Category: Worldwide PSE

  • Innovation Without Borders: Galileo’s Networked Approach to Better Higher Education System

    Innovation Without Borders: Galileo’s Networked Approach to Better Higher Education System

    One of the biggest, but least remarked upon trends in European higher education in recent years is the growth of private for-profit, higher education. Even in countries where tuition is free, there are hundreds of thousands of students who now prefer to take courses at private for-profit institutions.

    To me, the question is, why? What sort of institutions are these anyway? Interestingly, the answer to that second question is one which might confuse my mostly North American audience. Turns out a lot of these private institutions are relatively small, bespoke institutions with very narrow academic specializations. And yet they’re owned by a few very large international conglomerate universities. That’s very different from North America, where institutions tend to be either small and bespoke, or part of a large corporation, but not both.

    Today my guest is Nicolas Badré. He’s the Chief Operating Officer of the Galileo Group, which operates a number of universities across Europe. I met him a few months ago at an OECD event in Jakarta. When I heard about some of Galileo’s initiatives, I knew I’d have to have him on the show. 

    There are three things which I think are most important about this interview. First is the discussion about Galileo’s business model and how it achieves economies of scale across such different types of institutions. Second, there’s how the network goes about collectively learning across all its various institutions. And third, specifically how it’s choosing to experiment with AI across a number of institutions and apply the lessons more globally. 

    Overall, it’s a fascinating chat. I hope you enjoy it too. But now, let’s turn things over to Nicolas.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.27 | Innovation Without Borders: Galileo’s Networked Approach to Better Higher Education System

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Nicolas, Galileo Global Education has grown significantly over the years. I think the group is, if I’m not mistaken, 13 or 14 years old now. Some of the universities it owns might be a bit older, but can you walk us through the origins of the group? How did you grow to be as big as you are? I think you’ve got dozens of institutions in dozens of countries—how did that growth happen so quickly?

    Nicolas Badré (NB): Thank you, Alex, for the question. It’s an interesting story. And yes, to your point, the group was created 13 and a half years ago, with an investment by Providence Equity Partners into Istituto Marangoni, a fashion school in Italy. That dates back to 2011. Since then, we’ve made 30 acquisitions.

    The growth started primarily in Europe, especially in France and Germany. Then, in 2014, we took our first steps outside of Europe with the acquisition of IEU in Mexico. Significant moves followed in 2018 and 2019, particularly into the online learning space with Studi in France and AKAD in Germany.

    There’s been a very rapid acceleration over the past five years. For context, I joined the group at the end of 2019. At that time, Galileo had 67,000 students across nine countries. Today, we have 300,000 students in 20 countries.

    Back then, the group was primarily focused on arts and creative schools, as well as business and management schools. Now, we’ve expanded into tech and health, and even into some professional training areas—like truck driving, for instance.

    What does this reflect? Two things. First, very strong organic growth from our existing schools and brands. Take ESG in France as an example. It’s been around for 40 years and is a well-known entry-level business school. Over the past five years, it’s diversified considerably creating ESG Luxury, ESG Tourism, you name it. It’s also expanded its physical presence from just a few cities to now being in 15 or 16 cities across France.

    So it’s really been a combination of strong organic growth and selective acquisitions that have helped us more than quadruple our student numbers in just five years.

    AU: It’s interesting— I think a lot of our listeners and viewers might be surprised to hear about such a strong for-profit institution coming out of France. When you think of French higher education, you think of the Grandes Écoles, you think of free education. So why would so many people choose to pay for education when they don’t have to? It’s a pretty strong trend in France now. I think over 26% of all students in France are in some form of private higher education. What do you offer that makes people willing to give up “free”?

    NB: It’s a good question, and you’re right—it’s not just about France. In many places across Europe, including Germany, the Nordics, and others, you see similar dynamics.

    That said, yes, in France in particular, there’s been a growing share of private players in higher education over the past few years. That probably reflects the private sector’s greater ability to adapt to new environments.

    I’d highlight three main factors that help explain why we’ve been successful in this space.

    First, we’re obsessed with employability and skills-based education. And that’s true across all levels and backgrounds. When we worked on our group mission statement, everyone agreed that our mission is to “unleash the potential of everyone for better employability.” 

    Because of that focus, we maintain very strong ties with industry. That gives us the ability to adapt, create, and update our programs very quickly in response to emerging demands. We know competencies become obsolete faster now, so staying aligned with job market needs is critical. That’s probably the strongest unifying driver across all of Galileo.

    Beyond that, we also offer very unique programs. Take Noroff, for example—a tech school in Norway, which is even more tuition-free than France. It’s one of the very few fee-paying institutions in the country. But the program is so strong that students are willing to pay around 15,000 euros a year because they know they’ll get a top-tier, hands-on experience—something that might be slower to evolve in the public system.

    So that’s the first point: employability and unique, high-impact programs.

    Second, we put a strong emphasis on the student experience. How do we transform their education beyond just delivering content? That’s an area we continue to invest in—never enough, but always pushing. We’re focused on hybridizing disciplines, geographies, and pedagogical approaches.

    And we’ve systematized student feedback—not just asking for opinions, but making sure we translate that feedback into tangible improvements in the student experience.

    And third, I’d say there’s a values-based dimension to all of this. We focus heavily on innovation, entrepreneurship, and high standards. Those are the core values that we’re driven by. You could say they’re our obsessions—and I think that kind of vision and energy resonates with our students. Those are the three main things I’d point to.

    AU: I have a question about how you make things work across such a diverse set of institutions. I mean, you’ve got design schools, drama schools, law schools, medical schools. When people think about private education, there’s often an assumption that there’s some kind of economies of scale in terms of curriculum. The idea that you can reuse curriculum across different places. But my impression is that you can’t do that very much. It seems like you’re managing all these different institutions, each of them like their own boutique operation, with their own specific costs. How do you make it work across a system as large and diverse as yours? Where are the economies of scale?

    NB: Well, that’s also a very good point—and you’re absolutely right. We have a very diverse network of schools. We have a culinary arts school in Bordeaux, France, with maybe 400 students, and we have universities with more than 10,000 students, whether in medical or business education.

    So yes, you might wonder: why put these institutions together?

    The answer is that we really built the group’s development around the entrepreneurial DNA of our school directors. They’re responsible for their own development—for their growth, diversification, and how they respond to the job market.

    We’re not obsessed with economies of scale. What we really value is the network itself. What we focus on is shared methodology—in areas like sales and marketing, finance, HR, and student experience.

    There are also some opportunities for synergies in systems. In some cases, for instance, yes—we use a similar CRM across several countries. But I think the real value of the network lies in its ability to share experiences and experiment with innovation throughout, and then scale up those innovations appropriately across the other schools.

    So I’d say it’s more about shared practices than about forcing economies of scale across borders—because that doesn’t always make sense.

    AU: Am I correct in thinking that you don’t necessarily present yourself as a chain of institutions to students? That each institution actually has a pretty strong identity in and of itself—is that right? Is there a fair bit of autonomy and ability to adapt things locally at each of your schools?

    NB: Yes, I think that’s true. In terms of branding, we believe that each of our schools generally has a stronger brand than Galileo itself. And that’s how it should be, because each school has its own experience, its own DNA, its own momentum and development.

    So, we see ourselves more as a platform that supports the development of all these schools, rather than a chain imposing the same standards and practices across the board.

    Of course, we do have certain methodologies—for example, how to run a commercial campaign. We provide guidance, but it’s ultimately up to each school to manage that process and use the methodology in a way that works best for their own development.

    That doesn’t mean there’s no value in having the Galileo name—there is. But the value is in being a platform that supports the schools, rather than overshadowing them.

    AU: Nicolas, I know Galileo is testing a lot of AI-driven approaches across its various institutions. What I found interesting in a discussion we had offline a few weeks ago is that you’re experimenting with AI in different parts of the institution—some of it around curriculum, some around administration, and some around student services. Can you give us an overview? What exactly are you testing, and what are the goals of these experiments?

    NB: I think we first need to frame how we’re using AI, and it’s important to look at our strategy globally. We believe there are three major trends shaping higher education.

    First, student expectations are evolving quickly—they’re demanding more flexibility and personalization. Second, there’s a rapid emergence of new competencies, which challenges our ability to adapt and update programs quickly. And third, we need to go beyond boundaries and be agile in how we approach topics, address new skills, and serve diverse learners. These are the three starting points we see as opportunities for Galileo to differentiate itself. Now, we’re not trying to become a leading AI company. Our goal remains to be a recognized leader in education—improving employability and lives. That’s our benchmark.

    With that in mind, our AI vision is focused on four areas:

    1. How do we deliver a unique experience to our students?
    2. How do we connect educators globally who are trained in and comfortable with AI?
    3. How do we develop content that can be adapted, localized, translated, and personalized?
    4. And how do we improve operational productivity?

    AI is clearly a powerful tool in all four areas. Let me walk through some of the things we’re doing. 

    The first area we call AI for Content. We’re using AI to more quickly identify the competencies required by the job market. We use tools that give us a more immediate connection to the market to understand what skills are in demand. Based on that, we design programs that better align with those needs.

    Then the next step is about course and content creation. Once we’ve defined the competencies, how do we design the courses, the pedagogical materials? How do we make it easier to localize and adapt that content?

    Take Studi, an online university in France with 67,000 students and around 150 different programs. A year ago, it would take them about four months to design a bachelor’s or master’s program. Now, it takes one to two months, depending on the specifics. The cost has been cut in half, and development speed has increased by a factor of two, three, even four in some cases. This also opens up opportunities to make programs more personalized because we can update them much faster. 

    The second area is AI for Experience. How do we use AI to enhance the student experience?

    We’ve embedded AI features in our LMS to personalize quizzes, generate mind maps, and create interactive sessions during classes. We’ve also adapted assessments. For example, in Germany, for the past two years, our online university AKAD has let students choose their own exam dates. That’s based on an AI approach that generates personalized assessments while staying within the requirements of German accreditation bodies. This wouldn’t be possible without AI. The result is higher engagement, faster feedback, and a more personalized learning experience.

    Lastly, beyond content and experience, we’re seeing real gains in AI for Operations. In sales and marketing, for example, we now use bots in Italy and Latin America to re-engage “dead” leads—contacting them again, setting up meetings, and redirecting them through the admissions funnel. It’s proven quite efficient, and we’re looking to expand that approach to other schools.

    We’re also seeing strong results in tutoring. Take Corndel, a large UK-based school focused on apprenticeships. They’re using AI tools extensively to improve student tracking, tutoring, and weekly progress monitoring.

    So, we’re seeing a lot of momentum across all these dimensions—and it’s really picked up speed over the last 18 months.

    AU: So, you’ve got a network of institutions, which gives you a lot of little laboratories to experiment with—to try different things. How do you identify best practices? And then how do you scale them across your network?

    NB: Well, first of all, we have lots of different pilots. As you’ve understood, we’re quite decentralized, so we don’t have a central innovation team of 50 people imposing innovations across all our schools.

    It’s more about scouting and sharing experiences from one school to another. It’s a combination of networks where people share what they’re learning.

    Just to name a few, we have a Digital Learning Community—that’s made up of all the people involved in LMS design across our schools. They exchange a lot of insights and experiences.

    We also hold regular touchpoints to present what’s happening in AI for content, AI for experience, and AI for operations. We’ve created some shared training paths for schools as well. So there are a lot of initiatives aimed at maximizing sharing, rather than imposing anything top-down. Again, as you pointed out, the schools are extremely diverse—in terms of regulations, size, content, and disciplines. So there’s no universal recipe.

    That said, in some cases it’s more about developing a methodology. For example, how do you design and implement a pedagogical chatbot? The experiments we’re running now are very promising for future scale-up, because we’re learning a lot from these developments.

    AU: I know that, in a sense, you’ve institutionalized the notion of innovation within the system. I think you’ve recently launched a new master’s program specifically focused on this question—on how to innovate in education systems. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

    NB: Yeah, I’m super excited to talk about this, because it’s where I’m focusing most of my energy these days.

    We’ve been working on this project for a year with four Galileo institutions. It’s called Copernia, and the name, like Galileo, is intentional—these are people who changed perspectives. That’s exactly what we want to do: change the perspective on education and truly put the student at the center.

    Copernia started the initiative, Galileo confirmed it, and it’s no coincidence we’re focusing on this.

    The first program we’re launching under Copernia is a Master of Innovation and Technology for Education. The idea is to bring together and leverage expertise from several fields: neurocognitive science, tech, AI and data, educational sciences, innovation, design, and management. The goal is to offer students a unique experience where they not only learn about innovation—but also learn to develop and apply it.

