Global View on Tertiary Education

“And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” – President JF Kennedy

On Tuesday 16 April 2024, the president of Montgomery College in Maryland cancelled an event which featured the screening of a documentary (The Occupation of the American Mind) analysing how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has influenced the discourse about Israeli policies in the American media, turning what was intended as an opportunity for dialogue and debate into a moment of censorship.

On Wednesday 17 April, the University of Southern California (USC) announced that it was rescinding its invitation to deliver the commencement address to the Muslim valedictorian chosen by the university for just this honour, citing safety concerns for the university community.

On Thursday 18 April, the Republican-led Congress Committee on Education and the Workforce grilled and criticised the British-American President of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, for not doing enough to control antisemitism on campus.

Her conciliatory tone and her disclosure during her testimony of confidential information about Columbia professors under institutional investigation shocked defenders of academic freedom.

On Friday 19 April, perhaps to prove her willingness to abide by Congress’ expectations, Shafik called in the police to remove students who had planted tents on a Columbia campus lawn in protest of the ongoing Israeli assault in Gaza.

One hundred and seven students were arrested and detained for hours. The next day, Columbia University suspended them all. Similar police actions have been undertaken since on campuses across the country, including Emerson College, Emory University, NYU, the University of Texas, USC and Yale, to name but a few.

Images of a dark past

Riot police invading a university campus are images we are used to seeing in authoritarian regimes such as Afghanistan, Iran, or Myanmar, but not in the United States, at least not since the Vietnam War.

US universities turning against their own students evokes images of the dark past of the country before the abolition of the Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

It is still painful to remember the sobering experience of Autherine Lucy Foster, the first Black American female student admitted at the University of Alabama in 1956. After white students demonstrated violently against the university’s decision to admit a black student, the university reversed its position and expelled Foster.

Attacks against higher education have grown exponentially in the past two years in the United States, driven by the fundamentalist aversion to both science and the inclusion of traditionally underrepresented students that permeates today’s version of the Republican party.

I have observed with disbelief and sadness the multiple forms of backlash against US colleges and universities: state laws to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, limits to institutional autonomy, restrictions on tenure, book banning, prohibition to teach gender studies and critical race theory, measures to undermine the independence of accreditation agencies and repeated attacks on academic freedom, as evidenced by the evolution of the Academic Freedom Index.

The weaponisation of antisemitism

In the past six months, accusations of antisemitism have been weaponised to accelerate the assault against the US higher education system.

In the same way that suspicion of being a communist was the pretext for eliminating free thinkers in academia during the McCarthy era, allegations of antisemitism were the excuse to get rid of Harvard University’s first female black president and are now systematically used to silence anyone denouncing the war crimes committed by the Israeli army in Gaza as collective reprisals after the monstrous onslaught of Hamas against Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023.

The American Association of University Professors has denounced restrictive legislations defining “antisemitism to include political criticism of the state of Israel”.

What values are US colleges and universities defending as they try to rein in peaceful student demonstrations? Was Shafik’s decision to call in the police against her own students the best solution? It clearly failed to bring a good resolution of the issues at hand and seems to have emboldened students at Columbia and other universities to step up their protests, and set a precedent for brutal police intervention on US campuses.

These young people are genuinely distressed by the massacres of children and women perpetuated in Gaza, the “humanitarian disaster inflicted on the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” (to quote the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari) and the collective punishment imposed by denying food to the population of Gaza, a policy that is strictly prohibited by Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.

Open to learning

While university leaders should not, under any circumstances, accept the violent behaviour of masked vandals (as happened at the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt) and must firmly denounce all forms of extremism, including attacks against Jewish students, Muslim students, Black students and LGBT students alike, they should be open to learning from the lessons of non-violent student protests of the past to find more effective ways of communicating, dialoguing and negotiating with the majority of students who protest in an earnest and peaceful way.

Sadly, restrictions to academic freedom are not limited to the United States, as documented by Scholars at Risk, which monitors the situation in 179 countries.

The 2023 update of the Academic Freedom Index report highlights China, India, Mexico, Russia and the United States as countries with significant deterioration of academic freedom.

Even in democratic nations, like France and Germany, censorship is on the rise at universities. Last week, after the president of Lille University cancelled a debate on Palestine, the French association of research-intensive universities (UDICE) reaffirmed that “universities must facilitate the confrontation of ideas and knowledge informed by research. Debating is inherent to the education of students, research, and the dissemination of knowledge in society. Imposing silence would be a betrayal of the very mission of universities”.

On 26 April, the acting head of Sciences Po, a prestigious institution of higher learning in France, called the police to dislodge students who were demonstrating peacefully.

In Germany in early April, Cologne University withdrew an invitation to Professor Nancy Fraser, a US Jewish philosopher who teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York City, because she had been critical of Israeli policies.

Institutions of higher learning have the responsibility to foster an inquisitive and open environment where diverse perspectives and opinions are encouraged and explored, rather than stifling meaningful dialogue and limiting students’ exposure to differing viewpoints.

Effective and empowering education is about providing students with safe spaces where they can think critically and engage with complex issues, even those that may be controversial or make them uncomfortable because they challenge their own beliefs.

Core values

Should universities remain neutral and refrain from taking positions about the issues and challenges faced by the societies they are expected to serve, or do they have a duty to uphold core values as part of their global common good mission, to use Professor Simon Marginson’s definition?

In 2017, Pierre de Maret (emeritus president of the Free University of Brussels) and I launched the Shanghai principles as a way of reminding university leaders of the social responsibility of their institutions of higher learning.

Echoing the philosophy of intellectual independence and the core values of academic freedom and institutional autonomy defended by the Magna Charta signed by 975 heads of universities from 94 countries (including 22 from the US), our Shanghai principles recognise social inclusion, scientific truth, ethical values, responsible research and global solidarity as the moral compass of universities.

Expressing deep concern about the prospects for academic freedom and freedom of expression at colleges and universities – in the US and internationally – may seem overtly alarmist, but history has shown repeatedly that it is much easier to undermine democracy than to re-establish it.

This is why I am always humbled when I think of Martin Niemöller, the German priest who, after initially embracing the racist ideology of the Nazi party when Hitler came to power in 1933, realised his errors and became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to the Nazi regime.

He was arrested in 1937 and spent eight years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. After the war, he wrote the following poem to express his belated regrets (as reported by the British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust):

First, they came for the Communists,
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists,
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists,
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews,
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me,
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

* First published by University World News on 26 April 2024.

For several decades, Roma children have been systematically discriminated against and often segregated in special schools in many Eastern European countries. As a result, the pipeline of high school graduates qualified to enter higher education has been constrained. In Hungary, however, the creation of an NGO dedicated to the promotion of educational opportunities for Roma youths has been a game changer.

The University of Western Australia is a selective university in Perth, often perceived as out of reach for aspiring students from traditionally under-represented groups. To improve the integration of incoming students, the university recently shifted from a deficit model (the idea that responsibility for inequalities do not reside with the institution but with the individual) to a more inclusive approach which relies on comprehensive student support services.*

African universities are usually not considered major players in the world of science. Yet, the renowned scientific journal, Nature, has just published the results of a ground-breaking study conducted by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Rwanda that describes a new pooled method for identifying COVID-19 at low prevalence. AIMS has been successful in attracting female students to undertake postgraduate studies in mathematics.

These encouraging stories are but three examples out of the many innovative initiatives analysed in a new book, Transforming Lives, which illustrates the life-changing impact these programmes can have.

The 31 case studies presented in the book come from 21 countries or territories in seven regions of the world. The overwhelming majority of institutions analysed are public universities, ranging from elite universities in capital cities to more open access institutions in regional cities.

The book’s case studies point to three interesting developments in the range of equity target groups that higher education institutions seek to serve.

First, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of universities – notably in South America – have started to look at mental stress as a temporary disability that deserves special attention.

Second, Indian universities are using the term ‘trailblazer’ to describe first-in-their-family students who do well during their higher education studies and then go back to their community as role models.

