Global View on Tertiary Education

Dorothy Lepkowska

Democratic processes using equity as a quality imperative and the covert continuation of banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures should form the basis of resistance to the onslaught of culture wars and threats to academic freedoms sweeping global higher education, a conference has heard.

Dr Jamil Salmi, a global tertiary education expert, told the event in Oxford that higher education was currently experiencing its fourth major attack on the principles of equality and equity in the past century, from authoritarian regimes and the anti-woke agenda.

The three previous assaults were in Nazi Germany, the United States under McCarthyism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Salmi, who is an emeritus professor of higher education policy at Diego Portales University in Chile and a research fellow at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, told participants at the “Access and Geopolitics: Next Steps in Tackling the Equity Crisis in Global Higher Education” event that there had been a “ferocious backlash” to 30 years of collaboration in improving access to higher education.

The event was hosted jointly by the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN), the Centre for Global Higher Education and the Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance.

He said that while there remained big disparities in participation and access across countries, many nations and organisations had tried to promote “the notion of the right to higher education and even the right to free higher education”.

“As we well know, the international community, meaning global UN and bilateral aid agencies and national governments, have worked together over the past 30 years to improve access and success in higher education, and many parts of the world have attained high participation rates,” Salmi said.

“But we know there are big disparities across countries, and Africa, South Asia and Central America are still behind compared to the rest of the world,” he noted.

‘Terrible memories’ of the past

The latest attack was in the form of anti-woke culture wars with three main targets: the exclusion of targeted groups, such as women and LGBTQ; the elimination of equity promotion programmes; and the banning of courses and books and indoctrination in fundamentalist views, which were “bringing back terrible memories” from the past.

“Perhaps the most glaring attack against participation is the wholesale exclusion of women from higher education in Afghanistan since 2021, but it is not only happening in fundamentalist Muslim governments,” Salmi said.

“Even among Christian fundamentalists we see a similar attitude.” He also cited the persecution of LGBTQ communities in countries like Poland and in some Republican states in the US.

Meanwhile, in countries such as Chile, Colombia, the Philippines and South Africa, subsidies that were available to poor students attending private universities “have been dismantled”, he said. The American government was also banning DEI programmes and even trying to prevent them from happening in other countries.

Salmi added: “The US government has recently been sending letters to universities throughout Europe, telling them that if they have DEI programmes, they would not be eligible anymore for research funding in partnership with a US university.

“Across the US we see the closing down of programmes [and] reallocation of resources to eliminate equity programmes that are described as being against the law.”

Resisting backlash

The backlash to strategies that promote equity, diversity and widening participation are a “setback” to those ideals and have led to a drop in institutional autonomy, resulting in attacks on academic freedom and a climate of fear and hostility, Salmi argued.

However, in countries “where you still have democratic processes intact, that’s the best way to push back”, he said. “In Poland, after eight years of attacks on the education system, the new government elected two years ago was able to reverse the negative measures.

“And in countries that have international legal commitments, that is also a way of trying to protect the equity agenda. Some US universities have tried to use proxies of race without actually using race, because this is banned by the Supreme Court [in admissions policies].

“So, for example, universities can focus on first-generation students on the assumption that many Black students could be helped in that way,” he noted.

Modes of resistance

But there were alternative modes of resistance, according to Salmi.

“You can change the name of the equity department, but you still carry on with the same programmes. However, perhaps the most powerful approach – and that’s what WAHEN is about – is to frame a strong body of evidence to resist the backlash against higher education equity,” he said.

“We have to recognise that despite the explicit goals of meritocracy, we still have a long way to go,” he added, highlighting that the proportion of first-generation students attending Oxford and Cambridge was still only about 18%, against a UK average of 48%.

“We see the same thing in the US, where the elite colleges and universities still have more students from the top 1% than from the bottom 60%, which can be contrasted with the great work done by the community colleges, where 39% of students are first-generation.”

Another way of confronting the backlash was to use quality assurance systems and to present equity as a quality imperative, thereby dismissing the notion that academic excellence works only if you are selective.

“There are many examples showing that you can have excellence with inclusion. For example, if you compare the proportion of low-income students at Berkeley with Harvard, it is about three times as high.

“There is a lot of evidence showing that diversity boosts critical thinking and academic performance, so equity needs to be in the core quality standards of our quality assurance systems.”

Bucking the trend

Professor Graeme Atherton, the director of WAHEN and associate pro vice-chancellor of the University of West London, who chaired the session, described Salmi’s presentation as “sobering”.

He told University World News: “While the challenges to equitable access and success across the world presented by populism are acute, there are many examples of universities and countries bucking this trend. Austria, Australia and Colombia are just three examples of countries where national and municipal authorities are investing energy in equity, focusing on inclusive values.

“It is vital that as the reductive anti-equity virus threatens to spread through higher education, we use WAHEN as a vaccine.

“By showing how equitable access benefits not just higher education but the whole of society and creating powerful networks of best practice, WAHEN can protect the most vulnerable students across the world from losing the transformative opportunities higher education provides,” he noted.

Originally written by Dorothy Lepkowska and published in University World News on 11 June 2025.

The last time the world took notice of higher education in Myanmar, it was in the aftermath of the brutally repressed student uprising of August 1988, which resulted in thousands of deaths and arrests and stronger sanctions from the international community.

The political transition that started in 2011 has triggered the resumption of international collaboration in the higher education sector and the launch of a comprehensive education sector review led by the government of Myanmar with strong support from development partners.  The purpose of this analytical exercise is to pave the way for increased external assistance based on an objective diagnosis of the current situation and needs, to help the government and other stakeholders formulate a strategy for the future development of higher education.