    One of the major assets we want to leverage is the Galileo network. With over 120 campuses, we can offer students real, hands-on opportunities to experiment and innovate. So the value proposition is: if you want to design and test educational innovation, we’ll give you the tools, the foundational knowledge, and, most importantly, the chance to apply that in practice—within our network, with our partners, and with other institutions.

    The goal is to help the whole ecosystem benefit—not just from Galileo’s environment, but also from the contributions of tech partners, academic collaborators, and business partners around the world. I’m convinced this will be a major tool to develop, share, and scale practical, applied innovation.

    And importantly, this isn’t meant to be just an internal initiative for Galileo. It’s designed to be open. We want to train people who can help transform education—not only in higher education, but also in K–12 and lifelong learning. Because we believe this kind of cross-disciplinary expertise and hands-on innovation experience is valuable across the entire education sector.

    AU: I’m really impressed with the scale and speed at which you’re able to experiment. But it did make me wonder—why can’t public higher education systems do the same? I mean, if I think about French universities, there are 70 or 80 in the public system—though it’s hard to keep track because they keep merging. But theoretically, they could do this too, couldn’t they? It’s a moderately centralized system, and there’s no reason institutions couldn’t collaborate in ways that let them identify useful innovations—rolling them out at different speeds in different areas, depending on what works. Why can’t the public sector innovate like that?

    NB: First of all, I wouldn’t make a sweeping judgment on this. I think there is innovation happening everywhere—including within public institutions. So I wouldn’t describe it in black-and-white terms.

    That said, it’s true that as a private organization, we face a certain kind of pressure. We need to prove that we operate a sustainable model—and we need to prove that every month. In other words, we rely on ourselves to develop, to test, and to optimize how we grow. 

    The second is that we have an asset in being able to test and learn in very different environments. Take the example I mentioned earlier, about Germany and the anytime online assessments. We were able to implement that model there because it was online and because the regulatory environment allowed it.

    Now, when we approach accreditation bodies in other countries, we can say: “Look, it works. It’s already accepted elsewhere. Why not consider it here?” That ability to move between different contexts—academic and professional, vocational and executive—is really valuable. It allows us to promote solutions that cross traditional boundaries.

    That’s not something all public universities can do—and frankly, not something all universities can do, period. But it’s an advantage we’ve built over the past several years by creating this large field for experimentation.

    AU: Nicolas, thank you so much for being with us today.

    NB: Alex, thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.

    AU: It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and to thank you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining us. If you have any questions about today’s podcast, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. And don’t forget—never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast. Head over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. Join us next week when our guest will be Noel Baldwin, CEO of the Future Skills Centre here in Canada. He’ll be joining us to talk about the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. See you then.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • The Fifteen, April 4, 2025

    The Fifteen, April 4, 2025

    The latest edition of The Fifteen highlights stories on workforce readiness and labour productivity (Hong Kong, the UK) and the expansion and regulation of private higher education (Spain, Tunisia).  But we’re also covering such issues as access problems in Finland, faculty issues in Iran and admissions reform in Vietnam, as well as, inevitably, the latest policy atrocities in the United States. Enjoy!

    1. The most recent controversy in the American higher-ed landscape is the Trump administration’s rapidly increasing use of a little-used power to revoke academic and student VISAs. Is It That Easy for Trump to Revoke Visas? (The Chronicle) Well, it’s either that or the Trump administration’s ‘review’ of several billion worth of funding to Harvard. Trump Administration Targets Harvard With Review of $9 Billion in Federal Funding. (Wall Street Journal)
    2. The European Commission is pushing research funding towards a competitiveness-focused fund that focuses more on industry applications. The European Parliament and Council, along with universities and research leaders, support preserving the current framework (F10) that prioritizes long-term, more academic research. Is the sun setting on blue-sky EU research funding? (Times Higher Education)
    3. Many in Higher Education see mergers as an important and potentially necessary part of the sector’s future. However, getting these agreements off the ground is much easier said than done, even when funding incentives exist. Supporting Partnerships for Student Success and Institutional Viability. (Transformational Partnerships Fund)
    4. Free tuition does not guarantee access, part MCXXIV.  In Finland, there are about three times as many students applying than there are spots in universities, leading some students to spend thousands on preparatory courses in a bid to get in. Over 93,000 applicants left without a place at university. (Helsinki Times)
    5. Long known for cutting-edge research universities, Hong Kong is piloting a government-backed program to open universities offering applied programming to fill the labour market demand for advanced technical skills. Applied sciences universities are set to diversify HE sector. (University World News)
    6. A report from India shows that tech graduates’ employment struggles are not unique to North America. Many students fail to land jobs after graduating, even with in-demand skills, highlighting the challenge young graduates face getting from campus into the workforce. 60% of premier engineering students lack job offers, highlighting gaps in campus. (The Economic Times)
    7. Staying in India, a new report says that 51 students died in ragging (i.e. hazing) incidents at their universities over the past three years; medical universities were singled out as particular hotspots.  Medical colleges emerge as ragging hotspots with 51 deaths in 3 years, reveals study. (The Times of India)
    8. We missed this a few weeks back, but better late than never. A Chinese entrepreneur set up a new university and endowed it with $10 billion. Chinese boss in American Factory film approved to launch university to rival Stanford. (SCMP) Now, it’s going after top international faculty. Chinese entrepreneurs’ philanthropy helps lure world-class scholars. (SCMP)
    9. China has long put a big emphasis on Engineering education. Some think this is now paying serious dividends. How does China’s ‘engineer dividend’ propel rapid growth of its high-tech industries? (Global Times)
    10. Spain Is in the midst of a private higher education boom, with over 20% of that country’s students now enrolled in the sector. Las universidades públicas pierden estudiantes frente a la gran oferta de las universidades privadas. (infobae) But quality concerns exist. El cuádruple fracaso de Sánchez antes de su ofensiva a las universidades privadas: notas infladas, falta de plazas, peor empleo y regulación fallida. (El Mundo) And now the government is setting out a new set of rules for privates to maintain university status. El Gobierno va a endurecer los criterios para crear nuevas universidades: un mínimo de 4.500 estudiantes y un sistema de validación. (infobae)
    11. Across the Mediterranean, Tunisia is also figuring out how to regulate booming private universities and a new law is in front of Parliament. Réforme de l’enseignement supérieur privé en Tunisie : un amendement pour renforcer le recrutement d’enseignants permanents. (Business News)
    12. Iran’s universities are seeing a huge exodus of medical personnel due mainly to poor pay and working conditions. Wave of Faculty Exodus Reaches Iran’s Major Universities. (Iran Focus)
    13. In a rare piece of positive news on international education, New Zealand is reporting an increase in foreign student applications. New Zealand witnessed a 27% increase in international student applications this year. (Education Times) and predict much larger increases in numbers from India as those students look away from North America. Indian Student Enrolment In New Zealand Set To Nearly Double By 2030, Predicts 95% Growth: Report. (Free Press Journal)
    14. An interesting piece from the Moscow Times about anti-war resistance in Russian universities. In Russia’s Universities, Anti-War Voices Are Silenced. But Resistance Remains. (The Moscow Times)
    15. And finally, from Vietnam, which might currently be the world’s most ambitious country when it comes to higher education reform, comes an attempt to re-work university admissions.  Currently, there are no fewer than 20 different adjudication methods for university admissions, which is silly. Vietnam plans nearly 20 university admission methods in 2025. (Vietnam Global). But better standardization and an end to early admissions are on the way. Vietnam abolishes early university admission starting 2025. (Vietnam Global)

    That’s our quick global roundup in higher education—from privatization, access and employment outcomes to ambitious reforms and the rapidly shifting international markets. Plenty to think about—and plenty more to come. Catch you in the next edition!

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  • “Anything Can Be Done With Anything”: Innovative Universities with Dara Melnyk

    “Anything Can Be Done With Anything”: Innovative Universities with Dara Melnyk

    There’s an old joke about innovation in higher education.  It goes like this:  How many universities does it take to screw in a lightbulb.  Change? 

    Maybe that’s a bit unfair, but it’s unquestionable that the sector isn’t famed for welcoming change, in particular radical change.  One particular aspect is what is called isomorphism – the tendency of all institutions to look the same because they are copying some “ideal” model university (think Harvard or Oxford); indeed, that institutions which don’t copy the model followed by “prestige” universities must ipso facto lack “quality”. 

    But innovation does happen.  It’s just not always widely noticed or celebrated.  But there is one regular webinar that is trying to change that, and that’s the Innovative Universities Global Webinar Series.  Based at Constructor University in Germany, it’s co-hosted by two fantastic higher education researchers.  One is Isak Frumin, who joined our podcast last year to talk about post-Soviet universities, and the other is today’s guest, Dara Melnyk.

    We invited Dara onto the show today to discuss what she and Isak have discovered about innovative universities over the course of their webinar series.  What are the catalysts for innovation in higher education?  What kinds of structures or leadership are required to sustain innovation?  Does the innovation process look different in different parts of the world?  I found this an absolutely delightful conversation, mainly because Dana’s job allows her to delve deeply int topics that I wish I could spend more time on myself, and this was a chance for me to live that life vicariously.  I hope you find her as insightful as I did.  And so without futher ado: over to Dara.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.26 | “Anything Can Be Done With Anything”: Innovative Universities with Dara Melnyk 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Dara, how did the Innovative Universities Global Webinar come about? What was the motivation to create a platform specifically focused on institutional innovation in higher education?

    Dara Melnyk (DM): So, there were practical reasons—I’d say three of them—and one completely impractical reason.

    The first practical reason is that we truly believe innovative universities are important. They’re useful because they test new approaches, and when those approaches are successful, other universities adopt them. That’s how you upgrade higher education systems. It’s, I think, one of the most powerful—and also most ethical—mechanisms for institutional change, as compared to implementing strict policies.

    The second practical reason is tied to my work. I’ve been consulting and advising universities for the past decade, and it’s simply easier to talk about universities when you can use extreme cases. These cases make for good examples, and innovative universities really have to get that one thing at the core of their distinction exactly right. They can typically articulate what they do very clearly, which makes it efficient to learn from them. For example, a lot of universities practice PBL, but if you want to really understand how it works, it makes sense to go to the core—to McMaster University, Maastricht University, whichever you prefer.

    The last practical reason is that innovative universities often have to fight private battles with regulators. They’re constantly trying to bridge the gap between their vision and the realities of everyday practice, and that can get pretty isolating. So we thought it would be helpful to create a gallery of cases, where university leaders could speak about their ideas and challenges—and where others could learn from those stories and feel a bit better about their own practice.

    And finally, the impractical reason—I promised you one of those! Isak, my co-host, and I have this acute curiosity about higher education. Innovative universities intrigue us. They surprise us. They’re hopeful. And most importantly, they make us question what we believe about higher education.

    AU: How do you go about selecting cases? What is it that makes a university truly innovative? Is it technology, governance, pedagogy? And how long do you have to wait to know if it’s an innovation worth copying?

    DM: Okay, so there are two questions here. First, about selecting cases—I’d love to tell you that we have a long, strict list of criteria, that we run them through models or maybe Excel files or something like that. But truly, we just follow our gut feeling. If something gives us pause, it might do the same for the audience. That’s how we choose. Someone tells us about an institution, and we think, “Okay, this is interesting—how do they do it?” And that’s when we decide to feature it.

    Now, in terms of what makes a university innovative, we mostly focus on innovations that are constitutive, not auxiliary—meaning they’re absolutely necessary for that specific university model to function. We do also like looking into innovations in the operational model. But typically, we concentrate on innovations in the core—so, in teaching and learning—because that seems to be the very essence of the idea of the university.

    AU: In your experience, I’m wondering to what extent institutions innovate for—how can I put this—internal reasons, as opposed to external challenges. What kinds of external challenges or changes in the environment, I guess, force institutions to rethink their model? And how often is it those external forces that are decisive in making institutions take that turn toward innovation?

    DM: I feel it’s not that cut and dried. While universities do sometimes respond to external forces or challenges, they also just as often stand idly by—disallowing what’s happening. Not in the sense of ignoring it, but rather acknowledging it, addressing it, and then denying any responsibility for taking action. That happens just as frequently.

    What I think triggers innovation more reliably is what I would call inflection points—periods in history when norms start shifting, and people begin to question what they believe in and what is right. And while that’s happening, you can sneak in something truly unusual.