Third, Australian universities now consider students from families that do not use English as their first language as an equity target group.

What triggers equity initiatives?

The case studies show a continuum between top-down and bottom-up processes, including activities mandated or promoted by government, initiatives launched by university leaders or coming from individual parts of the university, and initiatives promoted by external players.

The South Asia case studies illustrate how national and-or sub-national governments have mandated affirmative action and student aid interventions for designated target groups that all higher education institutions must implement.

The Australian and New Zealand governments influence universities through a combination of national targets and financial incentives.

The Irish government has clear equity targets that encourage universities to be proactive.

Scotland makes resources available to institutions interested in decolonising their curriculum.

Many case studies analyse initiatives that came primarily from a university leader or from dedicated individuals, especially in regions where national governments are not active in promoting the equity agenda.

One of the most emblematic examples in this respect comes from the University of Santiago in Chile, where Professor Francisco Gil dedicated his professional life to finding pioneering ways of supporting students from underprivileged families through outreach, remedial and affirmative action projects.

Finally, a few of the case studies illustrate how financial support offered by foreign foundations can have a significant impact when it comes to triggering worthwhile equity promotion initiatives at the institutional level.

The Mexico case study documents how the Ford Foundation’s Pathways to Higher Education programme has encouraged and supported universities interested in starting equity projects on behalf of under-represented Indigenous communities.

In Africa, the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program has been instrumental in allowing promising young people, especially talented women, to enrol in high-quality local institutions.

Drivers of success

The availability of external resources is crucial not only when it comes to triggering equity initiatives but also as a driver of success. External resources come essentially in the form of earmarked public funding, as was the case in Finland and Queensland, or in the form of grants from foreign donors.

Australia stands out as the one nation in the world that has provided the most substantial funding over a long period of time to promote equity.

While outreach programmes are an essential component of any effort to improve access to higher education, retention is higher when there is a special focus on the students’ experience during their first year of study at university.

Many of the case studies provide strong, holistic support to at-risk students during their first university year. Providing on-campus housing is also an important part of a positive learning and living environment for students from traditionally under-represented groups.

Multi-stakeholder cooperation through alliances with external partners is another important driver of success, as revealed by the Canadian, Finnish, Irish and US experiences. Involving the Indigenous community closely was key to success in Canada and the USA.

Embedding an equity initiative that started in one corner of a higher education institution as a core activity in the entire institution raises the chances of success and long-term sustainability. Making it a shared responsibility between dedicated support units and academic staff is important.

All these factors were clearly illustrated by cases as diverse as the affirmative action programme at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, the cooperative education scheme at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the activities in support of Indigenous students at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, for example.

Implementation challenges and mitigation measures

Any new initiative by a higher education institution is bound to encounter unexpected difficulties. Changes in leadership can bring setbacks to equity initiatives, as illustrated by the Kazakhstan case. Programmes imposed from above are more vulnerable than those that originate from within a university and are well embedded in the institutional fabric.

Universities can have a hard time implementing their equity programmes when there is a national mandate that is not sustained by sufficient public resources, as illustrated by the South Asian cases.

Several case studies confirmed the importance of having a good database to monitor progress and conducting surveys to assess the actual needs of students and the effectiveness of equity interventions. This helps to identify bottlenecks and take corrective measures in a timely fashion.

Australia and Brazil came out as the two countries with the most extensive data information system at the national level to orient and monitor equity promotion policies. Universities in several Western European countries – France and Germany, for instance – face the challenge of not being allowed to collect relevant data about students because of legal restrictions.

Another noteworthy finding is linked to the measurement of success. Progress measured such as successful graduation may not be sufficient because students from traditionally under-represented groups often find difficulties entering the labour market that graduates from well-off families do not encounter.

Prospects for sustainability and replicability

The most sustainable initiatives are those that are clearly aligned with the vision, mission and strategic plan of the university, that are fully embedded in the institutional culture and that benefit from a stable funding source that can keep the programme sustainable and even make it grow.

Working in close partnership with multiple stakeholders, both within and outside the institution, is also a strong factor in sustainability.

Several examples showed that other higher education institutions had adopted the good practices pioneered by the universities analysed in the book, notably in Germany, Ireland and Chile.

A string of pearls approach

Three success factors stand out clearly. First, no single measure is sufficient for promoting equity. The term ‘string of pearls’ aptly describes the combination of financial and non-monetary interventions necessary to address the needs of equity target groups. Second, abundant resources are essential to sustain and scale up equity initiatives. National authorities should provide public funding to support their equity agenda. At the institutional level, the diversification of funding sources can better protect universities from financial instability. Third, while many equity promotion initiatives may have been launched by visionary leaders, their embedding throughout institutions has depended on the sustained efforts of teams united around the conviction that students from under-represented groups are capable of great academic achievements.

*This post was first published as an article by University World News on 7 October 2023.

Despite the spectacular expansion that has occurred in many parts of the planet in the past 60 years, severe disparities persist in higher education.

A disproportionately high share of students enrolled in higher education still comes from wealthier segments of society. Structural inequality and disparities exist across groups and societies, often due to historical discriminatory norms around economic class, gender, minority status based on ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural characteristics and disabilities.

Even when they gain access, students from under-represented and traditionally excluded groups tend to have lower completion rates. They are often tracked into less prestigious higher education institutions and face reduced, lower-quality labour market opportunities as a result.

Around the world, many children face challenging circumstances beyond their own control due to discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, geographical origin, socio-economic background or other attributes, which drastically affect their opportunities to go to school, stay in school and complete secondary education.

At the tertiary level, young people encounter additional barriers reflecting the direct opportunity cost of studying, lack of social capital, insufficient academic preparation, low motivation and lack of access to information about their labour market prospects.

The need to achieve greater equity and inclusion in higher education responds to a strong social justice imperative, as reflected in target 4.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Measuring equity

Efforts to measure equity in higher education assume that the proportion of target equity groups should be equal to their share in the general population. In practice, however, the choice of indicators to measure disparities in higher education has been heavily influenced by the availability of data to analyse the situation of each equity group.

Household surveys available for 64 countries reveal large gaps in participation rates among income groups across all levels of enrolment, from the poorest nations with the lowest participation rates to countries with much higher average participation rates.

Gender balance in higher education has improved substantially in the past two decades. Today, women represent the majority of enrolment in higher education in most countries, except for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, women represent only 42.3% of all students. In South Asia, their proportion is 47%.

However, significant gender inequalities persist in access to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) institutions and programmes. Data from 18 countries across the world show the rate of female graduates in STEM varying from a low of 11% in Switzerland to a high of 47% in Argentina.

Less data is available to assess differences in access to higher education across ethnic, racial or religious minorities. Where it exists, data reveal vast disparities. For instance, in South Africa, despite the increase in overall enrolment in higher education, less than one in five black South Africans access it, compared to 55% among whites.

Similarly, in Vietnam, enrolment rates of the dominant Kinh/Hoa group are four times higher than those of ethnic minorities living in remote parts of the country. Among the world’s more than 82 million refugees, the UNHCR estimates that only around 5% of the relevant age cohort have access to tertiary education, whereas comparative enrolment figures for primary and secondary education are 68% and 34%, respectively.

People with disabilities, often called the ‘invisible minority’, are also widely under-represented in higher education. In Thailand, for example, less than 1% of youths with disabilities have access to higher education. In South Africa, they represent 0.6% of the total student enrolment compared to an estimated disability prevalence of 3.5% within the corresponding age group.

High degrees of intersection

Furthermore, it is important to note high degrees of intersection among these dimensions as disparities usually have an overlapping and cumulative effect across equity groups. Gender discrimination tends to impact girls from low-income groups more prominently.

For example, in Peru and Mexico, where female enrolment is lower than male enrolment – contrary to the general trend in Latin America – the difference between low-income and high-income students is striking.

