Hi all. It’s been over a month since the last Fifteen and you might think that the world of higher education would slow down over the holidays, but you’d be wrong. Buckle up, this is a big one.
1. Back in December the government in Bulgaria was forced to resign due to anti-corruption protests that were mainly led by students (although increasingly student protest is being called “Gen Z protests”, which is interesting and I would love to understand why). Iran is also currently undergoing a spasm of unrest which began just before New Year’s Day. It’s difficult to know exactly what is going on there due to regime restrictions on the internet, but what we know for sure is that students have been in the thick of things since about Day 3 of the protests, and that security forces have been targeting universities and student dormitories since about day 7. At least two students have been killed, one at the University of Tehran and another at Shariati College, the latter apparently executed at very short range. The likelihood is that the death toll among students is much higher than this, but it may take weeks or months before a more complete picture emerges.
2. Inside Higher Education has put together a useful list of higher ed issues that will be in front of Congress in 2026, while Forbes has done the same for state legislatures. At the institutional level, the story of the U Virginia presidential search/selection seems like the one to watch right now, but if schadenfreude is more your area, you could do worse than keep an eye on the wave of departures at the “heterodox” University of Austin.
3. The epic that is the battle over university finances in Argentina continues. President Milei’s proposed 2026 Budget Law tried to revoke the previous Congressional Law on Financing of Universities (which Milei was never going to implement anyway, having issued a decree suspending the implementation of the law a few weeks earlier). Congress passed the entire bill except the bit that cut funding to universities. And then his decree was overturned in the courts. The latest data suggests that faculty salaries are now down 45% from where they were three years ago. Meanwhile, north of the border in Brazil, universities are looking forward to dealing with a budget cut of about half a billion reals, which is equivalent to about 7% of non-mandatory expenses.
4. As for cuts at the institutional level, continual underfunding at Complutense de Madrid, one of Spain’s best universities, has led the institution to impose a 35% cut on all departments. And in Germany, deep funding cuts at the state level has led institutions there into some deep restructuring as well: Jan-Martin Wiarda has the details.
5. In more positive news: South Korea has announced a whack of new funding for regional universities, presumably in line with the government’s ambition to create “10 Seoul National Universities”. Hong Kong’s universities had a collective surplus of about $1.5 billion US last year, despite having had to return several hundred million dollars mid-year to help the regional government cover a deficit. Colombia passed a new law to improve university financing. And in France, the Minister of Higher Education has launched an “Assises de financement” which might just lead to an increase in funding there as well.
6. Faculty in Kenya who went on strike in the fall are happy now that the government made a 50% down payment on the back wages it owed them; industrial action has similarly been called off in Nigeria as the government there agreed to a 40% pay increase for university lecturers. Good news for the anglophone part of the continent, but over on the francophone side we are now looking at national faculty strike action in both Cote d’Ivoire and Cameroon.
7. The new(ish) Institute of Science in Tokyo (the result of a 2024 merger of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Tokyo Medical and Dental University) has just been named a “University for International Research Excellence, a title it shares only with Tohoku University in Sendai. The program allows the universities to reap a share of the annual returns on a US $100 billion endowment fund the government set up five years ago to boost the country’s university sector. U Kyoto is apparently next; U Tokyo, which is normally considered the country’s “top” university, has surprisingly been shut out of the fun so far.
8. Georgia has introduced a system of free tuition in its public universities, funded mainly by reducing funding to private institutions. Sounds progressive? In theory, perhaps, but keep in mind “public” = under (pro-Russian techno-accelerationist) government control and “private” = (not pro-Russian techno-accelerationist) so there is a whole fascism aspect to consider. Meanwhile, Namibia has worked out the details of its free tuition system. It applies only to first undergraduate degrees, and only institutions which receive a certain number of “points” in a new systems of quasi-accreditation will be eligible to participate.
9. Interesting development in Serbia where the government recently introduced a new financial system for the country’s universities, called SPIRI. There are complaints that a system built for primary and secondary schools is unlikely to be able to deal with the complexity of the tertiary level (and its use by institutions may actually violate the law). There is also a suspicion that the system is being introduced so the government can directly punish faculties seen as being anti-government.
10. Notable in online education: Italy’s radically reshaped higher education system is now over 20% online, thanks to a new breed of private online-only universities. Among the more interesting statistics on the sector is the fact that completion rates in online education are actually higher than in regular universities. Also, Ethiopia has a big new player in online education named Zengju which has jumped to prominence by using some very unorthodox tactics.
11. In the Netherlands, former ASML President Peter Wennink has authored a report for the Government on where to make investments for future prosperity (full text here). Almost unimaginably (for Canadians), it recommends big investment in research (and, to a lesser extent, education). Among the more specific recommendations is the creation of a National Institute on Breakthrough Innovation (basically a Dutch DARPA).
12. Parliament in India is contemplating a radically reshaping of the governance and regulation in the world’s second-largest higher education system. The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill (VBSA), 2025 would see most of the regulatory, accreditation and standards functions of the University Grants Council (UGC), the All-India Council on Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council on Teacher Education (NCTE) centralized in the new VBSA; however, all these functions would be de-linked from the actual funding of higher education, which would be controlled more directly by politicians. Here’s an excellent explainer from The New Indian Express.
13. Bangladesh is following India in revamping its peak education regulation bodies. And, as in India, Bangladesh’s new top body is being charged with conducting a ranking of universities. In the same vein, the state government of Khyber Pakhtunkwa in Pakistan is also going to start a system of institutional rankings. In both cases, the assumption is that competition via rankings will raise academic standards.
14. The right-wing government in Brazil’s Santa Catarina passed a couple of notable laws with respect to higher education just before Christmas. One eliminated the use of racial quotas in state universities; the other required all students to pass a drug test before enrolling. Good luck with that.
15. I don’t normally include editorials about higher education in the Fifteen, but this one from Portuguese writer Marco Vasconcelos is a scorcher, and worth your time (it’s about Portugal, but I am sure everyone will hear a local echo).
And that’s it for now. See you back here on January 30th.