    The largest and longest inflection period we’ve seen was probably in the 1960s and 1970s, when a lot of things were changing. Gender norms and generational roles were being questioned, there was widespread discontent with U.S. foreign policy and levels of inequality, and in Europe there was a kind of religious rebellion. That’s how we ended up with, I think, almost half of the cases in our collection.

    And possibly, we are living through an inflection period now as well. We’re seeing technological shifts, a new political order—or, as The Economist recently and aptly put it, “disorder”—emerging, as well as climate wars. Institutions are responding to all of that, but they’re also enabled to respond, because no one is quite sure what the correct university model is right now. For a time, that uncertainty creates room to innovate. I think at some point, it will settle again—and innovating will become difficult.

    AU: It seems to me that innovations require a pretty careful mix of institutional structures, leadership styles, funding mechanisms—these could be internal or external. Is there any configuration that you think is more likely to support long-term change?

    DM: First of all, anything can be done with anything. We’ve seen the most fascinating cases of innovation happen under really severe constraints. But at the same time, there are factors that significantly contribute to innovation. I’d classify them as stories, leaders, and policy.

    Starting with stories: if a university community believes it must innovate—for whatever reason, whether to be a pathfinder, to show other universities the way, or to solve problems because it has a vision it’s trying to implement—then it keeps solving issues in order to make that vision real.

    When it comes to leaders, personal drive matters. And you actually need several people with that drive, because they’ll argue, they’ll compete, they’ll collaborate—and ultimately, they’ll move the university forward. No university leader is an island, to paraphrase John Donne. No team, no vision, no innovation, ultimately.

    And finally, policy. I think you’d agree there needs to be sufficient autonomy to experiment. It sounds like a basic statement—like something you hear in every second university president’s speech—but universities are often quite limited by licensing and accreditation regulations. And also by something I’d call self-arrest, borrowing from Antony Giddens: playing it safe just in case, keeping still, not rocking the boat.

    So autonomy is really important. I love the title of the book by Bartlett Giamatti about universities—The Free and Ordered Space. I’ve been obsessed with that phrase. It seems incredibly relevant to universities, because, well—there is no order if you don’t have freedom. Freedom is the basis of order for universities.

    AU: Dara, your series features universities from all over the world. I’ve been so impressed by the way you’ve been able to go to various corners of the globe. What’s your impression about how the approach to innovation differs regionally? So, is there a North American path to institutional innovation that’s different from what you see in Europe or Asia? Is it about philosophy? Is it about traditions? I mean, what are the differences you see globally?

    DM: I think it’s about problem fields. A problem field is a cluster of issues you have to navigate and somehow address—quote in your design—for sponsors to even consider investing, for students to consider coming, and so on.

    If I were to walk you through the regions—this is a really rough typology at the moment, but still—
    For Africa, the problem field is the trifecta of affordability, quality, and regional relevance. That last part is sometimes interpreted as decolonization, but I think it’s more than that.

    Asia is incredibly diverse, both economically and culturally. I’d say China seems especially concerned with identifying its own way and positioning universities as economic drivers—meaning actual partnerships between higher education institutions and industry. And in developing countries, I think it’s mostly about securing social mobility for students.

    Now, traveling to North America—we’ve only looked at the U.S. so far; Canada is pending—it’s also very much centered on affordability. But with the University of Austin—not to be confused with the University of Texas at Austin—we’re seeing a return to thinking about and experimenting with what a university should be in the first place. That sounds a bit like the 1960s to me. So, we’ll see what happens there.

    And finally, Europe is all about Europe—Europeanness. Its largest innovation, the European University Networks, is centered on that. And apart from this sense of Europeanness, there’s a lot of attention to innovative and experimental pedagogies, partly in response to demographic changes.

    AU: About a year ago, we had a guest on the show, Brian Rosenberg—you’ve probably read his book, Whatever It Is, I’m Against It. He painted a picture of American institutions as being very resistant to innovation, basically because there are too many points of veto within the institution. What are the biggest obstacles you see preventing universities from adopting innovative practices? Are you as pessimistic as Brian? How do you get around that tendency toward inertia?

    DM: I am definitely not as pessimistic as Brian—maybe because I don’t live in the U.S. I hope the land down below Canada won’t be offended by that!

    Now, talking about obstacles, there are both external and internal ones. Externally, they’re quite plentiful, but I think it boils down to a conflict between open and closed systems. A higher education system is either welcoming—in narrative and policy—to innovation, or it’s not. And the way to overcome that barrier usually involves promotion, and often lobbying, for the importance of innovative universities.

    According to our observations, successful, innovative universities are typically led by talented lobbyists. You have to be able to fight back—to be an actor, not just an agent, in the national conversation.

    Now, for internal obstacles, the biggest one is a lack of critical discussion about the organization. If people can’t voice issues or share ideas—because, for example, they’re afraid to—then nothing changes, and nothing will change. So, step one is to create a platform for that discussion. And step two is not just to invite people to share their opinions—or embolden them, if you can—but to actually carry the conversation through to real projects. Try something out. It may or may not work, but at least you’ve tried. And then you can try again. That’s how you become an innovative institution.

    AU: What’s the most innovative institution you’ve seen? I know you’ve done dozens of these around the world. What’s the one that really affected you the most—one that you thought was the most interesting to think about or to look at?

    DM: It doesn’t really work like that. We tend to get excited about every single institution we look at. The more attention you pay to one, the more fascinated you get. For me, it’s typically the last case—either the one we just covered or the one we’re about to cover.

    So, the case we just covered is Roskilde University in Denmark, which is a cousin of McMaster University. They’re just wonderful. They have their own proprietary methodology—problem-oriented project learning—and they keep introducing new innovations. If you look at the news page on their website, it’s not just updates about research outcomes and student results. It’s also things like, “We’re going to introduce this,” or “We’re thinking about that.”

    And the case we’re going to cover very soon, in a couple of days, is Tidelines Institute. It’s a micro-college. There’s a proper definition for that, but I like to define micro-colleges as institutions where everybody knows everybody.

    Tidelines is located in the Alaskan wilderness and sees itself almost as complementary to traditional higher education institutions. It’s not a disruptive institution—it’s a complement. It’s an addition. It offers experiential learning through short-term projects for students. They can come for six months or even just a couple of weeks and learn something amazing by doing.

    AU: So, based on all these conversations you’ve had, what are the big themes that you think might affect—for lack of a better word—the university of the future? Obviously, there’s not one university of the future; there are lots of different possibilities and roles for individual institutions to play. But are there specific themes emerging from your research that you think might become a more hegemonic—or dominant—blueprint for higher education in the coming decades?

    DM: Some things are clear. First, affordable university models will keep appearing—because everyone wants them to. For that, you might look at NewU University in Washington, DC. It’s a really brave and persistent case that I admire deeply. Or the African Leadership University, which Brian Rosenberg—whom you mentioned—is an advisor to.

    Second, universities will implement more technology. We all know it; everybody talks about it. I’d recommend looking at MEF, a Turkish university, to see what they’re doing. They’re quite systematic in implementing new technological solutions.

    Third—and almost as a mirror to that technological implementation—universities will also have to compete with online platforms. They have to offer something no one else does. I really like the idea of Forward College, which is an itinerant college in Europe. Students study in Lisbon for their first year, Paris for their second, and Berlin for their third. Forward College believes that relational pedagogy should lie at the core of education—the relationship between teacher and student as the driver for learning. I think that has its place, maybe even a central place, in universities. These are the spaces where generations meet, and that should be used and leveraged.

    That said, I want to make a slightly extended comment about innovation. I’m not sure if Isak would agree, but even though I research innovative universities, talk about them, and write about them, I don’t truly believe in innovations in higher education. I don’t think they’re possible.

    Lately, I’ve been reading and listening to things about ancient Greece and ancient Greek education—and also listening to Bastille, because for me, that’s connected. There’s a line in their song Pompeii: “But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?” The more I learn about innovative higher education, the more I believe in two things: first, nothing will fundamentally change; and second, nothing should.

    On that first point—about the lack of fundamental change—most innovations are reimaginings. We keep reimagining ideas that have already been discussed, that have already been tried, throughout the couple of thousand years of higher education history.

    And on the second point—maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s something universities should retain. They are organizations that manage knowledge. They gain knowledge through research, they transmit it through education, and they apply it through technology transfer. The formats might change, but at their core, universities should remain the one type of organization responsible for the complete knowledge cycle. Everything else seems secondary to me.

    AU: Dara Melnyk , thanks so much for joining us today. And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek—and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining us today. If you have any questions or concerns about today’s episode, or suggestions for future ones, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Run—don’t walk—to our YouTube channel. Subscribe to it so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education. Join us next week when I’ll be joined by Nicolas Badré, the Chief Operating Officer of the Galileo Global Education Group. We’ll be talking about the rise of private higher education in Europe and the Galileo Group’s fascinating experiments with artificial intelligence in teaching and learning. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • The Learning Centred University with Steven Mintz

    The Learning Centred University with Steven Mintz

    Hi everyone, Tiffany and Sam here — your World of Higher Education podcast producers. While Alex is away in Japan, we’re here to introduce this week’s episode.

    In this interview, Alex speaks with Steven Mintz, a renowned scholar and postdoctoral researcher, and author of the book, “The Learning-Centered University: Making College a More Developmental, Transformational, and Equitable Experience” In the following conversation, Mintz discusses what makes a learning-centered university, the benefits of active learning over traditional lectures, and the practical challenges faced in implementing these changes. The discussion also delves into alternative scalable learning models, competency-based education, and the importance of holistic student support systems. Steven also reflects on his experience leading digital learning transformations and provides actionable steps for universities aiming to become learning-centered institutions. Have a listen.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.25 | The Learning Centred University with Steven Mintz 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher: Steve, your book makes a pretty strong case for universities shifting from being to what you’d call teaching-centred to being learning-centred. What does that actually mean? In practice, what is a learning-centred university, and how is it different from a teaching-centred one?

    Steven Mintz: If you look at the statistics—even in discussion classes—about 80 percent of classroom time is spent with the instructor transmitting information. And while you can certainly learn from listening to lectures, you can learn a lot more if you’re actually engaged in inquiry, analysis, discussion, and the like. What we’ve done is turn teaching pretty much into a performance, as opposed to focusing on what we’re really interested in—which is learning.

    Alex Usher: So, to use a phrase that was popular about a decade ago—more “guide on the side,” less “sage on the stage”?

    Steven Mintz: I actually disagree with that statement. I believe a professor needs to be a learning architect—essentially, a learning engineer who figures out what students need to know and develops strategies to help them acquire that knowledge. So, it’s not quite as passive as “guide on the side.” A professor is not just a tutor; a professor is a designer of learning experiences—or at least, that’s what a professor ought to be.

    Alex Usher: We’ll come back to how we achieve that in a minute, but—it seemed to me, as I was reading the book, that a lot of what you’re arguing for, implicitly at least, is a lot more resource-intensive than what we’re doing now. You know, we’re talking about smaller classes, personalized instruction, that kind of thing. How do universities manage that? How can they achieve it when budgets are shrinking all the time?

    Steven Mintz: Right now, we essentially have two types of classes: lecture classes and discussion classes. But there are other kinds of classes—other kinds of learning experiences—that we know work, and that we haven’t tried as much as we ought to. We know that in creative writing and art, students take studio classes, where they get a lot of input and feedback from peers. That’s scalable. We have experience with game-designed learning. The most famous example is Reacting to the Past, where students take on roles as historical actors. That’s expandable, and we know it works. Field-based learning works. Service-learning works. So let’s not stay wedded to just two models. Let’s think about other ways we can help students learn.

    Alex Usher: The great thing about the two types of classes we have now is that they seem easier to scale than what you’re talking about. Doesn’t cost come into it somewhere?

    Steven Mintz: Well, let’s think about that for a moment. If we adopt a hybrid approach, where a large part of the class is online and the active learning takes place face-to-face, that’s a scalable model. I’ve created interactive courseware with my students that includes simulations, animations, all kinds of exciting inquiry-based activities, and embedded assessments. But I combine that with active learning in the in-person environment. So in other words, by dividing the delivery, I can double the number of students served.

    Alex Usher: Presumably one of the barriers to this—and you’ll know this from your time in administration—is that it requires faculty to really change their approach, right? I mean, they’ve grown up in the kind of system you described, with those two kinds of classes, and many of them have become comfortable teaching that way over the course of their careers.

    How do you get faculty to rethink those traditional teaching methods? How do you incentivize them to adopt new approaches?

    Steven Mintz: You know, it’s shocking that college professors are the only professionals who aren’t mandated to do professional development. The assumption is that in graduate school, you learned everything you needed to know—and if you didn’t learn it there, you picked it up as an undergraduate by watching others teach. But we know we need to move in a different direction. So the question is: how do we do that?