In Peru, the enrolment rates of girls from the poorest and richest groups are 13.3% and 24.9%, respectively; in Mexico, they are 9.1% and 37.4%. Several studies have documented how poverty, ethnicity and rurality are also closely linked in North and South America, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

Similarly, poverty amplifies the obstacles encountered by people with disabilities; girls with disabilities having a lower probability of entering higher education or completing a degree than boys with disabilities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions and students experienced unprecedented disruption and new challenges. Severe reductions in financial resources, the digital gap and the lack of preparation of instructors exacerbated disparities in access and success, and created emotional and social distress, especially among vulnerable students.

Countries and institutions must therefore accelerate efforts to remove barriers to quality higher education for all learners from under-represented groups.

Equity promotion policies

The higher education ecosystem includes the following key elements specifically influencing the equity situation and results in any country: admissions policies; pathways and bridges; a quality assurance framework; government subsidies for institutions and students; tuition fees; and financial aid. The state can define policies and measures to improve equity in higher education along all these dimensions.

Within higher education institutions, several measures can help boost the access and success of students from various equity groups: outreach activities; targeted admission policies; retention programmes; and additional financial aid.

To be effective, equity promotion policies must be defined in a comprehensive way, taking both financial and non-monetary aspects into consideration, coordinating actions at the national and institutional levels in a complementary manner, and putting as much emphasis on completion as on access, which has traditionally received more attention.

A long-term view is key to guaranteeing continuity and consistency in effective equity promotion policies, which require well-established information systems to identify all equity groups, measure equity gaps and assess progress in terms of access and graduation.

Seventy years ago, the economic historian RH Tawney wrote about equality of opportunity as being “the impertinent courtesy of an invitation offered to unwelcome guests, in the certainty that circumstances will prevent them from accepting it”.

Today, equity in access and success at the higher education level cannot be regarded any more as a luxury or an afterthought. The need to achieve greater inclusion in higher education responds to a strong social justice imperative. Higher education systems in which opportunities are equally distributed are the basis for sustainable development and the construction of fair and democratic societies.

* This post was originally published by University World News.

Phil G. Altbach, Hans de Witt, and Jamil Salmi

In the context of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current brutal invasion and war on Ukraine, it is difficult, but essential, to consider the present and future of higher education and scientific relations between Russia and the rest of the world.

While formal education and research collaboration and other academic relations with official representatives and organisations affiliated with the Russian government should be paused, we should start thinking about a longer-term perspective as well.

Over the past decades, the three of us have had regular contact with Russian higher education, including participation in, and advice to, government-funded initiatives. We have always done so with a critical eye and in the interest of international academic collaboration. The primary focus of our activities has been to work closely with students and scholars, providing them, and ourselves, with an opportunity for cooperation that was as autonomous as possible from political interference.

In the current context, it is clear that participation in government-controlled and -funded activities with Russia needs to be stopped immediately and that solidarity and support must be primarily focused on Ukraine, especially in light of the shameful declaration of support for the war published by the Russian Union of Rectors.

But what about the long term?

Recent calls by several United States politicians to expel all Russian students and scholars currently in the United States are completely counterproductive. We have witnessed the great support given by Russian immigrants, in particular students and scholars, to the Ukrainian people, as well as their protests against the Putin regime.

We understand and support the cancelling of formal academic and research relations with Russia by authorities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

At the same time, we agree with the firm but nuanced statement of the European University Association (EUA) on the importance of academic and research engagement with Russia.

While suspending the membership of the 12 institutions which signed the support letter to Putin, the EUA emphasises the importance of supporting Russian academics who protest against the Putin regime, often at great personal risk of being arrested or fired, and the need to keep communication channels open with these individuals.

For the most part, Russian academics and scientists are not directly involved with the invasion of Ukraine and many reports indicate widespread opposition to the war in universities.

A second Cold War

There are many reasons why continued engagement with universities and relevant research organisations is important in the long run, in particular for the students and scholars who are depending on them. In that respect, it can be useful to reflect on academic relations during the Cold War between 1945 and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and learn from previous experience.

During that period, even in times of significant political tension, academic and scientific relations continued throughout – although on a modest scale and with considerable government supervision on both sides.

Back then, two quite distinct scientific systems coexisted, with only modest linkages between them. The Soviet system included the satellite countries of Eastern Europe and, until 1960, China. On the Soviet side, academe was ‘weaponised’ to serve national goals – with many scholarships provided to students from countries favourable to the Soviet Union.

On the other side, the Fulbright Program and many other initiatives offered opportunities for study and research in Western countries. The ‘academic cold war’ was global in scale. But it should be kept in mind that resistance to developing academic contacts with the other system came mainly from the Soviet side and that there were Soviet institutions and individual academics doing their best to adhere to integrity and academic freedom.

A second Cold War is quite likely to happen as a result of the Ukraine war, with implications for universities and for research. But it will probably be quite different from the previous one: Russia has been integrated into global higher education for three decades; research and scholarship have become globalised. Moreover, Russia no longer has a strong base of satellite countries and, even in the Russian sphere, as in Belarus, there is strong opposition to authoritarian rule.

It is not clear whether China will side with Russia in this new Cold War or if either country will seek to cut itself off from global science. There has been some academic and scientific decoupling of China in the past year – stimulated in part by the United States, but also coming from China itself. While the details are still unclear, this second Cold War will definitely have implications.

Strategies for the future

As stated above, in the current situation, our academic partners in Ukraine should be our absolute priority and receive our full support; all formal relations with Russian government programmes for collaboration and exchange should be cancelled, and formal relations with Russian institutions should be frozen as well.

At the same time, it is important to maintain our professional contacts with the Russian academic community outside and inside the country. More than ever, they need our support and understanding of the difficult circumstances in which they have to operate under a dictatorial and ruthless regime.

What the future will bring for academic cooperation and exchange with Russia cannot be foreseen at this stage and will require constant monitoring. But complete academic isolation will be counterproductive in the short and long run.

The academic boycott against the apartheid regime in South Africa has taught us that such a boycott can be effective as part of a broader social, economic and cultural struggle, but continued active interaction with individuals who were critical of the regime in the academic community of South Africa was mutually beneficial.

In this new, tragic and uncharted academic and scientific environment, we must be firm in condemning the institutions and academic leaders supporting the war, but keep the door open for contact and perhaps collaboration with those who share common values of integrity, mutual understanding and academic freedom.

This blog originally appeared as an article in University World News on 13 March 2022. Philip G Altbach is research professor and distinguished fellow, and Hans de Wit is professor emeritus and distinguished fellow at the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE), Boston College, United States. Jamil Salmi is professor emeritus of higher education policy at Diego Portales University, Chile, and research fellow of CIHE.

Philip Altbach and Jamil Salmi

Latin America (along with Africa) is the continent with the fewest top quality research-intensive universities. No Latin American university is found in the top 100, and relatively few Latin American scholars and scientists are among the most highly cited academics. Latin America represents 8.5 percent of the world population and produces 8.7 percent of the planet’s GDP, but its universities account for only 1.6 percent of the top 500 institutions in the Shanghai ranking and less than 1.5 percent of the top 400 in the Times Higher Education ranking. This is a serious deficiency if the continent wants to produce quality research and innovation—and share in the science-driven progress of the 21st century, especially in the present times of pandemic.

            One of the main reasons is the underperformance of the great public universities that emerged from the “Cordoba higher education revolution” of 1918. It is worth examining why this is the case as a prerequisite to improvement.

The Ideals and Realities of the “Cordoba” Universities

The Cordoba Revolution, started in Argentina in 1918 by students eager to democratize and modernize the university, led to the development of large public comprehensive universities throughout the continent and cemented the model of public higher education up to the present, making change very difficult. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Cordoba principles can be summarized in the following way. Universities have an important role to play, educating students who can participate in nation-building and providing research and service to contribute to national development efforts. With the ideal of providing equal access, universities do not charge tuition and generally admit students based on transparent and common criteria—either secondary school completion or competitive university entrance examinations. As a protection from authoritarian regimes, universities should be autonomous—free of direct government control, with academic freedom guaranteed, but at the same time funded by the state. Universities should be internally governed democratically—including faculty, students, and sometimes administrative personnel involved in decision making, and electing key academic leaders.

