the world.  I am hoping to turn the results of this little project, along with some data analysis on student enrolments and university finances, into an annual almanac – a little bit like State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada only a bit more narrative and a lot more global.  As a way to help me think through what’s going on globally, I thought it was worth putting together a quarterly summary of global trends, the first of which I am sharing with you today.  Please let me know what you think.

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The biggest news of the past three months by a country mile is the ferocious assault on US science and US universities being conducted by the US government.  It began with a 50% reduction in National Institute of Health (NIH) overhead rates, which seemed set to cost US institutions about $7 billion per year.  This later metastasized into a larger overall assault on the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF).  This did not so much take the form of reducing budgets – that, in theory, would require Congressional approval.  Rather, it took three other forms.  First, the suspension of funding for active projects that had anything to do with improving the lot of women or racial/sexual minorities (including basically anything involving maternal health), as part of a general attack on what the Americans call “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: (DEI).  Second, it involved suspension of various forms of graduate student assistance including the Fulbright program.  And third, it took the form of suspending competitions for future funding and slashing the NIH and NSF workforces below the point where they could conceivably fund large numbers of competitions in the future.  Basically: Congress can vote whatever funds it wants, but the Trump Executive is self-amputating so that it can never administer said funds.  Various legal challenges are underway but the Trump Administration’s disdain for the judiciary suggests it is unlikely to submit to any adverse decisions.  A Constitutional crisis looms.

On top of this came attacks on institutional autonomy, which for the most part consisted of threats to defund any institution which continued activities deemed to be “DEI”, a term the Administration defined in terms so vague as to make it nearly impossible to comply.  In the case of Columbia University, it also threatened to defund an institution due to its failure to combat “antisemitism”, which was an odd thing to demand given how many genuine antisemites seem to orbit the Trump regime (Columbia caved).  And also there was the detention and potential deportation of hundreds of international students, mainly it seems for the crime of exercising free speech and freedom of assembly in such a way as to be critical of Israel. 

The cumulative impact of what has happened in US in the past seventy days will take years if not decades to reverse.  Careers have been destroyed.  Promising lines of research – such as those involving mRNA research – have simply been dropped.  If one wanted to destroy America’s future prosperity and scientific pre-eminence, one could scarcely have done more than the Trump Administration has done.  This will be to the good fortune of some individual institutions in other countries, but to the world as a whole – especially North America – the faltering of science and the economic progress that depends on it will lower economic growth potential for a decade or more to come.

There are, broadly, three aspects to the whole US story.  The first is one of anti-scientism, a broad disdain for the idea that anyone other than those in power are permitted to say what the truth is.  This is most obvious when looking at the policies of the Department of Health and the NIH around the non-promotion of vaccines, but it permeates the administration generally.  There are no other parts of the world – for the moment – where we see anything similar.  But the other two aspects her – attacks on institutional autonomy and academic freedom on the one hand, and reductions in the financial capabilities of universities on the other, do have echoes elsewhere.

With respect to state controls over institutional autonomy and academic freedom, the most obvious parallel case to the United States over the past three months is Georgia, where the controversial pro-Russian government sees universities as a centre of dissent and wishes to increase supervision over them and thereby limit autonomy.  India and Pakistan have also seen flare-ups over the past few months with respect to autonomy – mainly but not exclusively relating to government use of the power to name vice-chancellors – but this is less a “new shift” than the latest incidents in a long-running battle.

The other issue, of course, is overall university funding. The United States is certainly unique in the extent to which scientific research budgets are under attack.  And it is unique in the sense that it seems to be the only country where individual institutions are being singled out for specific funding reductions in the manner of Columbia University.  But it is not unique in the sense that universities are feeling the need for quick retrenchment.

There two closest parallels are Argentina and the Netherlands.  In the former, President Milei’s inflation-busting program involves reducing government spending to well below the rate of price growth.  By some accounts, real transfers to universities are now down about 30% on last year, which has led to a series of strikes.  In the latter, the still new-ish coalition government, elected in 2024, is still enacting both a series of cuts to university finances and imposing restrictions on teaching programs in English, which has the effect of reducing universities’ international student fee income.  This too, is leading to strike action.

Among OECD countries, universities in France, already struggling to deal with last year’s reductions in funding, got hit with a new round of compressions in the February budget, and most are looking at deficits both this year and next.  The anglosphere trio of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are also facing continuing struggles from the loss of international students stemming from a combination of tighter visa restrictions, reduced demand and greater international competition, but unlike the other examples cited, these financial challenges in the short-term stem from a loss of market income, not government income.

In sub-Saharan Africa, however, we are seeing systems face a different kind of financial struggle.  Kenya and Nigeria are the ones most obviously dealing with huge increases in enrollment.  In the former, there has been much financial chaos stemming from the introduction and then retraction (via Supreme Court decision) of a new funding model.  However, the core problem is not the nature of the formula, but the insufficiency of the total amount of cash available.  In Nigeria, where enrolment demand has surged well beyond the capacity of existing institutions to deal with the crisis, there does appear to be some money available for expansion. But there is a debate between the government and Parliament about whether to invest new money into 200 new universities or into existing, poorly-funded public institutions (which are regularly subjected to months-long strikes).  Pakistan, which is the recipient of rare one-time legal windfall from the UK, is having a similar debate about the merits of investing in old vs. new universities.

Another way countries can deal with the surge in demand is by allowing the expansion of private education.   In the past three months, two jurisdictions which have historically been hostile to this notion – Greece and the state of Kerala in India have adopted policies which now make them more welcoming to these kinds of projects.  A new American-based private institution, Cintana Education, seems to be making advances in a number of Asian countries.  And The Philippines and Thailand have both announced new initiatives to attract new private universities from abroad. 

On the other side of this exchange, UK institutions have been opening new campuses in India and Central Asia at a ferocious pace.  And in China, the central government has told its institutions that they should be more aggressive in “going global”.  If these trends continue to converge, we could perhaps imagine large numbers of Chinese universities setting up branch campuses in large numbers across southeast Asia and maybe even as far afield as East Africa.   And while not all countries see opportunities for growth in the international education services business, Belarus of all places seems to making a go of it.

But demand does not just increase or decrease – it also shifts, and currently the shift in demand towards STEM is a very big deal.  The Russian Federation has ordered its universities to make sweeping changes to modernize its curriculum.  Top Chinese universities have been told to start growing once again, with a focus on STEM programs, and in particular programs related to Artificial Intelligence, at the expense of programs in the humanities. 

In terms of student and student activism, Serbia has stolen the show, with students leading what is now a five-month campaign against the government, based on themes of anti-corruption.   The President still refuses to resign, but the Prime Minister’s term at least has been cut short.  Bangladesh continues to experience aftershocks from last year’s events where student-led protests saw the overthrow of the regime of the Awami League’s Sheikh Hasina; there have been attempts to create an actual student political party to follow-up on this success but the effort has been mired in factionalism, mainly about which institutions’ representatives get to sit on the party executive.  Iran saw a spate of student protest activity after a student was murdered near campus, with students demanding better campus security.

In brighter news, Brazil’s higher education system has now broken through the 10 million student mark, making it comfortably the world’s fourth-largest higher education system.  And Vietnam’s university enrolments are heading towards the three million student mark, and the country is making ambitious plans for the system’s future.

And finally, perhaps, there were more stories of universities persisting through the most trying times.  Ukraine’s universities are soldiering on (pun intended) even as new rules require them to provide basic military training. And in Myanmar, universities continue their existence even behind rebel lines in that country’s civil war. 

And that, friends, was the quarter that was in world higher education.  See you again in June.