    First of all, there are always individuals who are pace-setters—innovators—and we need to give those people greater leeway to do what they want to do.

    Second, we need to figure out how to offer professional development in ways that faculty find welcoming and appealing.

    Third, we need to showcase success. We need to reward and incentivize faculty to try new and interesting things.

    Many faculty members already have tools at their disposal that could offer real insight. For example, I get a lot of statistical information from my learning management system about student engagement and where students are getting confused. I can use that data to improve my classes. But we’re not doing enough to make it easy for faculty to use those tools.

    Alex Usher: One of the learning-centred models that’s often pitched is competency-based education. And it’s interesting—you talk a fair bit about it in your book. It strikes me that CBE is relatively straightforward in fields like nursing. Western Governors University, for example, is well known for its CBE models in nursing and other professional areas. But you don’t tend to see it in fields like English, history, or philosophy.

    How do you see competency-based education being integrated into the humanities, social sciences, or even the pure sciences?

    Steven Mintz: There are a couple of different ways to think about competency-based education—and one of those ways, I think, is quite misleading.

    Many faculty members assume that CBE is synonymous with online or asynchronous education. But that’s not how I see it. I think of it as an approach where you first determine what literacies and skills you want students to acquire, then figure out how to instill and cultivate those skills, and finally, how to assess them to make sure students have actually mastered them.

    This shouldn’t be a radical idea. Medical schools have already adopted competency-based education, and that’s largely because many medical students don’t go to lectures anymore.

    They’re do-it-yourself learners—they’re among the best students we have in higher education—and they needed a different approach. Medical schools have found that CBE is a big part of the answer. You tell students what they need to know, you tell them the level at which they need to perform—and, amazingly, they do it.

    Alex Usher: Well, they do it—but even medicine is a bit more outcome-based than, say, history or philosophy, right? I’m curious about your thoughts on examples like Minerva—the Minerva Project—and the way they’ve been trying to apply competency-based approaches to higher education. Their model involves having evaluators watch classroom recordings and assess whether students are demonstrating things like critical thinking or communication skills during those smaller, active learning phases. What’s your take on what Minerva has done?

    Steven Mintz: I’m all in favor of critical thinking, but it’s a pretty abstract term. If I want a student to analyze a work of literature, I can be much more precise than simply saying, “I want them to think critically about the text.” I want them to understand how the author uses language and characterization, what themes are embedded in the work, what symbols are being used, and how the text might be viewed from multiple perspectives. For example, how would a feminist critic read the text? A Marxist critic? A postmodernist? A postcolonialist? These are more precise in my mind—and we can objectively assess whether a student can demonstrate those skills. That’s where “critical thinking” as a term strikes me as overly abstract.

    Alex Usher: So it’s really about figuring out how to operationalize concepts like critical thinking—on a discipline-by-discipline basis.

    Steven Mintz: Precisely. When I think about my own history students, what do I want them to know? I want them to understand historical methods—how to conduct research. I want them to think like historians. That means seeing processes that unfold over time, and recognizing that everything has a history. I want them to have a command of content—and we all know how to measure that. In other words, let’s be precise about the actual learning objectives we want students to meet, and then figure out the best ways to measure them.

    Alex Usher: Steven, you argue that student support structures are really important to a learning-centred university model, and that they need to be redesigned. So, what role does holistic student support play in improving student outcomes? And how is it different from the current student support systems that most institutions have?

    Steven Mintz: We have, right now, all kinds of information that can tell us when students are off track. We have all kinds of information that can tell us that some classes have very high rates of Ds and Fs and withdrawals. And we don’t use that information—which strikes me as absurd. Because why not act proactively to help students when they’re off track? Why not act aggressively when they’re confused about a topic? We can measure that.

    Now, the key is what are called formative assessments. These are low-stakes, frequent assessments that just try to figure out what a student knows and what they don’t know and these are not high-pressure. In my own class, I have students use their cell phones to respond to certain questions, because it helps me understand where they are. I can then judge whether they’re engaged or disengaged, and what I can do to help them learn better.

    Alex Usher: So, technology is often seen as both a solution and a challenge in higher education reform. You know, these days we talk about AI, we talk about adaptive learning, online education—how do each of these things play a role in making learning-centred approaches scalable, while ensuring at the same time that technology doesn’t simply become a, uh, you know, a cost-cutting substitute for quality education?

    Steven Mintz: You know, I believe the key to a successful education—to a great education—is a relationship-rich education. Relationships with faculty and relationships with classmates. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use technology. Let me give you a couple of examples that I use, that I developed with a team of students.

    One is a simulation: you are Christopher Columbus. You are going to sail to the New World and back using current wind and ocean currents. So for every student, it’s different. And what the students discover is you have to sail along the coast of Africa before you swing west towards Brazil. Then you go up the coast of South America to the Caribbean. And to get back, you have to sail northward along the Atlantic coast to New England. And then you curve over towards England. And then head south along the European coast. For students, it’s Flight Simulator 2025. It’s an opportunity to play a bit with history, and it’s fun.

    Another simulation I give my students is—every student gets a number of 18th-century gravestones on Cape Cod. Each student gets different ones, so there’s no cheating possible. And what they do is they figure out how long people lived, whether men lived shorter or longer than women, to what extent children were likely to die, how old people lived—and they also analyze the iconography on the gravestones.

    They learn a lot about naming patterns. They learn about life. And they learn about it not through lecture, but by doing.

    Alex Usher: Look, you were once in a position to drive large-scale digital learning transformation, right? You were the director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning—which ultimately was shut down after a few years. But looking back, what lessons did you take from that experience? What does it reveal about the challenges of implementing large-scale academic reform?

    Steven Mintz: Well, the first thing you learn, of course, is that it’s very difficult to do top-down. You have to have buy-in at every level. You have to have buy-in from senior leadership at the campuses, you have to have buy-in from faculty members, and the like.

    You can provide resources, which can help with buy-in, but mainly you have to find a coalition of the willing. You have to find innovative people who will buy into a project and who want to see it through—who really share your interest in improving student learning and then finding a way to do it.

    So let me give you an example. We opened a new university in South Texas, in the lower Rio Grande Valley—which is among the poorest parts of the country and urgently in need of more healthcare professionals. So we designed, in conjunction with the faculty, a competency-based biomedical pathway that we called Middle School to Medical School. In that program, every course was aligned. The English class was the literature of pain and illness. The history class was the history of medicine and public health. The economics class was health economics. The sociology class was the sociology of health. The art history class was representations of the body. In other words, what we were trying to do was produce well-rounded professionals. And everyone had a stake in that—not just the physicists, not just the chemists, not just the biologists, not just the mathematicians. Everyone had a stake in these students’ success. And together, we figured out what a wraparound program ought to look like.

    Alex Usher: So, if a university wanted to truly commit to becoming a learning-centred institution, what’s the first step they should take? My second question—my last question—is: how would they know they were on the right track? What metrics, if any, would you use to declare victory? To say, “Yes, now we are a learning-centred institution.” How would you know?

    Steven Mintz: Reform requires one of two things. It either requires a sense of urgency, or it requires a sense of opportunity. Now, many campuses these days feel a sense of urgency. We are experiencing what’s called the enrollment cliff. Because of changing demographics, we have fewer college students. And so, institutions—to survive—need to increase their retention and graduation rates. That’s the simplest solution to their economic problems. But other institutions, and many faculty, want to make a name for themselves. And that’s the opportunity they have: by doing something innovative, they can build their reputation. And more power to them, I say. This benefits everyone.

    So, how do we know that we’re getting there? It’s easy.

    We need to do many more exit surveys of students. We need to do more focus groups with students. And we need to ask them: How’s it going? What’s your level of engagement? Do you feel a sense of belonging on your campus? Do you have rich relationships with your faculty members? And if the answers are yes, then you’re accomplishing your mission. And if the answers are no, then you know you’re not.

    Alex Usher: Steven, thanks so much for joining us today.

    Steven Mintz: You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure.

    Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, and you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining us. If you have any comments or questions about this week’s episode, or suggestions for future episodes, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Please join us on our YouTube channel. Subscribe so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast.

    Next week, our guest is going to be Dara Melnyk. She’s currently a consultant and the co-host of Constructor University’s Innovative Universities global webinar series. We’ll be talking about what it is that makes a truly innovative university. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • The Fifteen, March 21, 2025

    The Fifteen, March 21, 2025

    Welcome back for another edition of The Fifteen. For the past two weeks, it seems like there have only been two stories in higher education: the Trump attacks on higher education and the QS world subject rankings. We cover the first, of course, but also stories of growing pains, corruption, ambition and blatant rent-seeking from places as far afield as Korea, Italy, Brazil, Vietnam and China. Enjoy.

    1. We won’t beat around the bush: the biggest story in world higher education is the ongoing carnage in the United States with the Trump administration using EDI as a pretext to defund dozens of colleges. Education Department Investigates Dozens of Colleges for Discrimination. (Inside Higher Education) The former President of Columbia, at least, is speaking out. ‘We’re in the Midst of an Authoritarian Takeover (The Chronicle) The brilliant Masha Gessen and Tressie McMillan Cottom (and also Bret Stephens) discuss the dynamics of the higher education wars in the New York Times: ‘It Is Facing a Campaign of Annihilation’: Three Columnists on Trump’s War Against Academia. (New York Times)
    2. A British Council report reveals that UK Higher Education Partnerships have seen a surge in enrolment from conflict-affected regions, especially in Iraq, Yemen, and South Sudan. Good news for enrolments, but it also raises concerns about brain drain from those regions. Surge in enrolment on UK university courses by students in conflict zones, report finds. (TheBoar)
    3. The Indonesian government announced plans to nearly triple spending on university researchers and lecturers. Indonesia seeks to raise university research funding to one per cent of GDP, talent development is the way forward, says minister. (The Star)
    4. A months-long dispute (marked by mass trainee doctor walkouts) over proposed medical school quota increases intended to address a looming doctor shortfall, is now in sight. South Korea’s education ministry has more or less frozen new admissions at about 3,000 per year after initially proposing an increase to 5,000 per year. South Korea offered to freeze medical student numbers to resolve the 13-month dispute. (Reuters). The government set a March deadline for the return of all trainee doctors amid growing concerns over overstretched emergency services. But the move comes amidst surging medical school applications. Medical school admissions surge expected to complicate acceptance standards in Korea. (Chosun Biz)
    5. There’s been a massive embezzlement scandal at Motol University Hospital, the Czech Republic’s largest medical facility. Czechia’s largest hospital embroiled in massive fraud scandal. (Radio Prague International)
    6. Thousands of foreign students accepted to Italian Universities have been waiting for VISA approvals—in some cases for years—in what appears to be developing into a scandal. Italy’s Foreign Ministry Under Fire Over Student Visa Rejections. (Schengen News)
    7. Interesting research from Chile on the connection between technical education and labour market outcomes, with a focus on the urban/rural divide. Exploring Chile’s labor market outcomes amidst regional disparities in higher education access. (Vanderbilt University)
    8. Istanbul’s mayor, the leading opposition Presidential candidate in the upcoming general election, has his degree revoked by Istanbul University, making him ineligible to face the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Opposition figure, Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu’s diploma canceled, blocking presidential bid. (Türkie Today) Not everyone thinks this is on the level. Istanbul University’s Historic Test And Lost Integrity – OpEd. (Eurasia Review)
    9. An important piece about how Russia is using stolen Ukrainian academic resources: Stolen Ukrainian universities: An invisible Russian weapon. (Vox Ukraine)
    10. Pakistan recently received $190 million GBP from the UK in a legal settlement. The government wants to use the money to build a new university. PM announces new university with funds recovered from UK. (University World News) That has caused some consternation among those who think the money should go to existing underfunded institutions. Govt urged to divert 190m pounds to cash-starved universities. (Dawn)
    11. Nigeria has an admissions crisis, with far more aspirants than places. Minister raises alarm over 75% admission shortfall. (TheGuardian) The government wants institutions to get bigger in order to alleviate these pressures. Parliament wants to add 200 new universities instead. Government Rejects National Assembly’s Plan for 200 New Nigerian Universities. (News Central Africa)
    12. China’s big universities are being asked to expand undergraduate enrolments after years of being asked to stay small in order to focus on graduate education. China’s Top Universities Want to Get Bigger. Literally. (SixthTone) But that’s not all; the increase in size comes with a push to switch away from humanities and towards STEM. Shrinking Humanities for AI. (China Media Project)
    13. Staying in China: the country seems to be about to make a big bet on micro-credentials. Bridging skills gap, China equips college grads for evolving job market. (news.cn)
    14. Brazil is approaching 10 million students enrolled in higher education, making it comfortably the world’s 4th largest higher education system. A rundown on the stats is here: Brasil registra cerca de 10 milhões de estudantes no ensino superior. (Grupo Jovem Pan)
    15. Vietnam is pushing some ambitious plans to remake its higher education sector. ‘Sweeping’ university reforms planned as Vietnam plays ‘catch up’ (Times Higher Education) American universities, even with a lot else on their minds, are taking notice. Duke, Stanford among 21 American universities seeking partnership in Vietnam. (VN Express)

    The Trump administration is, understandably, a magnet for media attention that can make keeping up with stories about anything else difficult. While the news can often look bleak, there are always new and exciting things happening around the world of higher education. We’re cutting through the noise by bringing you stories you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Have a good weekend.