Throughout Latin America, public universities influenced by the Cordoba model came to dominate academe and remain the key institutions today, largely unchanged in the past century. Even with massification, the growth of the private sector (in many Latin American countries, more than half the enrolments are in private higher education), and considerable institutional diversification, the “Cordoba universities” remain the gold standard. Several have become mega-universities, and many are the most prominent producers of locally relevant research in the country. For example, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest in the region, has 350,000 students (some in affiliated secondary schools). The University of Buenos Aires (UBA) enrolls 309,000 students.

The situation has been further exacerbated by low levels of public funding for higher education in most Latin American countries, lack of long-term continuity in national higher education policies due to political instability, and sometimes negative views towards the scientific mission of universities, as illustrated by the adversary policies of the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil.

The Governance Challenges of the Cordoba Universities

The case of the University of São Paulo, Brazil’s top university, illustrates well the governance limitations of many public universities in Latin America, unable to evolve rapidly with the flexibility characterizing flagship institutions elsewhere. Even though it has the highest number of top-rated graduate programs in the country, annually produces more PhD graduates than any U.S. university, produces pertinent research for the country, and is the highest-financed public university in Latin America, its ability to manage its resources is severely constrained by rigid civil service regulations. It has few linkages with the international research community—only 3 percent of its graduate students are from outside Brazil, and the majority of professors are USP graduates themselves.

The key missing element is the absence of a vision of excellence to challenge the status quo and transform the university, reinforced by a system of democratic election of university leaders, which promotes clientelism and frequent turnover of leaders, a large internal university council that makes the decision-making process unwieldy, and an egalitarian academic culture that frowns upon recognizing and rewarding outstanding researchers and teachers. In Brazil as in many countries in the LAC region, the lack of strategic ambition for the development of higher education can often be observed as much at the national government level as among the university leadership.

 What Could Be Done

The transformation of Latin America’s public universities would, without doubt, require a second “Cordoba revolution,” driven by a bold vision from the academic community, and substantial support and resources from government. This would involve the following changes:

• Substantial increases in public funding. Today, research funding is between 0.3 and 1% of annual GDP, way below the levels of investment in Nordic countries and East Asian nations.
• A continuous focus on national service and the Sustainable Development Goals. One of the strengths of the traditional “Cordoba universities” has been their commitment to national and social development. It is essential to retain this tradition and vision.
• A modern governance setup that allows for the professional selection of university leaders, internationally—a practice that, ironically, is acceptable when it comes to choosing the trainer of the national soccer team but is viewed as sacrilegious for universities. Also, universities are complex institutions that require a balance of professional and academic management and leadership.
• Autonomy and academic freedom, coupled with accountability to the government—the main funding source—and to society.
• Manageable size. Most world-class universities have enrollments of 40,000 students or fewer—and have a fairly comprehensive array of academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
• Interdisciplinarity. Flagship universities have structures and incentives that encourage and enable teaching and research across disciplines. This is notably lacking in many Latin American universities.
• Internationalization. Latin American universities generally lag behind their global peers in international connections, collaborative scholarship and research, and mobility. All aspects of internationalization are important, including increased attention to the use of English for international mobility and collaborative research , as long as it remains the main medium of global science and scholarship.

Our argument is not an “academic” exercise but an invitation to governments and institutional leaders to think about the development role of their universities in the 21st century.  Latin America deserves to have first-rate universities that can engage with global science through leading-edge fundamental and applied research, train ethically minded citizens and professionals, and contribute to the sustainable development of LAC societies. One thing is clear—the model of the traditional “Cordoba universities,” however innovative and successful a century ago, is no longer adequate and should be revisited. Another revolution is needed—this time not a common template as Cordoba proposed— but rather in the form of innovative ideas and courageous initiatives suited to each country’s national needs and aspirations.

_________________________

This blog originally appeared as an article in University World News and International Higher Education. Philip G. Altbach is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, US. Jamil Salmi is a global tertiary education expert, emeritus professor of higher education policy at Diego Portales University, Chile, and research fellow at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, US.

Today, 20 February 2036, is my granddaughter Sofia’s 15^th birthday. Born during the Covid-19 crisis which upturned our world in more than one way, she lives in Melbourne while I am based in Berlin. Since she is about to finish high school this year, I invite her to join me on a virtual visit of the Museum of 20^th Century Universities to celebrate her special day.

I pull on my iGlasses and jump into my favorite museum metaverse app. We meet in the lobby of the virtual museum. VR technology has improved so much, it feels like we are actually in the same room. My granddaughter’s avatar is young Marie Curie, the only female scientist to ever win the Nobel Prize twice, with the gaunt look of the famished student who would faint because she was too absorbed in study to eat. Mine looks like Einstein when he taught at Princeton, with the iconic wild bushy hair.

We start with the Grand Lecture Hall, an impressive amphitheater than can seat 800 people. An older white male professor is droning on for a full hour to an audience of bored and distracted students. We move quickly to the next room, a large library full of paper books and journals that students pore over for hours on at their individual reading desks. In the faculty building, rows of offices where the professors write articles behind closed doors, well hidden from the students.

The Museum was designed and coded by a community of artists, educators and historians who wanted to recreate the experience of traditional universities as they operated in the past. It provides a memorial to connect and share with others from all over the world in VR. The virtual museum contains a cross section of the types of buildings that hosted universities and the main activities that went on inside them until the turn of the century. Together we can discover what this space meant to our parents who did not have other options for studying and expanding their intellectual horizons than confining themselves in these castles of knowledge and towers of learning for several consecutive years. Welcome to this immersive historical showcase. Step into a classroom or a library, surround yourself with the sounds and experience of a student cafeteria or dormitory, as if you were right there and then.

Next, we enter the Gallery of Numbers. I explain to Sofia how everything had to be counted, measured and ranked in the old days. What’s your Gaokao or SAT score? How high is your GPA? How did you perform at the math Olympics or the Grande École entrance competition? What is the H-index of your professor? How many places did your University gain in the global, national and specialized rankings? She might find it hard to believe that universities did not select students on the basis of their life project or academic passions, but focused on dissected high school grades and valued test scores.

We now switch to the Pavilion of Exclusion, a sobering monument to the stark inequalities that characterized many institutions back then. We see universities for whites only, by law, design or circumstance; science and technology institutes with hardly any women; colleges without indigenous or special needs students. In a 3-D replica of Room 104 in Carnegie Hall at the University of Oklahoma in 1948, we see George McLaurin, the sole African American student on a campus of 12,174. He is sitting in a closet, the spot he was forced to occupy, separate from his white peers, after winning a legal battle to get admitted. We learn about Ivy League institutions with legacy admission practices favoring the sons of rich businessmen who made a big donation to their alma mater at the same time that “affirmative action” was disparaged and legally challenged for giving unfair advantage to minority students.  

Next comes the Building of Disciplines. All specializations are on display, from philology to finance to deep ocean technology. We can but wonder at the artificial distinction between the humanities and the sciences, observing how faculties and schools operated as silos within universities, and how the knowledge offered to students reflected the cultural biases of dominant nations and was completely out of phase with the complex nature of real-life challenges and the multidisciplinary competences needed to address them. We hear speeches of politicians arguing for increased funding for science and technology courses at the expense of the social sciences, sometimes defending the elimination of foreign language and the humanities. Sofia frowns when she sees that everyone followed a uniform set of courses towards the same degree, as if people learned at an equal pace and in a similar manner. “Imagine that they received dated degrees,” she exclaims, “instead of progressively building a blockchain qualifications portfolio throughout their working life!”

In the Pandemic Gazebo, we are reminded how the Covid-19 crisis triggered the coming of age of online education. Within a few weeks, sometimes only days, what was a hobby practiced by a few innovative instructors—often regarded as eccentric and less professional by their more traditional colleagues—became a mainstream platform for teaching and learning at universities worldwide, with extensive sharing of open educational resources. Sofia asks me: “Where are the students’ personal AI tutors”?

