The Fifteen: September 11, 2026

Hi everyone. The Fifteen is back, bringing you news on the biggest developments in higher education around the world from the last two weeks. Let’s get right to it!

1. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) just released the results of the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). And they are…awful. To quote: Average reading scores fell by 28 points across OECD countries between 2015 and 2025, equivalent to about one and a half years of learning. Mathematics scores fell by 22 points, equivalent to just over one year of learning. Basically, fifteen year-olds can now do what thirteen year-olds could do ten years ago. And those fifteen year-olds: they are heading towards higher education very soon. (If interested, Canada results are here; interesting comments from the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher to the effect that the big news in Canada is the decline in parental interest in education here).
2. The Very Definitely Nazi-ish Alternative für Deutschland won a big victory in the Saxony-Anhalt elections last weekend. Because they fell short of a majority, it is not yet clear if they will form a government (the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is a potential partner). But it does have some fairly nasty plans for higher education, as outlined here in an excellent précis by the Centre for Higher Education’s Ulrich Müller. Higher Ed leaders in Saxony-Anhalt are talking a good game about defending academic freedom, etc., but experience in places like Russia and Hungary suggest that state universities can’t do much when the state itself becomes the enemy. Stay tuned.
3. Nigeria has decided that the way to get higher education institutions is to…create a ranking! As of this year, all universities and polytechnics will be required to submit data to a National Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee, who will rank institutions (actual indicators seem to be tbd). This approach of using rankings as a spur to competition in quality isn’t new of course – it’s been government policy across South Aisa for while now. But it is the first time we’ve seen this in Africa.
4. A huge crackdown on academic misconduct China misconduct crackdown is underway, with over 40 researchers being investigated. This is a further development in a case that began when a graduate student blogger started publishing data on fraud in biomedical research earlier this year. 
5. South Korea continues its hyperactive approach to higher education policy making. The government has selected three of the regional institutions that will be given megabucks to become one of the government’s “10 Seoul National Universities” (that is, regional universities that will be upfunded so that they become as strong as SNU) – and immediately faced accusations of chicanery from institutions that were not picked. Meanwhile, since demographic decline is laying waste to enrolments at public regional universities, the major cities, the government has prepared a program granting free first-year tuition to 60,000 students at such institutions. But no good deed goes unpunished, so the government now faces criticism from regional private universities arguing that leaving them out of such a scheme is unfair.
6. Australian universities have been so twisted around by government meddling in higher education that they are starting to push for legislation that defines and protects institutional autonomy. That’s common in some parts of the world, but it would be new in the Anglosphere.
7. In AI news: Kazakhstan’s AI University began admitting students last week. The government of Andhra Pradesh greenlit the creation of a Quantum-and-AI university to open soon in Amaravati. Pakistan and Singapore, both of which announced this year that all degrees must have some AI content in them, have now release at least some details of what that actually means and how it will be implemented. Similarly, the University of Ghana has announced that all students must receive some AI training. Meanwhile, in Boston, MIT has released the results of its internal discussions about how AI should alter approaches to teaching and research. It’s a good report, mainly because it barely talks about the technology at all.
8. Dhaka University Bangladesh is going through what is being described as a political purge, with investigations being pursued against hundreds of professors believed to have acted in supported of the regime of the Awami League, which was chased from office through protests two years ago. Obviously, you want to get rid of people who have committed crimes; on the other, it’s hard to shake the notion that this just perpetuates a cycle of political victors punishing their enemies.
9. In Kenya…well, where to begin? Over the summer, the government decided that its new system of funding needed to be overhauled (the 4^th overhaul in the past six years). This time the idea is “100% government funding for all students” which actually means a lot more student loans: and non-means-tested ones at that, rather like the English system. There is not remotely the amount of money in the budget available to pay for this. Universities will undoubtedly be asked to take up the slack – that is, the same universities that are already KSH100bn in debt (about US$78 million) because of previous iterations of this government’s bright ideas. Meanwhile, at Moi University, one of the country’s most indebted, staff are threatening to go on strike over the university’s attempt to balance the budget via layoffs.
10. Last month the government of Malaysia decided to repeal the Universities and University College Act of 1971 (AUKU, using the Malay acronym), an Act which, among other things, gave the government and vice-chancellors sweeping power to crack down on campus dissent. This is a major step forward for liberalism in the country. But the question is: what kind of framework law will replace it? The government has set up a committee to make recommendations, but it may be awhile before we know the answer.
11. A good piece here from the Times Higher Ed on the strange and quiet death of the proposed Neom University in Saudi Arabia. Neom was the name given to a proposed new hyper-futuristic city to be built in northern Tabuk Province. Once the tab for the city, which included something called “The Line”, a glass-mirrored building measuring 200m x 500m x 170000m (not a misprint), reached about $9 trillion dollars, the Saudi government decided that maybe the whole idea was crazy, and started dialing ambitions way, way, down. That apparently includes the proposed city’s university.
12. In the UK, Lincoln Bishop University, a public institution, has been taken over by Global University Systems (the private company which owns University Canada West and Niagara Falls University). It’s not a merger, exactly, and Bishop Lincoln retains some degree of independence (details here) but it’s still a pretty unprecedented development.
13. In Mexico, we are into another round of the left-wing populist President bashing universities. Last week, the national association of universities, ANUIES, claimed that the system are facing a collective deficit of 50 billion pesos.  President Sheinbaum dismissed claims of penury, and claimed – as she has many times before – that universities would be fine and could enroll many more students if they just cut administrative costs. The President of the country’s largest institution, UNAM, basically told her to go jump in the lake. Same as it ever was.
14. The Eastern Congo is not often a focus of global higher education news, but it has been this summer. As described in the June 12 edition of The Fifteen, the central government in Kinsasha threatened to close universities in regions held by the M-23 rebels (which includes the cities of Goma and Bukavu) if the rebels continued to try to control the universities through personnel changes. The government in effect followed through on that threat by ordering all universities in the area to cease operations two weeks ago, telling students who wanted to continue their studies to leave the area and universities across the country to welcome students from the zone. The Rwandan-backed rebels called the measure an unjustified “collective punishment”.
15. Ethiopia has a quality problem. Three weeks ago, the results of the national university entrance exams were released. Only 12.8% of student passed; better than last year’s 8.9%, but still pretty awful. Then last came news of a new study showing that only about half of all graduating students passed their university exit examinations (a measure used in many countries like Brazil and Jordan as a sort of quality-control instrument; in Ethiopia, a student who fails the exam cannot receive their diploma). The unanswered question of course: is the problem the education, or the exams?

And that’s it for now. See you back here in two weeks.