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  • From Soviet Influence to Market Economy: Mongolia’s Higher Education Journey

    From Soviet Influence to Market Economy: Mongolia’s Higher Education Journey

    It’s been a while since we did an episode looking at the higher education system of a far-flung corner of the world. Recently I was perusing the pages of International Higher Education, a wonderful quarterly publication out of Boston College, and I saw a great little article about the challenges facing Mongolian higher education, and I knew this was something we had to cover on the podcast.

    Unless you spend a lot of time reading about the Chinggis Khan Empire, or in my case, watching the upper echelons of professional Sumo, my guess is you probably don’t think about Mongolia that often.

    As a state it’s only a little over a century old, a child of the disintegration of the Chinese empire, which found protection under the Soviet banner. Its fortunes, both as a country and as a higher education system, therefore, look a lot like those from the further flung stands of Central Asia — that is seriously under-resourced and heavily influenced by a Russian model, which splits teaching and research into two very different buckets.

    Today my guest is Dendev Badarch, a professor at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Ulan Bator, and one of the co-authors of that IHE article. He has an interesting take on the current situation in Mongolia and the likely keys to the system’s future success as the country moves towards upper-middle-income status and deals with the challenge of becoming a service economy.

    But enough for me. Let’s turn it over to Dendev. 

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.24 | From Soviet Influence to Market Economy: Mongolia’s Higher Education Journey 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Let’s start with a brief history of Mongolian higher education. You’re from the oldest university in the country, and the National University of Mongolia is only about 80 years old, founded in 1942, if I’m not mistaken. My guess is that, at the start, the system would have been heavily dependent on the Soviet model.

    How did higher education develop during the socialist period up to the late 1980s? Beyond training government cadres, what industries was it designed to support, and how quickly did Mongolian become the primary language of instruction?

    Badarch Dendev (BD): First of all, thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast. Yes, you are correct—the Mongolian higher education system was heavily influenced by the Soviet system. The first university, the National University of Mongolia, was established in 1942, and its curriculum, structure, and administration closely followed the Soviet model.

    To meet the needs of Mongolia’s planned economy, several small, specialized schools were established from the 1950s to the 1960s, including institutions for medical training, agriculture, teacher education, and polytechnic studies. These schools played a significant role in supplying specialists with the skills necessary to support the Mongolian economy.

    In its early years, instruction at the university was conducted in Russian. However, as more Mongolian specialists graduated with higher education degrees, Mongolian gradually became the primary language of instruction. By the 1960s, many courses—particularly in the social sciences and humanities—were being taught in Mongolian.

    AU: By the 1970s, Mongolia had a system that was producing professionals, and instruction was primarily in the Mongolian language. Then, at the end of the 1980s, there was a shift to a market economy, which must have had a profound impact on higher education. What were the biggest changes that occurred in that first decade of a market economy?

    BD:  The Democratic Revolution of 1989–1990 marked a historic transition in our country. We moved from a socialist one-party system to a multi-party democracy and a free-market economy. This shift led to significant changes in higher education.

    In response to the pressure from the new democratic system, the government, in my opinion, took three key steps.

    The first was significant changes to public institutions, reclassifying old public institutes as universities and giving them more authority. Mongolia faced economic difficulties at the time. Under socialism, higher education was fully funded by the government—covering tuition, student stipends, faculty salaries, and more. But after the transition to democracy, we faced a very difficult situation.

    Second, under socialism, all higher education institutions were public. With the reforms, the government allowed the establishment of private universities and colleges, which significantly increased access to higher education.

    The third major step was the adoption of Mongolia’s first higher education law. These three key steps taken by the government shaped Mongolia’s higher education system as it exists today.

    AU: What’s the division now between public and private higher education? In countries like China and Russia, maybe three-quarters of students are still in public universities, but there’s still a significant private or non-state sector that educates about a quarter of the students. Is that the case in Mongolia as well? How big is the private sector?

    BD: You see, when the government made the decision to establish private institutions, there was a boom—a surge of small private colleges that had no infrastructure, no proper teaching facilities, and not enough qualified faculty. At one point, there were almost 200 private colleges.

    But as of last year, the 2022–2023 academic year, we have 69 higher education institutions—19 public and 50 private.

    However, in terms of student numbers, 60 percent of students are in public universities—because of reputation, infrastructure, and other factors. In total, Mongolia has about 145,000 students.

    AU: My understanding is that both public and private institutions rely heavily on tuition fees, and that tuition fees are quite high. Is that good for financial sustainability, or does it create risks for institutions?

    BD: Tuition fees are not high, but universities and higher education institutions depend almost entirely on tuition. About 90 percent of their income comes from tuition. There is no public funding—except for some government subsidies for students.

    AU: So, in that situation, it’s not really a question of whether a high dependence on tuition is bad. If there’s no public subsidy, it’s simply the only way to operate, right?

    BD: Yes. Exactly.

    AU: Badarch, another critical function of universities is research. How does Mongolia compare internationally in terms of scientific research? What are the successes, and what are the biggest barriers to developing a stronger research culture?

    BD: You know, from the beginning, Mongolian universities were primarily training institutions, not research institutions. But in the last 10 years, there has been significant investment in higher education, especially in public universities. For the first time, university professors have started publishing internationally. In fact, the five largest public universities now produce 65% of all internationally published research papers. However, in Mongolia, higher education and research have been separate from the start, following the Russian model.

    AU: You would have an Academy of Sciences?

    BD: Yes, research was traditionally conducted by the Academy of Sciences. But universities have received significant investment in research infrastructure. For example, the National University of Mongolia now has more than 40 research laboratories in fields like biology, environmental sciences, and even nuclear physics. The Mongolian University of Science and Technology has supercomputer laboratories and modern mechanical engineering facilities. In addition, we now have many graduates returning from foreign universities to work in Mongolian universities, and they are contributing to research.

    But there are still major challenges. Universities do not receive sufficient research funding because most of the research budget goes to the Academy of Sciences. There is very little collaboration with industry and almost no funding from the private sector. There are also no endowment funds or other financial support systems for university research.

    Another critical issue is the weak graduate programs. Almost 99% of graduate students are part-time—there are no full-time graduate students. This severely limits research output. Without strong graduate programs, research activity remains low. This is one of the biggest challenges for Mongolian universities.

    AU: A couple of years ago, a set of laws were passed aimed at increasing university autonomy—governance, leadership selection, those kinds of things. Do universities now have real independence, or does political influence remain a challenge? And what did the laws do to promote political independence?

    BD: Over the last three years, there were extensive discussions about the concept and details of these new laws. In July 2023, Parliament adopted a set of education laws. For the first time, these laws covered all levels of education as a single system, creating better interconnection between different stages of education. That is a very good sign.

    Second, for the first time, the law explicitly recognized academic freedom as a key principle of higher education, which is another positive step.

    The third important issue relates to governance. According to the law, if implemented correctly, universities should have independent governing boards. Another key aspect is the diversification of funding for universities, as well as strengthening university research. The law also states that public universities should receive government subsidies to help cover maintenance costs.

    I think these are the positive aspects of the new law. However, in reality, the implementation of these important measures has not yet happened. Political interference still exists, particularly in the selection of university directors and key leadership appointments.

    AU: We’ve talked a lot about the challenges in Mongolian higher education. What do you see as the opportunities? Where do you think the greatest improvements could happen in the next few years?

    BD: Yes, there are definitely opportunities. First, universities are expanding their cooperation with international communities, and they are learning a lot from these collaborations. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we have a new wave of young specialists and graduates from world-leading universities. We need to hire them. If we bring in these young professionals, give them opportunities to conduct research, teach, and help reform higher education institutions, we will see positive changes soon.

    Second, there is a major opportunity in digital technologies. If we use them smartly and correctly—things like AI, online learning, and MOOCs—then Mongolian universities can take a big step forward.

    But in order to take advantage of these opportunities, we need to ensure that the new laws are properly implemented.

    AU: If we think even further ahead, maybe to 2050, what do you think the system will look like? Will Mongolia have caught up with countries like China, Korea, or Japan? Do you think the system will have developed to the point where it can be considered alongside those peers?

    BD: You may know that the government has adopted the “Vision 2050” long-term strategic development plan. According to this plan, by 2050, Mongolia should have one of the leading universities in the region.

    I see two possible scenarios for the development of higher education in Mongolia by 2050—one optimistic and one pessimistic.

    Starting with the optimistic scenario: If we can reduce government and political interference in university governance and give universities full autonomy, that would be a big step forward. The government should also increase its support for universities, establish strong links with industry, and adopt models like the triple helix approach. Additionally, partnerships with leading international universities would help improve graduate programs.

    If these changes happen, Mongolia could develop strong higher education institutions. But right now, many of the most talented secondary school students are not choosing local universities—they are looking abroad for their education.

    The pessimistic scenario is that if things continue as they are today, universities will still exist, but they will lack freedom and independence. The issues we are currently facing—political interference, funding limitations, and weak institutional autonomy—will persist. That would be very unfortunate. However, I hope that we will see changes in government policy and that Mongolia will implement best practices from other higher education systems around the world.

    AU: Thank you so much for joining us today.

    BD: Thank you.

    AU: And before we go, I’d like to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, as well as our listeners, viewers, and readers for tuning in. If you have any questions or comments about today’s podcast, please don’t hesitate to contact us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. If you’re worried about missing an episode of The World of Higher Education, why not subscribe to our YouTube channel? Go there today—don’t delay—never miss an episode!

    Join us next week when our guest will be Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. We’ll be discussing his new book, The Learning-Centered University. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (March 16, 2025)

    HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (March 16, 2025)

    International Frameworks

    With the right opportunities we can become AI makers, not takers
    Michael Webb.  FE Week. February 21, 2025.

    The article reflects on the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, aiming to position the country as a leader in AI development rather than merely a consumer. It highlights the crucial role of education in addressing AI skills shortages and emphasizes the importance of focusing both on the immediate needs around AI literacy, but also with a clear eye on the future, as the balance moves to AI automation and to a stronger demand for uniquely human skills.

    Living guidelines on the responsible use of generative AI in research : ERA Forum Stakeholder’s document
    European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. March 2024.

    These guidelines include recommendations for researchers, recommendations for research organisations, as well as recommendations for research funding organisations. The key recommendations are summarized here.

    Industry Collaborations

    OpenAI Announces ‘NextGenAI’ Higher-Ed Consortium
    Kim Kozlowski. Government Technology.  March 4, 2025.

    OpenAI has launched the ‘NextGenAI’ consortium, committing $50M to support AI research and technology across 15 institutions, including the University of Michigan, the California State University system, the Harvard University, the MIT and the University of Oxford. This initiative aims to accelerate AI advancements by providing research grants, computing resources, and collaborative opportunities to address complex societal challenges.

    AI Literacy

    A President’s Journey to AI Adoption
    Cruz Rivera, J. L. Inside Higher Ed. March 13, 2025.

    José Luis Cruz Rivera, President of Northern Arizona University, shares his AI exploration journey. « As a university president, I’ve learned that responsible leadership sometimes means […] testing things out myself before asking others to dive in ». From using it to draft emails, he then started using it to analyze student performance data and create tailored learning materials, and even used it to navigate conflicting viewpoints and write his speechs – in addition to now using it for daily tasks.

    Teaching and Learning

    AI Tools in Society : Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking
    Gerlich, M. SSRN. January 14, 2025.

    This study investigates the relationship between AI tool usage and critical thinking skills, focusing on cognitive offloading as a mediating factor. The findings revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading. Younger participants exhibited higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants. Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage. These results highlight the potential cognitive costs of AI tool reliance, emphasising the need for educational strategies that promote critical engagement with AI technologies.