We finish with the Examinations Chamber. My granddaughter cannot stop gasping as we float through the holograms of anxious students immersed in writing high-stake competitive finals, under the vigilant watch of stern proctors ensuring that no knowledge sharing or cooperative work takes place. How different from today’s open-internet, continuous, collaborative and interactive assessment sessions!

As we are about to leave the Museum, my granddaughter’s avatar shakes her head and comments: “Seriously! Can you imagine that these people were restricted to studying at a single university at a time, instead of seamless cross-learning from multiple knowledge providers over their lifetime?” “I feel so lucky to live in this age of flexible and open education!”

Originally published in Orazbayeva, B., Meerman, A., Galan-Muros, V., Davey, T., and C. Plewa (Eds). The Future of Universities Thoughtbook: Universities during Times of Crisis. Amsterdam: University Industry Innovation Network.

Courtney Brown and Jamil Salmi

An Unprecedented Challenge

As country after country decrees partial or total lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of universities and colleges closing and switching to e-learning has soared. However, few of these institutions are well prepared for this sudden, disruptive move. A lot of scrambling and improvisation are occurring as administrators, instructors, and students struggle to implement broad-based online learning. The scale of the COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented in the lives of nearly everyone involved.

As of April 9, more than a 1.5 million people had been infected worldwide – more than 150 times the number diagnosed with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) during that epidemic nearly 20 years ago. SARS emerged in China in November 2002. Within months, it had spread to 29 countries or territories in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. By the time the global outbreak was contained, the SARS virus had affected 8,096 people worldwide, killing 774.

During SARS’ peak, schools and universities in the three most affected areas of Asia – China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – were closed from one to several months. To compensate for these closures, some universities kept their students engaged by establishing or increasing their online presence. This required effective learning-management systems, videoconference facilities, and instructors experienced with e-learning.

Short-Term Effects

This time around, the rest of the world watched for nearly two months as China and a few East Asian countries and territories went into lockdown. Despite repeated warnings from the leader of the World Health Organization, few countries prepared for a possible pandemic. When it became clear COVID-19 was spreading rapidly on a global scale, governments suddenly – finally – showed alarm and began shutting down businesses, schools, and universities. Within a few weeks, about 20,000 higher education institutions had ceased normal operation and sent 200 million students home, with many switching to online classes after only a few days of preparation.

While these campus closures will likely help prevent the spread of the virus within higher education institutions, they have clearly forced colleges and universities to operate in unfamiliar ways and spend significant sums to shift their operations online. Higher education institutions all over the world have suspended international travel and exchange programs and put most research activities on hold. Many are struggling with difficult decisions about how to assess student learning, whether to postpone or cancel final exams, and how to recruit students for the next academic year – especially in countries where national end-of-high school exams have been scratched.

Nor has the move to online education been universally embraced. Argentina’s flagship university, Universidad de Buenos Aires, decided to postpone classes and rearrange the academic calendar rather than switch to online classes, deciding that only in-person courses can guarantee quality. Along the same lines, the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe announced that it would remain closed until further notice. The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education suspended online education together with on-campus activities.

Students are also resisting the digital transition. In Tunisia, the main student union – students in other countries have a stronger say in their educations than do U.S. students – denounced the government’s decision to adopt online education during the COVID-19 crisis. The union labeled the move a discriminatory measure and called for a boycott of online platforms. Similarly, in Chile, students at the country’s main public institution, the University de Chile, and at the private Universidad San Sebastian have initiated online strikes. In the United Kingdom, more than 200,000 students have signed a petition demanding refunds of their tuition payments, essentially claiming that online instruction isn’t what they paid for.

Fairness Dimensions

While the disruptions caused by the pandemic affect both rich and poor countries and upend the lives of every societal group, students from vulnerable groups are hit especially hard. In wealthy societies such as the United States, where most residence halls were shut down – often abruptly, many students from low-income families faced major difficulties. They had problems finding off-campus housing on short notice, lost access to campus-based health care, struggled to pay unexpected living expenses, and felt unprepared for a sudden shift to online studies. In this context, community college students – who are more likely to be people of color, older, have lower family incomes, and care for dependents – are much more vulnerable than those attending four-year institutions. These challenges could lead to large numbers of dropouts by the end of the academic year and far fewer students enrolled in the fall. International students stranded far from home also face economic and emotional hardships.

In poorer countries, students from disadvantaged groups face even greater difficulty. In developing countries with limited internet access and low broadband capacity, opportunities for online learning are likely to be drastically constrained, especially in rural areas. Many students from low-income households – sometimes even faculty members – lack laptops or tablet computers. In addition to digital-divide challenges, colleges and universities in poor nations will likely struggle to rapidly launch quality distance learning programs. Many lack experienced instructional designers, sufficient educational resources, an adequate grasp of the specifics and nuances of online education, and strong institutional capacity to deliver it. The African University Association already has signaled that, among the 700 universities operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, very few are well prepared and sufficiently equipped to deliver their programs online.

In addition, universities in the developing world will need to arrange for alternative learning assessments and exams, which in turn will likely disrupt preparations for next year’s admissions. Students from disadvantaged groups, who often have less access to relevant information, may be affected more by these developments.

Governments Stepping In

It is difficult, at this early stage of the pandemic, to have a comprehensive view of national programs adopted by governments to support affected colleges and universities. Initial indications show the following types of measures are needed at the national level: 1) financial stimulus packages and student loan moratoria, 2) flexibility in quality assurance requirements, and 3) capacity-building initiatives to ease the transition to online learning.

A few countries – Australia, Denmark, Germany, Taiwan, and the United States for instance – already have approved economic rescue packages that include support for higher education. This will help public colleges and universities weather the crisis by protecting the employment of most administrative and academic staff, boosting student welfare, and helping to pay for the technology that can enable a rapid transition to online education. Also, the Canadian and U.S. governments called for a halt to all student loan repayments for the next six months. This maneuver will provide welcome relief to unemployed graduates and those with limited incomes. Many governments also are providing universities with targeted research funding to help identify effective medicines to treat COVID-19 patients and to develop a vaccine. The Nordic countries are funding research in the social sciences to study and mitigate the social consequences of the pandemic.

The second type of national-level interventions needed are those that allow for greater flexibility in the application of quality assurance criteria. Some examples: Suspending deadlines for accreditation and program registration processes, postponing accreditation visits – or switching to “virtual visits” – because of university closures or travel restrictions, and lifting requirements concerning online education. Indeed, many countries have strict regulations regarding online education. A few even impose additional constraints reflecting a negative perception of distance learning. When Peru’s current higher education law was passed in 2014, for example, it specifically disqualified professors who had obtained their doctoral degrees through online education from becoming faculty deans.

By contrast, oversight bodies in many countries are now relaxing their quality assurance criteria to support the rapid transition to online education. Some have issued recommendations to guide colleges and universities, but the general trend has been to issue blanket approvals of the new approaches and delegate responsibility for establishing quality online programs to the higher education institutions themselves. The governors of several U.S. states – Maine’s Janet Mills among the first – have issued executive orders to release funds without adhering to the usual review requirements as part of an effort to encourage online training of health specialists and other workers deemed essential during the pandemic.

The third type of interventions needed involve capacity building to deliver online education – steps that complement the flexible decision-making described earlier. The government of Ghana, notably, has taken the lead in organizing training activities to support universities in their move to online education, in partnership with the United Kingdom’s Open University.  

Countries also must strengthen broadband capacity to facilitate internet access for all students. This can be done by providing subsidized internet packages for university students and free connections to national research networks for all universities. In poorer countries, there is a great need, in addition, for reinforcing campus network infrastructure. These interventions can have positive effects, but only if governments stop enforcing internet shutdowns and censorship, a growing practice to muzzle political dissent. Governments must also guarantee continuity in power supplies, another major challenge faced by the higher education sector in several countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Institutional Policies

The most urgent task for many colleges and universities has been to alleviate the economic hardships experienced by students from low-income families. To reduce the digital divide between rich and poor students, some institutions have donated or loaned out devices to students and offered them internet bundles to provide access to online resources. Others have been able to provide emergency financial assistance and help students find alternate housing, including host homes.