The first higher education policy dialogue workshop in Myanmar since the beginning of the political transition took place in Naypyitaw on 29 June 2013, with a focus on “Empowering Higher Education: A vision for Myanmar’s universities”.  It was convened by the British Council with strong participation and support from AusAID, the Asian Development Bank and UNESCO. I was invited as an advisor to AusAID.

The two-day meeting brought together representatives of the various ministries overseeing the operation of higher education institutions, rectors and academics, student leaders, and members of parliament, including the Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.  The workshop offered a unique platform for policy dialogue around the main issues facing higher education in Myanmar, allowing many stakeholders who had not had a voice for several decades – especially students from all over the country – to participate actively in the deliberations.

The official opening statement by Deputy Union Minister of Education Myo Myint outlined changes the government had already made to improve education as well as plans to revitalise higher education and intensify international partnerships.

Suu Kyi’s four guiding principles

It was of great significance and symbolic value that this was followed by a speech delivered by Aung San Suu Kyi in her role as chair of the parliamentary committee for revitalisation of Yangon University.

In her inspirational speech about the role of education in constructing a democratic Myanmar, the Nobel laureate spoke about the priorities for restoring universities, articulating four dimensions of empowerment as the organising principles that should guide higher education development in the current reconstruction phase.

The first one is empowerment through autonomy, which would allow universities to manage their academic activities in an effective manner, as opposed to the present situation of strict government control.

The second is inclusiveness, a basic requirement to ensure equal opportunities for all groups in Myanmar society in terms of access and success in higher education. This emphasis on equity is all the more important as large segments of the population have been excluded from higher education since the 1988 crackdown.

The third principle is empowerment for change, referring to the ability of each university to transform itself into an innovative institution.

And the last one is empowerment for the future, through reforms of the curriculum and pedagogical practices with the purpose of better preparing the young women and men of Myanmar who will be responsible for creating a more democratic society and building a more productive economy.

Review and priorities for action

After the presentation of the preliminary results of the sector review – indicating major performance gaps in terms of coverage and equity, quality and relevance, financing and governance – I urged the workshop participants to consider five key points as Myanmar moves forward to reconstruct its higher education system with possible support from several donor agencies: opportunities, challenges, vision, consensus-building and coordination.

First of all, the political transition represents a unique opportunity to ‘get it right’ – to construct a sound and balanced higher education system for the long term.  Many, if not most, countries in the world are hampered in their efforts to improve higher education by the weight of tradition and the reluctance of stakeholders to embrace change.  The current situation offers a unique opportunity to undertake courageous reforms that are often not possible in other countries because of vested interests and entrenched positions that block meaningful change.

Second, the national authorities and university leaders face a perplexing dilemma as they work on reconstructing the higher education system. On the one hand, they are faced with a myriad of immediate tasks to get the system to operate properly again. On the other hand, they should devote, as a matter of priority, sufficient time to thinking seriously about the future of higher education in preparation for the long-term transformation that is needed.  Balancing the resolution of urgent problems and the careful preparation of future developments is a major challenge that must be addressed effectively.

Third, preparing for the future requires elaborating a vision and formulating a strategic plan to guide the harmonious development of Myanmar’s higher education system.  This would involve setting clear targets in terms of quantitative expansion and the reduction of social and ethnic disparities and defining the desirable institutional configuration of the system; that is, the types of institutions – universities and non-university institutions – that are needed to satisfy demand for higher education, as well as the specific mission of each category of institution.  The plan would include identifying the conditions necessary for the proper functioning of all institutions from the viewpoint of supporting quality assurance mechanisms, appropriate governance and sustainable funding.

Fourth, the development of a vision and strategic plan should not be a technocratic exercise rigidly controlled from the top. It will only become meaningful if prepared in a participatory mode as a consensus-building process, bringing together the diverse constituents of the higher education community and allowing for a high degree of tolerance for controversies and disagreements around the content of the needed reforms and the proposed changes.  Achieving consensus on higher education policies requires a transparency of approach and creating confidence among all stakeholders.

Last but not least is the need for effective donor coordination. Countries in transition like Myanmar, emerging from a long period of international isolation, often become the donors’ latest darling. Offers for university partnerships abound all of a sudden; many projects are being prepared concurrently.  But these concrete manifestations of good intentions are not always coordinated, and carry the risk of pulling the higher education system in several directions. The onus is on the government and parliament of Myanmar to make sure that donor support is consistently and coherently anchored in the country’s vision, plan and priorities.

As Myanmar moves forward to reconstruct its higher education system, all stakeholders should bear in mind the notion expressed by the president of the University of Maryland, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the United States, that “a crisis is an opportunity not to be wasted”.  I would paraphrase his observation by stating that, in the case of Myanmar, the political transition is too good an opportunity to be missed, as the country commits itself to establishing the basis for a strong higher education system.

University campuses all over the world remained relatively calm during the first decade of the new century. The lack of student activism prompted comments about the apathy of today’s students compared to the high level of political awareness and commitment of their predecessors in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. By contrast, 2011 saw waves of student protests around the cost of university education in places as diverse as Seoul, London, Berkeley, Bogota and Santiago.

Some observers see the affinity of students for street protests as a ritual of political coming-of-age. After all, young adults’ first consequential political interactions with their governments are usually over how much they will pay for school and what they will get in return. So it makes for a natural flash point.

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