The world is changing.  The goal of the Trump Administration, fairly clearly, is to create a world where “rules” are set by the Three Bullies (itself, Russia and China) with all other countries basically left at the mercy of these three major nuclear powers.  It is a terrifying prospect, with more than a little of echo of Orwell’s Oceania/Eurasia/Eastasia trio with their boots “stamping on the face of humanity, forever”

But the thing about all those other countries?  They have agency.  And there’s an obvious bloc of countries that could rise to meet this trio – a group which one might call, with perhaps a hint of ironic anachronism, “The Free World”.  Which is to say, the European Union (yes, I know, Hungary, but bear with me), the UK, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and maybe, with some kind of associate membership, Taiwan as well.  There are plenty of obstacles to this kind of grouping, of course, but as it consists of basically everyone who still believes in multilateralism, Bretton Woods, free trade and the rule of law, it is a kind of natural grouping, and certainly one that will need to strengthen elements of collective co-operation and defense against the Three Bullies. I doubt we’ll get there in four years, but in eight?  It might well be possible.

And if that happens, what would the effects be on higher education?  Well, nothing, necessarily.  But let me make a case for how universities can make a serious, sustained case for their utility in a period of global diplomatic upheaval.

If a grouping like this were to come to pass, it would be for strategic defensive reasons, based on shared values (in much the same way NATO emerged in 1949).  The good news is that we already have some pretty good, functioning examples of how to get universities to work together to reinforce community and collaborate on significant common challenges.  Namely, the European Union’s Erasmus Program for student mobility and the Horizon Europe program.  So I suspect that the new Free World will, in relatively short order (not immediately but soon), start to put together the kind of supranational infrastructure to give force to these ideas.

To be clear: I don’t think the correct answer will be to simply expand these programs.  This new “Free World” association can’t really be just “Europe plus” for the simple reason that Canada, ANZ, South Korea and Japan (and potentially one or two others) are too different, and their various political and educational cultures would need to be respected in any new arrangement.  But there is no question, given that Europe would be the demographic hub of the Free World (450 million vs. 176 million for Korea/Japan and 65 million for CANZ), that whatever Europe has done/is doing would likely be at the core of any new system that emerges, so whatever comes out of this on student mobility will be close enough to “Erasmus plus/Horizon Europe plus” that I’ll just use those terms as shorthand.

And what might that mean for Canada and Canadian universities? 

Well, first of all, it means that the “internationalization” agenda ceases being so much about gathering loads of money from bringing foreign students to Canada and becomes about national security and outbound student mobility, something Canada has never been especially good at.  Canadian students are homebodies: they are reluctant to go abroad because they don’t see the value in doing so, mainly because Canadian businesses put very little premium on international experience in hiring.  That might change in the scramble to secure new, non-US markets for Canadian products (we’ll see; I certainly hope so).  But institutions themselves are going to have to get better at reducing barriers to mobility too.

(A slightly extraneous thought here: if our main ally is no longer an English-speaking country but a globally-polyglot set of countries, we might just have to change our view about language policy, and get more people not just to speak French but to speak Japanese, Korean, German and Spanish as well.  Canadian universities’ second-language requirements have become progressively more of a joke over the past few decades.  I am not sure how much is salvageable at the undergraduate level any more, but it would be great to see one institution – McGill maybe? U de M? – to make a commitment to the new Free World internationalism by saying all Master’s degree students have to demonstrate at least some proficiency in three languages.  That would be a statement.)

Second of all, it means we are probably going to have to get used to playing in bigger sandboxes.   Imagine a world where the Government of Canada takes 20% off the top of granting council budgets and hands it over to a Horizon Europe plus (it’s possible – recent developments around the creation of a mission-based tri-council “capstone” agency suggest that no one in Ottawa thinks a domestic agency can do mission-based stuff, so maybe handing it over to a supra-national agency would do the trick).  Success in Horizon Europe means playing by a different set of rules than your regular granting council work.  It means working in teams – big, multinational teams.  Being part of those teams is one thing: graduating to putting those teams together and leading those teams – which is where the big money is – is something else entirely.  Canadians can do this, of course, but we don’t have the experience of the Belgians or the Dutch, who are the real heavyweights of these multinational efforts. We’re going to have learn how to do that.

And eventually – who knows?  Could we end up with a Bologna Process for the Free World?  A Free World Higher Education Area?  That’s a bigger stretch.  As I noted about twelve years ago, the signing of the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement, which provided for free movement of professionals from Canada to Europe, was theoretically a moment where Canada might have wanted to look at harmonizing its higher education system with Europe so that graduate credentials might be more easily recognized, so that Canadians could actually take advantage of this provision.  We never lifted a finger.  It might be different this time, but I doubt it.

In any event – none of this is imminent.  And it might not happen at all.  But it is, shall we say, consistent with the country’s new trajectory.  And the faster we start at least gaming out and thinking about what changing diplomatic realities mean for the higher education sector, the further ahead of the curve we will be.  And that’s never a bad thing.