    California went big on AI in universities. Canada should go smart instead
    Bates, S. University Affairs. March 12, 2025.

    In this opinion piece, Simon Bates, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President for Teaching and Learning at UBC, reflects on how the ‘fricitonless efficiency’ promised by AI tools comes at a cost. « Learning is not frictionless. It requires struggle, persistence, iteration and deep focus. The risk of a too-hasty full scale AI adoption in universities is that it offers students a way around that struggle, replacing the hard cognitive labour of learning with quick, polished outputs that do little to build real understanding. […] The biggest danger of AI in education is not that students will cheat. It’s that they will miss the opportunity to build the skills that higher education is meant to cultivate. The ability to persist through complexity, to work through uncertainty, to engage in deep analytical thought — these are the foundations of expertise. They cannot be skipped over. »

    We shouldn’t sleepwalk into a “tech knows best” approach to university teaching
    Mace, R. et al. Times Higher Education. March 14, 2025.

    The article discusses the increasing use of generative AI tools like among university students, with usage rising from 53% in 2023-24 to 88% in 2024-25. It states that instead of banning these tools, instructors should ofcus on rethinking assessment strategies to integrate AI as a collaborative tool in academic work. The authors share a list of activities, grounded in the constructivist approach to education, that they have successfully used in their lectures that leverage AI to support teaching and learning.

    Accessibility & Digital Divide

    AI Will Not Be ‘the Great Leveler’ for Student Outcomes
    Richardson, S. and Redford, P. Inside Higher Ed. March 12, 2025.

    The authors share three reasons why AI tools are only deepening existing divides : 1) student overreliance on AI tools; 2) post-pandemic social skills deficit; and 3) business pivots. « If we hope to continue leveling the playing field for students who face barriers to entry, we must tackle AI head-on by teaching students to use tools responsibly and critically, not in a general sense, but specifically to improve their career readiness. Equally, career plans could be forward-thinking and linked to the careers created by AI, using market data to focus on which industries will grow. By evaluating student need on our campuses and responding to the movements of the current job market, we can create tailored training that allows students to successfully transition from higher education into a graduate-level career. »

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  • Connecting Universities in a Divided World: International Association of Universities’ Mission

    Connecting Universities in a Divided World: International Association of Universities’ Mission

    There are a lot of transnational associations of universities out there. Some are meant to advance specific political goals, like the European Universities Association. Others exist simply to support their members without engaging in lobbying or political work, such as the African Association of Universities, whose former president, Ernest Aryeetey, was a guest on the show last year.

    But the oldest of all these associations is the International Association of Universities (IAU), based in Paris and created by UNESCO in 1950. I had the pleasure of attending their annual meeting in Tokyo last November—a unique opportunity to see global higher education, in all its glorious diversity, reflected in a single room.

    While I was there, I asked their Secretary-General, Hilligje Van’t Land, to join us on the show. Graciously, she agreed, leading to today’s podcast.

    My chat with Hilligje revolved mainly around two issues. First, the state of global higher education—spoiler: it’s been better. And second, the challenges of maintaining an association across a membership spanning over 100 countries.

    How do you keep an organization relevant across institutions with such different capacity levels, facing such different problems in vastly different external environments? And at the global level, can universities even be considered a single community?

    Hilligje, who has one of the most interesting vantage points in global higher education, brings sharp insights to these big questions. And so, without further ado, let’s turn it over to Hilligje.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.23 | Connecting Universities in a Divided World: International Association of Universities’ Mission 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Hilligje, I’m not sure all our viewers, listeners, or readers are familiar with the history of the International Association of Universities. I know it was founded in 1950, but how has it evolved since then? And what does your membership look like geographically?

    Hilligje Van’t Land (HVL): Yes, well, my name is indeed HVL, and I’m the Secretary-General of this wonderful organization, the International Association of Universities.

    As you mentioned, it was founded in 1950 under the auspices of UNESCO, and its secretariat is based in Paris. I point that out because it’s one of the most common questions I get—where are you based?

    At the same time, we represent a truly global higher education community, with universities from 130 countries across five continents.

    How has it evolved over time? In the beginning, the association was largely led by universities from the Global North, working to rebuild the world after World War II on a foundation of shared values—values that would help create peace among people through higher education. And today, that vision still underpins much of what we do. Our goal is to bring together voices from around the world to collaboratively shape a collective vision of what universities can stand for, ultimately helping societies develop toward something better.

    So what does our membership look like? We have 600 engaged members who contribute financially to the association, and it’s an incredibly diverse group of universities spanning all five continents. That diversity is central to our mission—not just representing one group, but bringing together many perspectives.

    AU: We often think of university associations in terms of rectors’ conferences, where their primary job is to lobby—whether at a national level or through organizations like the European Universities Association. The International Association of Universities (IAU) obviously doesn’t have that kind of function. So is it more about universities speaking to each other? What exactly is its role in the global higher education ecosystem? Who is it speaking to beyond just its membership?

    HVL: That’s a very good question—sorry if my English stumbles sometimes!

    Indeed, we are a truly global association of universities, but without a specific regional or local resonance. For example, the European Universities Association engages with the European Commission, the Arab Association of Universities works closely with ministries across the Arab world, and American universities are involved in national-level associations that influence policy, like the Association of American Universities (AAU). In Africa, university associations work closely with the African Union.

    Our role is to bring these voices together, encouraging universities to collaborate globally in ways that contribute to transforming the world. From where we sit, we advocate to the United Nations and UNESCO, influencing policy decisions within global agenda-setting bodies affiliated with UNESCO.

    Right now, we are approaching the end of the UN Agenda 2030. A new global agenda will have to be developed because we are far from achieving the current goals. Yet, those goals have played a crucial role in bringing universities together around essential topics. As we look ahead, universities worldwide will help shape this next agenda, ensuring higher education continues to be a key driver of global progress.

    AU: One thing that struck me when I attended your meeting in Tokyo last November—an amazing gathering, by the way—was how difficult it must be to create an institutional agenda that speaks to universities from such different parts of the world. How can I put it? Institutions in Australia, Indonesia, and Somalia—where I think you even had a delegate from Somaliland—are all dealing with vastly different domestic challenges. Given that universities are so deeply embedded in their national contexts, how do you find themes that resonate across all of them? How do you create a common agenda that works for everyone?

    HVL: It’s both a challenge and an opportunity, Alex.

    When institutions are deeply embedded in their national dynamics, it can be difficult to see beyond them. But without looking outward, how can they truly make the case for what they do? Staying in an echo chamber or only engaging in national-level discussions limits the ability to develop informed policies. That’s why bringing in diverse voices from the global higher education community is so important—it enriches conversations at institutional, national, and regional levels.

    The agenda we co-develop with our board is then put to the IAU membership every four years for discussion at the global level. Are these the right topics to focus on? Yes or no? From there, a strategy is developed, and universities engage by seizing opportunities for responsible and meaningful internationalization.

    For example, universities rally around themes like fair and inclusive leadership, the role of higher education in sustainable development, and, since COVID, the global conversation on digital transformation in higher education. A major focus now is open science and AI—how do these shape the future of universities?

    And while institutions may come from Somaliland, Ghana, Colombia, Reykjavik, or Paris, they often grapple with similar questions. University rectors and policymakers worldwide are asking themselves the same things. By facilitating global leadership meetings, we create spaces where these shared concerns resonate and where new perspectives can emerge.

    AU: You’ve mentioned the three big areas that IAU works in—sustainability, internationalization, and digital transformation. You also have those large surveys and studies that go out every couple of years. How do you engage institutions in these areas? What are universities doing in each of these three areas with IAU, and what are they getting out of it?

    HVL: Fair and inclusive internationalization—one of the key topics that resonates strongly, even within the name International Association of Universities—translates into at least 10 different ways for universities to engage.

    For example, just yesterday, we hosted a webinar on what responsible internationalization means today. Does it mean closing borders and fencing off countries that are perceived as threats to our intellectual work? Or, on the contrary, is responsible internationalization an opportunity to connect universities globally around key topics and foster international research collaborations? These collaborations are critical for addressing global challenges like climate change and crises in their many forms.

    So, these discussions are one way we engage institutions. We also offer a service called HEIAS (Higher Education Internationalization Strategies Advisory Service), which helps universities refine their internationalization approaches.

    Additionally, we maintain a network of internationalization associations, including NAFSA in the U.S., EAIE in Europe, and the African Association for Internationalization. By bringing these voices together, we co-develop statements that universities can adopt, ensuring that key topics remain at the forefront of global discussions.

    On sustainability, we created the Global Cluster on Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development. This initiative invites universities worldwide to champion specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while ensuring their projects remain interconnected. The goal is not to work in silos but to collaborate and co-create solutions to pressing challenges—whether water issues, gender inequality, or unsustainable urban development.

    These efforts lead to research projects, joint initiatives, and meaningful impact across the global higher education community.

    AU: Hilligje, you held that meeting in Tokyo last November, which I mentioned earlier. What do you think were some of the main takeaways from that event? What did you learn about how universities are coping with the challenges of the 2020s?

    HVL: The 2020s—universities are coping with everything that comes their way, I would say.

    One of the major takeaways was something you might not expect: the theme itself—University Values for the Future in a Changing World. When planning the conference, we had many discussions with the program committee. People said, We need to talk about AI. We need to talk about sustainability. We have to discuss the financial sustainability of universities because that’s what institutions are struggling with.

    And I said—many organizations are already tackling these topics specifically. Let’s focus on values. Where do values stand today? What values do we need to cultivate to build a meaningful, impactful higher education system for the future?

    As you saw at the conference, we had an unusually large group of university leaders attending—more than in previous years. We brought together leadership from universities worldwide to discuss the values they stand for, each from their own unique perspectives.

    What this told me is that IAU has a unique opportunity to rally around topics that other organizations aren’t addressing. And these conversations are essential.

    We received a lot of feedback—messages and even letters—from participants saying these discussions were eye-opening. They allowed universities to develop new collaborations, whether by inviting each other to campuses or by looking at institutional challenges through a different lens.

    So the key takeaway? These conversations are crucial if we want to shape the future of higher education differently. Of course, IAU will continue to address the pressing issues on universities’ daily agendas, but leaders are also craving more space for these deeper discussions—discussions that are vital yet often overlooked.

    AU: At the meeting, one session in particular stood out to me—the one led by Fanta Aw from NAFSA in the United States. A lot of participants from North America, Australia, and other OECD countries came in very concerned about university values, feeling that they were under threat. This was just a week or two after the U.S. elections, so people were thinking about issues like that, as well as the rise of movements like Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and what these political shifts could mean for universities.

    What struck me, though, was the response from universities in other parts of the world—particularly in Asia and Africa. It wasn’t outright pushback, but more of a gentle chiding. Their message was, We live with these challenges all the time. From IAU’s perspective, that’s just another example of how institutions come from vastly different contexts. How do you bridge these experiences within IAU? How do you ensure that both perspectives are heard?

    HVL: Well, those perspectives were very much present on that panel, and the discussion continued long after the session ended.

    It’s important to recognize that these challenges aren’t confined to a single region or a divide between so-called “developed” and “developing” countries. In fact, I’d like to discard that terminology altogether—many of the countries we traditionally label as developing have advanced in ways that often surpass others.

    The key takeaway is that these conversations are essential. Just because one university or country is newly experiencing pressures from policymakers, threats to academic freedom, or restrictions on institutional autonomy doesn’t mean these issues are new globally. For some institutions, this is an everyday reality.

    But these challenges must be debated openly. If the future of higher education is one without institutional autonomy and academic freedom, what kind of education system are we building? What happens if governments dictate which topics can be discussed on campus, replace rectors at will, or shut down academic departments based on political agendas?

    These issues need to be confronted head-on. From these discussions, the conversation must be taken further—to the United Nations, to UNESCO policymaking forums, and to global decision-makers. If we don’t address them now, the future could be even bleaker than it already appears in many parts of the world.

    AU: A couple of weeks ago, we had American author Ben Wildavsky on the show. Of course, he wrote The Great Brain Race 15 years ago, and we invited him to discuss that book because it presented such an optimistic view of higher education—one where globalization would bring everyone closer together.

    But looking around the world today, I find myself questioning the future of globalization and internationalization. IAU is deeply tied to a version of internationalization—maybe not the one Ben was promoting, but still a vision of global academic collaboration. If globalization really does roll back over the next four or five years, what do you see as IAU’s role?

    HVL: Globalization is a complex phenomenon, with many facets—and it’s often questioned because it brings challenges alongside opportunities. Increasingly, it also comes with fear.