To ease the transition to online education, one priority has been to offer crash courses – to academics and students alike – in how to use digital platforms and how to apply effective techniques for online learning. Institutions with fully functional teaching and learning services have found themselves better prepared to support their entire academic community in this transition. Colleges and universities should also look for opportunities to reach out to less-prepared institutions in their orbit and create collaborative platforms for sharing what they learn.

Based on testimonies coming from some of the colleges and universities struggling with the sudden shift to online education, three considerations are urgently important for institutions engaged in this transition. First, they must align learning-assessment procedures and criteria with the new online curricular and pedagogical approaches. Several colleges and universities already have moved to a pass/fail approach, eliminating grades for the rest of this academic year. Designing online assessment methods to fit these emerging modes of teaching and learning will take significant effort, but it will help to assure the quality of learning and validity of final assessments.

Second, institutions must establish, increase, or strengthen academic and psychological supports for today’s students. This effort will become ever more crucial as growing numbers of students struggle to adjust to new teaching and learning approaches – not to mention their fears and concerns about the pandemic. Careful reliance on data and predictive analytics can help support staff identify struggling students early on and can also help pinpoint the areas in which these students might require extra support.

Third, all higher education institutions must factor this crisis into their strategic planning, undertaking thorough risk assessments and mitigation processes to anticipate the medium- and long-term consequences of the pandemic – including the expected economic recession. For higher education institutions in poorer countries, the COVID-19 crisis is a moment to activate a few deep partnerships with universities in other countries that are willing to share their resources and experience in this time of emergency, especially in the areas of digital education and collaborative online research.  South-South partnerships with universities and other relevant actors can be particularly rewarding, notably in the area of e-learning. In Africa, many universities could benefit from closer linkages with providers of online education in Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tunisia, widely recognized as leaders in this domain on the African continent.

Vultures and Angels: Support from Other Actors

The abrupt, broad-based transition to online education provoked by the pandemic has been a boon for education technology companies, a few of which have shamelessly taken advantage of the crisis to boost their prices or dump flawed products on the market. Fortunately, these companies appear to be a small minority. Many firms, from the education sector and beyond, have shown boundless generosity in support of the thousands of institutions and millions of students left stranded by the pandemic. Academics and students all over the world now have access to free courses in many languages. They can use digital platforms for virtual meetings and videoconferences. They can benefit from free, online tutoring programs. And they can use virtual labs for simulations and experiments. Some telecom companies have offered free or highly subsidized internet packages to students and academics and have exempted sites that contain open educational resources from data charges.

In all countries, and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, the National and Regional Research and Education Networks have an important role to play in giving colleges and universities access to fast internet and collaborative networks. This follows the tradition of the Network Startup Resource Center, started in 1992 with a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, which has helped establish such networks in most parts of the world.

Since the beginning of the crisis, companies and philanthropists in many countries have donated money, computers, and tablets to help students adjust to new online learning approaches. In South Africa, a generous donor has just cleared the debts of 300 students at Walter Sisulu University who are expected to graduate this academic year.

Conclusion: The Likely Longer-Term Impact

Awed by their potentially disruptive character, the New York Times declared 2012 “the year of the MOOCs,” referring to the explosion of the so-called Massive Open Online Courses and the growing perception that they could challenge traditional universities or even threaten their very existence. While this prediction proved overblown, one may wonder whether the rapid transition to online learning brought about by the COVID-19 crisis will ultimately transform colleges and universities into digital institutions. In any event, the COVID-19 pandemic is sure to bring about substantial changes in the way higher education institutions operate – in both the short and long term.

The resilience of modern universities has never have been tested as thoroughly as during the current crisis, but not all institutions are being affected in the same ways. The world’s top universities are unlikely to suffer adverse long-term consequences. As predicted by Phillip Altbach and Hans De Wit in a recent article, “… research universities and top-quality institutions that are globally and nationally recognized and have stable income streams, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and elite American private liberal arts colleges and similar institutions worldwide, will recover more rapidly and emerge relatively unscathed from the crisis.”

But for most higher education institutions, especially the private ones that are fully dependent on tuition fees, financial survival will be a serious challenge during the deep recession many economists predict. It’s realistic to expect many private colleges and universities to close their doors for good. Millions of students with limited resources could drop out of higher education altogether, or at least shift to more affordable public institutions. Colleges and universities with high proportions of foreign students also will be vulnerable to fluctuations in the demand.

Institutions would be well advised not to consider the COVID-19 pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime crisis whose effects will disappear in a few months. Most colleges and universities failed to heed the lessons of the SARS epidemic. Hopefully, this crisis will serve as a wake-up call to reassess the vulnerabilities of the higher education sector and the challenges of living in a global and interdependent world. If anything, it has shown the importance of contingency planning and risk management, the benefits of supporting innovative delivery methods, and the need for flexibility in learning assessment and admissions requirements.

Will the COVID-19 crisis be remembered as a black-swan event that truly transformed higher education? It’s impossible to predict at this early stage. At the very least, the pandemic represents an ideal opportunity to experiment with novel ways of organizing and delivering the curriculum. Will universities embrace the potential of online education in a more systematic way? Will this crisis push colleges and universities to broadly adopt innovative approaches that have so far been embraced by only a handful of institutions and audacious educators? Will it herald the disappearance of high-stake exams, to be replaced with next-generation assessment methods and tools? To paraphrase the title of a remarkable book on curricular and teaching innovation, one of the most positive consequences of the COVID-19 crisis could be to transform the teaching and learning process with the purpose of “sparking curiosity, igniting passion, and unleashing genius.”

Finally, it is essential to acknowledge that achieving fairness in higher learning for racial and ethnic minorities and those from low-income families remains one of the biggest challenges. These students are likely to suffer most because of the COVID-19 crisis. The next six months will be a critical test of the capacity of the international community, national governments, and higher education institutions to act swiftly and effectively in order to avoid a growing gap between rich and poor countries, between well-endowed and resource-limited institutions, and among the students themselves. It will be crucial to avoid choices that reinforce or deepen existing disparities. Instead, we must search together for solutions that create opportunity for all, especially people who have faced barriers to the economic success and social mobility that higher learning can bring. In a time of growing distrust towards evidence-based expertise, it will be equally critical to implement consensus-based solutions that transcend ideologies and reflect scientific results.

This blog was originally published on the Lumina Foundation site.

The New Equity Study

A 2018 study sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, All Around The World, reviewed the policy commitments of national governments to promote equal opportunities in access and success in higher education.  The study found that, with the exception of a few fragile states recovering from a natural catastrophe or a major political crisis, equity is a priority theme in the higher education discourse of most governments. 

Leading up to this year’s World Access to Higher Education Day (26 November 2019), we undertook a follow-up study to explore which equity promotion policies seem most successful, and to assess under what circumstances some policies work better than others.  The new study focused on a small sample of countries from all corners of the planet: Australia, Austria, Colombia, South Africa and Vietnam.

The country case studies revealed the following strengths:

• Australia is one of the most advanced countries in terms of comprehensive equity policies;
• Austria is a leader when it comes to gender policies and support for refugees;
• Colombia has been a pioneer in student loans and retention policies;
• South Africa is making strides in addressing long-lasting inequalities from years of apartheid; and
• Vietnam attends many equity target groups but needs to invest more public resources to implement its comprehensive equity plan.

Key Findings at the National Level

We found that there is a dearth of rigorous impact studies evaluating equity policies in a rigorous manner.  We also concluded that there is insufficient relevant data to measure disparities and monitor the effects and consequences of equity policies. 

The country studies do confirm one of the major findings of the 2018 Lumina study: to achieve strong equity results there needs to be a high degree of alignment among leadership goals, policy goals, policy instruments, and allocated resources. It is particularly crucial to have enough resources to implement the national equity agenda effectively. 

The country experiences also showed us that there is essential to have continuity in equity policies.  Through the case studies we saw how politics often get in the way of sound policies.  To improve access and success for under-represented groups in the long run, it is important to stay the course and carry on with both financial and non-monetary equity policies in a consistent way, independently of who is in government. 

Additionally, we noted that Austria is the only country surveyed with equity promotion policies influenced and strengthened by supranational considerations. The Bologna process and the social dimension agenda promoted by the European Commission have both strengthened Austria’s equity agenda in higher education.

Finally, the case studies confirm the interaction of four structural elements that strongly influence the scope and magnitude of disparities in higher education:

• The secondary education system and the extent of streaming between general education and vocational training within high schools,
• The level of selectivity in the admission policies of universities,
• The degree of institutional differentiation of higher education systems, and
• The availability of financial aid for students from disadvantaged groups. 

Key Findings at the Institutional Level

In the five case studies, we also reviewed institutional approaches and experiences to promoting access and success for under-served students.  A survey of several universities in each country has revealed a number of good practices worth reporting. 

• Institutions should have a clear strategy that can either take the form of a stand-alone document or be embedded in the institutional strategic plan.  The University of Wollongong in Australia and Uniminuto in Colombia are good examples of this. Both have put a strong emphasis on equity as part of their core mission. 
• Having a department responsible for all equity-related activities under the direct authority of an institutional leader is also an important factor of success. 
• In low- and middle-income countries, innovative partnerships between higher education institutions, local authorities, and local businesses can generate additional resources to finance scholarships for needy student. 
• Higher education institutions—and even governments—can share and model successful policies and programs initiated by individual universities.  This happened, for example, with the successful mentorship program set up by the Universidad del Valle in Colombia.
• In addition to ensuring greater access, elite public or private universities that want to be more inclusive should strive to provide a welcoming environment for first-generation students, who often feel uncomfortable within an elitist institutional culture.

Next Steps

Moving forward, it will be important to put emphasis on four aspects:

• impact studies to measure which interventions and combinations of interventions are most effective; 
• strong information systems to identify all equity groups and measure their progress in terms of access and graduation;
• identification and evaluation of effective policies to improve gender balance in STEM institutions and programs, in the top academic positions, and in university leadership functions.
• definition of the needs of students with disability, provision of sufficient resources, and empowerment of higher education institutions to place this dimension much higher on their equity agenda.

Post-truth: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.  Oxford Dictionary

“Evidence-based” and “Science-based”: two expressions explicitly prohibited in official budget documents of the Federal government by President Trump in 2018

Scholars and experts are aware of the limits of their knowledge, as doubt is part of scientific reasoning. As the cognitive bias known in psychology as the Dunning-Kruger Effect shows, for scientists, “the more you know, the more likely you are to see how little you know”. The opposite is of course also true. The less you know, the less able you are to recognize how little you know, so the less likely you are to recognize your errors and shortcomings. Or, as Bertrand Russell said: “the whole problem of the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

Unfortunately, the world seems to be increasingly populated by “fools and fanatics”. In a time of blogging, tweeting and instant messages, everybody’s views are assumed to be equally valid and worth considering. Thus, we experience constant “information war”, with the proliferation of fake news, hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and, last but not least, alternative facts. As we know, the latter expression was originally coined by President Trump’s spokesperson after the release of the photos comparing the turnout at his Inauguration in January 2017 with Obama’s in January 2009.

Conspiracy theories have always existed. Conspiracy thinking arises when people faced with complex issues choose to believe a simple—but false—explanation of whom to blame. Often, conspiracy theories are more amusing than the honest, but often complicated truth. But today’s social media, with their algorithms based on artificial intelligence, create “echo chambers” that play an important role in spreading false rumors. In addition, professional fake news writers and disseminators are flourishing and can often be manipulated by foreign interests, as Russian meddling in the US presidential election has shown. Thus, the realization that two-thirds of adults living in the United States are on Facebook and 45% get their main news from it, is a matter of deep concern.

These trends affect democracies in an adverse manner. Fewer people are interested in participating in democratic elections, either by voting or running for office. Faced with a maelstrom of fake news and contradictory information, voters are unsure of what to believe and make increasingly irrational decisions, following the exhortations of demagogues who appeal to their raw emotions rather than their reason. Misinformation undermines democracy and leads to dramatic policy shifts that may adversely affect the very people who have supported the policy changes. The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the negative vote in the peace referendum in Colombia and the election of President Trump are the most recent examples in that respect. One of the paradoxes of these situations, in the case of the United States, is that the measures taken by the Republican administration to curtail health care access and benefits are likely to affect, to a large extent, the voter base of the Grand Old Party.

Notwithstanding this post-truth context, World Class Universities (WCUs) still need to deal with pressing global challenges, such as climate change, migration, global epidemics, a turbulent world economy, financial instability, increased inequality, global trafficking and terrorism, to name only a few. They must also continue to assume their role model responsibility in the way they operate as institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, the international rankings that identify which universities are in the top do not measure fundamental dimensions of the role of WCUs, such as the importance of instilling ethical principles, the ability to foster engaged learning experiences (critical thinking, connecting disciplines and applying knowledge to the real world), the need to be socially inclusive institutions, the extent to which research remains unbiased and intellectually independent from the political and business world that contributes to its funding, etc.

In a globalized, complex context, WCUs are facing growing risks. They are increasingly driven by the market and the never-ending search for additional funds, rather than by their own sense of higher purpose. Seen for a long time as a temple of knowledge where dedicated researchers are serving science, they have lost part of their standing. This has generated a decline in people’s trust in scholarly expertise.

Even more worrisome is the wariness that government authorities have shown towards universities. This has had two serious consequences. First, in several countries, top universities have experienced significantly reduced public funding. In the United States, for instance, under the dual influence of the financial crisis and the perception that universities are bastions of liberal thinkers, the Republican legislature in states as diverse as Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Virginia has cut down the annual budgetary allocation to the state’s flagship university to no more than 10% of its annual revenue. Second, from Hungary to Turkey to China and Russia, authoritarian rulers are imposing growing restrictions on academic freedom to their public universities.

World-Class Universities are increasingly under threat in the post-truth world. With global visibility comes global responsibility. WCUs all over the world should work together as a network for the public good. They must succeed in meeting international standards while being deeply committed to their local environment. As they engage in socially useful learning and relevant knowledge creation, they should also preserve a space where free debate and dissent are welcome. The “Ivory Tower” could thus morph into a “Beacon of Hope” and contribute to diminishing the inequalities and the frustration they generate at the local and national level, while contributing to a fairer and more sustainable planet.

In that perspective, we propose a code of conduct for WCUs in the form of five “Shanghai Principles”, to commemorate the place where this proposal was made for the first time. The Shanghai principles are defined as follows:

• Inclusiveness. Academic excellence should become more inclusive rather than continuing to be exclusive as a result of unnecessary selection mechanisms. Following the example of Arizona State University and some of the top universities throughout the world that have a needs-blind admission policy, WCUs must find ways of welcoming an increasingly diverse student population by removing the financial and non-monetary barriers that prevent qualified applicants from vulnerable groups from accessing and succeeding in WCUs. Many studies have shown that diversity among students and staff improves the teaching and learning experience and fosters tolerance and open-mindedness. 
• Ethics. WCUs should place a strong emphasis on ethical values and behaviors to promote honesty, tolerance and solidarity. For this purpose, it is not sufficient to design a compulsory course on ethics that all students are expected to take. WCUs should do much more to instill ethical principles in students and faculty and to ensure that socially responsible values are built into the curriculum. Positive values should permeate all academic programs and become part of the DNA of the institutional culture of WCUs.
• Objectivity. An essential responsibility of WCUs is to promote critical thinking. Therefore, teaching, learning and research must be conducted in a scientific way, with great emphasis on objective methods of reasoning and inquiry. WCUs must champion honest communication about what can be legitimately claimed as truthful. Inside the university, it is important to reinstate the academic tradition of free and fair debate that has been undermined by relativism and political correctness. WCUs are well placed to offer a safe space for assessing different views but also to engage outside of the university in public debates on complex issues. To deal with the latter, multi-disciplinary perspectives are often needed and universities are one of the few places that have the means to provide the expertise, to nourish reflection, and to influence policies on the basis of facts and scientific evidence. As van der Zwaan put it, “In the future, the university may well derive its most important form of legitimacy from its visibility and leadership in society. Despite the fact that public discourse is showing less and less interest in complexity, tackling complex problems is one of the university’s key strengths”.