    What IAU fosters, however, is global cooperation. Cooperation starts at the institutional level, extends to national and regional levels, and then reaches the global stage. But cooperation is never a given—it must be nurtured carefully, strategically, and consistently.

    Just yesterday, during our Futures of Higher Education webinar series—which now includes 75 recorded sessions available on our website—we hosted Ayesha Maikundi, the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja. She was asked about responsible internationalization and what globalization means today.

    She raised an important point: We send the best and brightest into the world, but they rarely come back. Some return as expats, contributing to higher education in their home countries occasionally, but not in a sustained way. The challenge of brain drain remains significant.

    While brain gain and brain circulation are often discussed—though, of course, brains don’t literally circulate on their own—the real issue is ensuring meaningful global academic connections. Different models have been used over time, but we need to continuously rethink how we facilitate these exchanges.

    For example, not every system is easy to engage with—Nigeria, as Ayesha noted, presents logistical challenges. But beyond that, there are many places around the world that remain overlooked, not because they lack value, but because we fail to recognize them as worthy academic destinations.

    That’s why global collaboration and mobility must be continuously worked on—strategically, deliberately, and persistently—to strengthen the international higher education ecosystem.

    AU: Beyond issues like globalization and state intrusion into university decision-making, from your vantage point, what are the other major trends shaping higher education globally today? Are we seeing a convergence of concerns at the university level? In other words, are institutions becoming more similar—more isomorphic, so to speak? Or, at a global level, are we seeing more diversification among institutions?

    HVL: Universities are institutions with many, many faces.

    There are certainly harmonization processes underway in different parts of the world. In Europe, for instance, you have the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process, along with ministerial meetings aimed at creating greater alignment among institutions.

    But the goal isn’t to make every university the same. In Europe, the aim is to embrace diversity while fostering better dialogue and collaboration across institutions. A similar trend is slowly emerging in Asia as well.

    Now, if you look at the United States—it’s technically one country, but in reality, it has so many states, so many systems, and so many different kinds of universities within those systems. That diversity is significant.

    This is why, right from IAU’s founding in 1950, we began developing the World Higher Education Database. At the time, it included just 50 universities. Today, we track and document over 21,000 institutions worldwide, mapping entire higher education systems in order to foster better understanding and appreciation of their differences.

    In the end, this work also feeds into UNESCO’s Global Convention on the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications, which aims to improve system compatibility. Harmonization is important in the sense that it allows students and scholars to navigate different systems more easily and become true global citizens.

    If systems are entirely disconnected—with different academic calendars, study periods, and structures—it creates barriers. So yes, harmonization is happening, but there is no one-size-fits-all model. Universities will remain distinct, and that’s the beauty of it.

    AU: So, maintaining harmonization while preserving diversity—that could be one of the major global trends over the next 15 to 20 years. How do you see IAU evolving over the next 10 to 15 years as sustainability, internationalization, and digital transformation continue to accelerate? Will you stick with these three focus areas, or do you anticipate new priorities emerging? And will new ways for institutions to collaborate globally develop as well?

    HVL: I’m convinced that this will remain a movable feast, to borrow a phrase—because universities are never static. Their interests and priorities evolve over time.

    We host International Conferences annually, but every four years, we hold a General Conference where we elect a new board and bring together the global higher education community to define our next strategic plan.

    Right now, we have four priority areas—though leadership is a major focus as well. These priorities may shift over time, as they have in the past. While the core mission remains, new challenges continue to emerge.

    For instance, we need to address the massification of higher education, as more people around the world seek university degrees. We must also consider the commodification of higher education, which is becoming an increasing concern. At the same time, there is a strong push for skills-based education, which we try to balance by advocating for the continued importance of the humanities.

    Another tension that remains unresolved is collaboration versus competition—how universities navigate national interests while engaging in global partnerships. The rise of digital education also raises new questions about what it means to be a university in a rapidly changing world.

    In terms of IAU’s membership, we currently have 600 institutions that financially support our vision and mission. But many more universities align with our values and participate in our initiatives.

    Looking ahead 10 years, where do I see IAU? Well, in an ideal world, I’d love to see 21,000 universities as members—creating a truly global dialogue, not just about the future of higher education, but about how universities shape society itself.

    Because ultimately, we’re not just looking inward—we’re asking what universities contribute to the world.

    AU: Hilligje, thank you so much for joining us today.

    HVL: You’re welcome.AU: And before we wrap up, I’d like to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, as well as you—our viewers, readers, and listeners—for tuning in. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, please reach out to us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education. Join us next week when our guest will be Dendev Badarch, a professor at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. He’ll be with us to discuss the future of higher education in Mongolia. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • Why Boycott? Maya Wind on the Case Against Israeli Universities

    Why Boycott? Maya Wind on the Case Against Israeli Universities

    Over the past few years, calls for the boycott of Israeli universities have grown louder. This discourse generally entwines two different sets of arguments. The first is an argument about the effectiveness or validity of academic boycotts.  The second, because it’s Israel, is about whether Israeli universities are being unfairly targeted due to anti-Semitism. Curiously, what Israeli universities themselves might have specifically done to deserve is often relegated to an afterthought.

    My guest today is Maya Wind. She is an Israeli citizen, and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Riverside. She is also the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel, How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, published last year by Verso press. Her book is a direct answer to that last question.  The charge sheet that she brings against Israeli universities is a long one. And it should give people pause before thinking that Israeli universities are unproblematic.

    Some of you are not going to like this interview. I suspect some will not enjoy the platform given to these opinions. But given the tenor of the times, I very much think it is worth a listen. I think there are two points in particular that are worth thinking about. The first is whether the boycott is about the universities themselves, or about Israel in general. The second is the standard for boycott. Wind makes it clear that she doesn’t see an absolute standard here other than that some oppressed group requests. So, for her, the relative level of complicity of Israeli universities in the dispossession of Palestinians and, say, that of Chinese universities in the repression of Uyghurs is irrelevant because the key factor is that one group asked for the boycott and the other didn’t. It’s about consistent allyship rather than relative guilt.  That wasn’t something I had understood beforehand, and I’m guessing it might be new for many of you as well. But maybe it’s best if I let my guest explain things on her own. Over to Maya.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.22 | Why Boycott? Maya Wind on the Case Against Israeli Universities 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Maya, your book lays out the case for sanctions against Israeli universities and for boycotting them. But before we get to that, I want to ask about something you don’t really cover in the book: What’s the evidence that boycotts or academic sanctions are an effective strategy for forcing political change?

    Maya Wind (MW): That’s a really crucial question. First, for listeners who may not be as familiar with the context, the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) was first called for by Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005—so, 20 years ago now. The BDS movement, including the call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, was heavily inspired by the movement against apartheid in South Africa. In that case, the isolation of many apartheid institutions, including universities, played a key role in bringing an end to the apartheid system.

    Of course, as academics and students, we are all students of history. If we take seriously the idea that Israel is a settler state and that Israelis are colonizers, then history tells us that colonizers have never initiated the process of decolonization on their own. In every case of settler colonialism, external pressure has been necessary to compel colonizers to participate in that process. The BDS movement is specifically seeking to create that external pressure by building a grassroots international movement to hold the Israeli state—and its universities—accountable.

    PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, actually predates the broader BDS call by a year. It was formed in 2004 and, even then—21 years ago now—identified Israeli universities as pillars of the system of racial rule and apartheid. As academics, particularly those in the West, we have an obligation to respond to this call by severing our ties to Israeli universities. Otherwise, we remain directly complicit.

    AU: Your charge sheet, if I can put it that way, against Israeli institutions is really threefold. The first major charge—using your words from the epilogue—is that they need to stop denying that their campuses stand on expropriated Palestinian lands and cease to serve as engines of Judaization, colonization, and Palestinian dispossession. What exactly do Israeli institutions do in this regard, and why does it matter so much?

    MW: Right. Here, I’m following not only Palestinian civil society and Palestinian scholars but also Indigenous scholars around the world—particularly in settler states—who have long examined the role of the settler university. These scholars have highlighted how universities have often functioned as pillars of ongoing Indigenous dispossession, built on stolen lands that were cleared through genocide. This is part of a broader, global movement, and there is extensive critical scholarship on this issue in other settler states as well.

    In the context of the Israeli settler state, “Judaization” is actually the official terminology used by the Israeli government. It refers to a process seen in many settler states: the twin projects of continual removal and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the transfer of Palestinian land ownership to Jewish Israelis, and the ongoing expansion of Israeli frontiers—redistributing the Jewish population across what was historic Palestine.

    If we trace the history of Israeli universities, this pattern becomes clear. It starts with Hebrew University, the first university of the Zionist movement, and continues with all the universities established by the Israeli state since then. For example, the University of Haifa is in the Galilee, the region with the highest Palestinian population. Ben-Gurion University is in the Negev, an arid southern region where Jewish Israelis were historically less likely to settle. The most recent university to be accredited, Ariel University, is located in the illegal settlement of Ariel, deep in the occupied West Bank.

    For over a century, Israeli universities have been physically designed, built, and strategically located to support the state’s project of Palestinian dispossession, particularly in regions of strategic concern to the Israeli government. Any reckoning with Israeli universities—or settler universities more broadly—must begin with the question of land itself. This is one of the central issues I explore in the book.

    AU: Before I go into the other elements of the charge sheet, you’ve used the term “settler” and “settler colonialism” a couple of times. What distinction, if any, do you draw between the need to boycott Israeli universities, as you argue, and the historical case that could be made for boycotting institutions in Canada or the United States? Why sanction one and not the other?

    MW: That’s a really important question. The first and primary answer is that the Indigenous population most directly impacted by the violence of these settler universities—in this case, Palestinians—have explicitly called for a boycott. A boycott is not a value; it is a tactic. Indigenous movements around the world have used different tactics to advance decolonization, and these tactics change over time and depend on the specific context.

    In this case, more than 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society came together to advance their liberation struggle and issued a call for boycott. They outlined a theory of change, arguing that Western governments—particularly those heavily invested in the Israeli settler state—not only provide arms but also offer diplomatic and legal immunity that allows Israel to continue committing war crimes, including, most recently, the crime of genocide. Given this, they have made it clear that those of us in the international community have an obligation to rise up and pressure our own governments to sever ties and isolate the Israeli regime until the process of decolonization begins and the system of apartheid is dismantled.

    This is a grassroots movement, and we do not need to wait for our governments to act.

    AU: That’s a useful clarification. The second area where you’re most critical is the cooperation between universities on one hand and the military, Shin Bet, and other security services on the other. You write about how the connection between university research and the military in Israel is somewhat different from how it operates in the United States or other countries, partly because research institutes in Israel cooperate so directly with the security sector. What does this military cooperation look like in practice? And is it just about research, or is there also an academic programming element?

    MW: Right. This is a very important question because the collaboration between Israeli universities, the security state, and the military industry is incredibly deep and comprehensive. We see this in several ways.

    First, Israeli universities function as military bases by designing and operating specialized, degree-granting programs tailored for security state personnel, including the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), Israeli police forces, and soldiers. These are the same forces that have engaged in decades of daily violations of Palestinian rights and international law. This is well documented, and these academic programs actively train soldiers and security personnel to refine their operations.

    One example is Hebrew University, where the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies trains soldiers in the Intelligence Corps, providing them with linguistic and regional expertise to improve their surveillance of the Palestinian population. This training directly contributes to the creation of target banks for airstrikes in Gaza, as we have seen over the past 16 months. That is just one of many examples.

    Another form of cooperation is research and institutional collaborations. The Institute for Criminology at Hebrew University and the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University work closely with military and security state experts to produce scholarship that advances security operations. Their research informs policy recommendations for the Israeli security establishment.

    A third example is the close ties between universities and military industries. It is not widely known that major arms manufacturers like Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Elbit Systems—the largest suppliers to the Israeli military and major global exporters of weapons—were actually founded on Israeli university campuses. These companies develop and refine their technologies by testing them in occupied Palestinian territories, violating international and human rights law daily. They then market these products globally as “battle-proven.” To this day, Israeli universities serve as critical laboratories for these industries.

    In all of these ways, it is impossible to understand the Israeli security state and military-industrial complex without examining the role of the Israeli university system.

    AU: The third charge you discuss is that Israeli universities are not academically neutral—that they do not provide all staff and students with equal opportunities to be protected from outside influence or to thrive academically. We often hear that Israeli universities do not discriminate, but you have a different perspective.

    MW: Yes. One of the things that really struck me while researching and writing this book was the extensive scholarly work that already exists on this issue. I conducted an ethnography of Israeli universities, spending significant time across Israel’s eight major public universities. I spoke with and accompanied Palestinian student organizers, and I interviewed both Palestinian and Jewish Israeli faculty and staff.