• Relevance. Research undertaken by WCUs must address global challenges, including but not limited to food, health, energy, climate change, the environment and security. WCUs are very good at conducting excellent “blue sky” research but they should focus more on promoting research that solves real problems and addresses global challenges. When looking at the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2015, it is clear that WCUs can have a positive impact on almost every one of them.

• Global Collaboration. The race to secure a higher position in the international rankings has pushed WCUs to compete with each other in a compulsive manner. Notwithstanding the competition exacerbated by the rankings, solidarity is a core value of university life. It is the essence of collegiality. Over the centuries, it has fostered the exchange of ideas, mobility of researchers and joint undertakings. The competition inherent in the rankings phenomenon should not come at the expense of collaboration among responsible universities. WCUs can equally promote excellence through cooperation and solidarity. WCUs should rather act as a community of institutions and scholars cooperating for the global good. In that way, they would be following the positive example of the Talloires Network, an international association of institutions committed to strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of universities.

* This blog was written together with Pierre de Maret, emeritus president of the Free University of Brussels.  It is based on a chapter by the authors in the following upcoming book Wu, Y., Wang, Q., and Liu, N.C. (eds.) (forthcoming). World-Class Universities: Towards a Global Common Good and Seeking National and Institutional Contributions. Rotterdam: Brill Publishers.  A shorter version was posted on Inside Higher Education‘s world view.

 

“…All regions and countries can benefit from progress toward a knowledge-based economy, which does not depend heavily on material resources, places less of a burden on ecosystems and is more sustainable than other economic models. By shifting to a knowledge-based economy, societies can move from the age of scarcity to the age of abundance. Knowledge does not deplete with use but rather increases as it is shared among people. Through technological innovation, we can help usher in a more sustainable future…”

Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General (24 April 2014)

The Brazilian aviation company, Embraer, is the world leader in the production of regional jets. The success of the country’s emblematic firm can be traced back to the creation of ITA, the National Aeronautic Engineering School, in the early 1950s. Established in close partnership with MIT, and widely considered today as Brazil’s top engineering school, ITA has trained the scientists, engineers and technicians who helped build Embraer into a leading global company.

Typhidot is a revolutionary method to diagnose typhoid fever. Invented by scientists at the Malaysian University of Science in Penang (USM), Typhidot is credited with saving thousands of lives. Compared with traditional methods for detecting the disease, Typhidot is faster, more reliable, cheaper, and it does not require cold storage. USM’s Center for Medical Innovations and Technology Development, from which Typhidot originates, is dedicated to finding innovative ways of diagnosing infectious diseases in an effective, quick and affordable manner.

Until the beginning of this decade, most practicing teachers in Palestinian primary schools were poorly prepared and did not have a university degree. After new regulations required all teachers to have both a university degree and a relevant professional teaching qualification, three West Bank universities worked together, with support from a renowned British teacher training institution, to radically overhaul their pre-service teacher training program, introducing a competency-based approach and a school experience element. A quasi-experimental study carried out after three years of implementation found very high value added for the new pre-service teaching program.

These are but three examples to illustrate the unique and vital contribution that tertiary education makes to economic and social development. But notwithstanding this crucial developmental role, for several decades traditional human capital theory challenged the need for public support of tertiary education on the grounds that graduates captured important private benefits—notably higher salaries and lower unemployment—that should not be subsidized by taxpayers. Influenced by this argument, many multilateral and bilateral donor agencies focused their support on basic education rather than investing as well in the expansion and improvement of tertiary education systems in developing countries.

In the 1990s, however, a growing body of research demonstrated the importance of going beyond rate-of-return analysis to measure the full value of tertiary education as a fundamental pillar of sustainable development. By focusing primarily on the private returns of government spending, rate-of-return analysis failed to capture the broader social benefits accruing to society, which are important to recognize and measure. These include research externalities, entrepreneurship, job creation, good economic and political governance, and the positive effects that a highly educated cadre of workers has on a nation’s health and social fabric.

Building on these findings, the path-breaking 2000 report entitled Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise called for scaling up investment in tertiary education and research to equip developing countries with the knowledge and the qualified manpower needed to fight poverty and accelerate economic growth. Written by a distinguished group of independent experts with financial support from UNESCO and the World Bank, the report had an important impact at three levels. First, it helped reorient donor policies to give greater attention to tertiary education in partner countries. Second, it unleashed several reform initiatives in the developing countries themselves. Third, it paved the way for increased South-South networking and collaborative activities.

Fifteen years later, the world of tertiary education has changed significantly. Developing countries have seen tremendous enrollment growth, especially in the private sector. Many of them are facing an exponentially rising demand as more young people graduate from high school as a result of successes in implementing the Education for All agenda. Against this background, the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations in September 2015 has given renewed consideration to the importance of education for development and the urgency of putting in place viable financing strategies to expand and transform tertiary education. Indeed, it is doubtful that any low-income country can achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) without a strong tertiary education system.

In addition to the essential contribution that tertiary education can make to the goals of sustainable economic growth (SDG 8) and poverty reduction (SDG 1), advances on all the other 15 dimensions, from developing a vibrant agricultural sector and building up a resilient infrastructure to mitigating the devastating effects of climate change and preserving the environment, cannot happen without the participation of scientists and well-trained professionals and the application of leading edge research for finding appropriate solutions to the big challenges faced by mankind. With respect to the goal of diminished inequality (SDG 10), tertiary education plays a critical role in promoting social mobility through equal educational opportunities for all groups, especially the most vulnerable groups in society (low-income groups, minorities, people with special needs, etc.). Achieving the SDGs also requires strong institutions for policy design and implementation, and well-prepared citizens who care about social and economic inclusion and environmental sustainability.

The contribution of tertiary education is crucial, in particular, for achieving real progress in basic and secondary education. A recent study found that more than a quarter of all primary school teachers in 31 countries had not achieved the minimum education standards themselves. Tertiary education supports the rest of the education system through the training of effective teachers and school principals, the involvement of highly qualified specialists in curriculum development and educational research, and the design of appropriate tests to assess students learning outcomes. The symbiotic linkage between tertiary education and the lower levels of schooling has the potential of stimulating a virtuous circle of capacity building in as far as the quality of tertiary education affects the quality of primary and secondary school education and is, in turn, directly influenced by the quality of secondary school graduates.

A similar argument applies to the fundamental role of medical education and research for meeting the health sustainable development goal (SDG 3). Universities train the medical doctors, nurses, technicians, epidemiologists, public health specialists, and hospital managers who form the most important pillar of any health system. Universities and associated health institutes conduct the fundamental research and a significant share of the applied research that condition any significant progress in the fight against diseases and health hazards.

Developing countries must build up their capacity to deal with serious health issues not only because of domestic policy needs, but also in order to contribute effectively to the resolution of global health crises through collaborative research. Indeed, research production has moved from being discipline-driven to problem-focused, with diverse teams of scientists from several disciplinary areas collaborating on the resolution of complex problems, which often correspond to shared challenges that affect mankind as a whole, regardless of political boundaries. This evolution is best illustrated by the global health issues that have come up in recent years, from SARS to MERS to the latest Ebola epidemics in West Africa. In the case of SARS, for example, identifying the corona virus required data sharing and collaborative efforts on an unprecedented scale. This experience has radically changed how the international scientific community responds to emerging global health threats.

This blog was initially published by Inside Higher Education.