    What stood out to me—both in my fieldwork and in my background research—was just how much has already been written about this. There is a rich body of scholarship, not only in Hebrew and Arabic but also in English, often published in leading peer-reviewed journals in Europe and North America. Palestinian scholars, both in Palestinian and Israeli universities, have extensively documented the constraints on knowledge production, the marginalization of Palestinian critical epistemology, and the challenges of producing anti-colonial scholarship within the confines of the Zionist university system. They have also written in detail about the systematic discrimination Palestinian students face and their experiences within these institutions.

    Yet, despite this extensive scholarship, I find that it is largely unread in Western academic communities. This raises important questions about why we, in the West, have failed to engage with this work and why we have instead accepted the narratives presented by Jewish Israeli university administrators and scholars, who often portray Israeli universities as beacons of democracy. In reality, this has never been the case, and Palestinians have been documenting and writing about these inequalities for a very long time. I cite much of this work in my book, and I also corroborated it through my own interviews.

    What I found was not only that Israeli universities are embedded within and implicated in a broader system of apartheid, but also that Palestinian student organizing and political activism on campuses are violently suppressed. This suppression has intensified over the past 16 months, as Palestinian scholars and students speak out against the genocide and mobilize for Palestinian liberation on Israeli campuses.

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    AU: Maya, you’ve discussed issues at several institutions across Israel. You’ve specifically singled out Ariel University for its role in normalizing the occupation and Hebrew University for its failure to protect academic freedom. Are there any institutions that stand out to you as having a better record than others? Is there one that you might say should not be subject to a boycott?

    MW: The call for an academic boycott was laid out by Palestinian civil society and Palestinian scholars. Just last year, in 2023, this call was reiterated by not only the Union of Palestinian Faculty and Employees but also by every single Palestinian student union at every Palestinian university. They reaffirmed their call for us to enact the academic boycott.

    This is a call coming from Palestinian civil society, and as it is worded, it applies to all complicit Israeli universities. In the course of my research, I found that every single Israeli university is deeply implicated in the structures of occupation and apartheid. Not one is exempt.

    At this time, the call remains for a boycott of all Israeli universities, and I hope my book helps to substantiate why that is necessary.

    AU: It sounds to me like the Palestinian call is really about Israel as a whole, rather than specifically about Israeli universities, right? And I have to say, when I read the chapter on the relationship between universities and the military, I thought to myself: I can’t imagine a university in any country—let alone one as highly militarized as Israel—saying no to providing academic training for military officers.

    Universities are instrumental to the state, right? So when we talk about disapproving of university policies, aren’t we really talking about disapproving of Israeli state priorities? Is there any way an individual Israeli institution could change this if it wanted to?

    MW: I think that’s a really critical question. We have to understand—and take seriously—that settler states, systems of violence, and even genocide do not reproduce themselves automatically. These are systems of violence that are upheld by a vast network of institutions, including many in civil society. It is not just the military, not just the security state, and not just military industries. A whole host of public institutions—what we often think of as civil society institutions—lend themselves to this violence of elimination. This case is no different.

    But what we also have to recognize is that it is not just the institutions—it is the people within them who sustain and reproduce these structures. There is the active labor of thousands of Israelis, across hundreds of institutions, including universities, who are making this violence possible.

    What I want to emphasize here is that Israeli academics have tried very hard to have it both ways. The call for an academic boycott has been underway for more than two decades, and one of the main arguments used by Israeli university administrators and academics who oppose it is that they cannot possibly be held accountable for the crimes of the Israeli state—if such crimes even exist, as is still debated within Israeli universities. They claim that it is unjust to hold them responsible for what the state is doing.

    But at the same time, when they are confronted—particularly over the last year—by thousands of students, faculty, and staff participating in the boycott, pointing out that they are directly complicit in apartheid and now genocide, these same university administrators and Israeli academics respond in exactly the opposite way. They say precisely what you just said: Of course, we are embedded in the state. Many of our students are soldiers. Why wouldn’t we cooperate with the state we are a part of?

    They often go even further, offering justifications for genocide and apartheid. So they cannot have it both ways. Either they defend themselves by claiming they are not at all accountable and cannot be implicated in what the state is doing, or they admit that they are, in fact, part of the state—at which point they must also take responsibility for their role in sustaining its system of oppression.

    AU: One argument that emerged in Canada over the last few months—particularly around the end of the encampment at the University of Windsor, if I’m not mistaken—was that the university agreed to boycott Israeli universities as part of a resolution. In response, some argued—I can’t remember if it was Michael Geist or Anthony Housefather in the House of Commons—that if you boycott Israeli institutions but not universities in other countries guilty of similar actions, then that is antisemitic.

    For instance, many of the same criticisms you make about Israeli universities—such as failing to uphold free debate and cooperating with the military—could likely be made about Chinese universities in relation to the government’s policies in Xinjiang or Tibet. What do you make of that argument? Should we also be boycotting Chinese universities? And if not, why not?

    MW: Boycotts—whether organized by unions or any other group—are always made in response to a call. It is not up to us to unilaterally decide to boycott a university system. That decision belongs to the communities directly impacted by the violence of that university system. When such a call is made, it is then up to the international community to assess whether the institutions in question are, in fact, complicit—and to decide whether to participate in the boycott.

    To my knowledge, there has been no such call from other Indigenous communities in similar contexts. There could be, and if there were, I think many of us would absolutely consider participating. But this argument is ultimately a distraction—one that is often pushed by Israel and its Zionist supporters to divert attention from the central issue at hand. The reality is that Palestinians have called for a boycott. Now, it is up to us to assess whether that call is justified and whether we will comply

    AU: You wrote this book prior to October 7, 2023. What has changed since then, both in terms of how Israeli universities behave and in terms of the boycott movement?

    MW: Over the past 16 months, we have seen a devastating acceleration of a project that has spanned over a hundred years. Genocide is structural to the Israeli state, just as it is to settler states elsewhere. For two decades, Palestinian civil society has been telling us that various institutions in Israeli society have long served as part of the infrastructure laying the groundwork for the genocide we have witnessed unfold over the last 16 months—part of the Israeli state’s long-term project to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the Palestinian people.

    My book, which I submitted to the press shortly before this latest acceleration of the genocide began, details many of the ways in which universities are implicated. But it should come as no surprise that this is a structural problem. Israeli universities have continuously worked in service of the state, uninterrupted and ongoing, from before the state’s founding to the present moment—including this phase of the genocide.

    Over the last 16 months, Israeli universities have continued to develop weapons and technologies used against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They have continued training soldiers and producing Hasbara—Israeli state propaganda—to shield Israel from international criticism. In fact, Israeli universities have actively intervened to prevent academic boycotts from being implemented on Western campuses, smearing student, faculty, and staff organizers, and in some cases, calling for them to be forcibly dispersed. They have also played a direct role in producing legal scholarship to aid the Israeli state in resisting the genocide case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

    Beyond this, universities have provided tangible benefits to soldiers, offering course credit, scholarships, and special privileges for those returning from Gaza. In countless ways, Israeli universities remain embedded in the infrastructure of violence that sustains the Israeli state, even as that state now stands on trial in the highest courts in the world for genocide.

    If you’re asking what has changed, I think the biggest shift is that more people have now come to recognize what Palestinians have been calling for over the past 20 years: the urgency of intervention. There is an increasing recognition that international civil society must take action and stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation—and participate in the broader project of decolonization. That is a significant development in the global movement for Palestinian liberation, and we will continue to build on it.

    There is no going back.

    AU: Maya, thanks so much for joining us today.

    MW: Thank you.

    AU: And that just leaves me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, as well as you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for tuning in. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Folks, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education.

    Join us again next week when I’ll be joined by Hilligje van’t Land. She’s the Secretary General of the International Association of Universities, located in Paris, and she’ll be talking about the joys of running the world’s oldest transnational university organization. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

    Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

    If I say the word “Serbia”, chances are your mind goes to things like the NATO air attacks of 1999 and the associated Kosovo War, to the breakup of Yugoslavia and to Marshal Tito and maybe – if you’re more historically-minded – to the origins of World War I.  It probably doesn’t go to higher education or radical student politics.

    But that’s kind of unfortunate because in fact Serbia’s recent history has had plenty of instances where youth- or student-based movements have had an effect on politics, most notably with respect to the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.  And that’s very relevant today, because for the last 18 weeks, Serbia students have been on a campaign to rid the country of the governing Serbian Progressive Party on grounds of corruption.  They have formed some extraordinary alliances across civil society leading to regular marches involving tens of thousands of people as well as a series of rotating strikes.  The movement has not yet reached its ultimate objective, but it has claimed some notable victories along the way, most notably when the Prime Minister, Milos Vucevic, was forced to resign in January. 

    With me today to analyze all of this is Jim Dickinson.  He’s an associate editor at Wonkhe in London, one of the most remarkable Higher education sites in existence, and to my mind absolutely the best-informed person on the European student politics scene.  Jim wrote an excellent summary of the situation in Serbia around the time of the Vucevic resignation, and we thought it was high time to finally bring Jim on the show. 

    Jim talks about the origins of the protests, its growth and metastasis into a genuinely popular national protest movement and its prospects for future success.  Will Serbia end up being like Bangladesh, with students actually forcing regie change?  The future is never certain, of course.  But what I liked about Jim’s perspective is the way he takes account of the interplay between official student “unions” and an unofficial student “movement” and explains why you need to take account of both to understand the current situation in Serbia.

    But enough from me.  Let’s turn it over to Jim.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.21 | Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher: Jim, before we get to current day events, tell me—what are student politics normally like in Serbia? Are student unions more about service delivery or activism? Is there just one national student union, or are there multiple ones? Are they organized on a party-political basis? Tell me how it all works in a normal year.

    Jim Dickinson: You know, we were there about 14 or 15 months ago, and we were quite impressed. We took a group of UK student unions on a little bus tour, as I do each year to different parts of Europe, and it was quite impressive. Student representation is guaranteed at both the faculty and university levels. Broadly speaking, what is also guaranteed is a student union, which has responsibility for extracurricular activities, as well as for student voice and representing students.

    These unions then feed into something called the Student Conference of the Universities of Serbia. What’s interesting—and a few countries in Europe have done this—is that they’ve put the national student union on a statutory footing. So, it’s actually mentioned in legislation. Essentially, they took the National Conference of Rectors, the university association, added an “S” at the front, and set it up as a statutory body that listens to students’ views on higher education.

    So, in theory, the legislation establishes representation at the faculty, university, and countrywide levels. Students have the opportunity to elect other students, organize student activities, and be the voice of students—which are broadly the two activities you would expect when you hear the phrase “student union.” Maybe not in the U.S., but certainly in most other parts of the world.

    Alex Usher: Is there party political involvement in student unions there?

    Jim Dickinson: I mean, this is really interesting. Some people would say there is. But one of the things that’s kind of, I guess, moderately characteristic of the former Yugoslavian and Eastern European countries is that there’s not much open talk of politics.

    Sometimes students will align with particular political views, but this isn’t like what we might see in Austria, Germany, or even Finland, where large factional or party political groups of students stand for election to student councils. In Serbia, student unions are framed as being independent from formal politics—pure, in a sense, and separate from direct political involvement.

    Now, of course, what actually happens—depending on who you listen to and believe—is that youth branches of political parties do stand in these elections. And depending on the perspective, the government—certainly the current government—is accused of pumping in money and candidates to ensure a level of control in these bodies, much like what might happen in other parts of civil society in the country.

    But officially, you don’t see that. In fact, in some of these countries, student unions will even sign documents declaring their complete independence from party politics as a way of signaling, “We’re not about that; we’re about the students.”

    Alex Usher: Tell me about the history of student unions getting involved in national politics. I know there’s a history going back to the 1960s in Bulgaria of student involvement in politics.

    After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two major instances in Serbia. In 1996–97, students led protests against what were seen as rigged elections in favor of Slobodan Milosevic. Then in 2000, there was a youth-led—but not student union-led—movement called Otpor, which was the central organizing group that ultimately helped remove Milosevic after the 2000 elections.

    Now, obviously, there’s a big mobilization happening today. What’s the connection between those events in the late 90s and early 2000s and what we’re seeing now?

    Jim Dickinson: So, ahead of putting student unions—both locally and nationally—on a statutory footing, there were always student groups and associations, often based around faculties or entire universities. Because these groups were relatively loose and voluntary, their level of political interest and influence would fluctuate.

    They often got caught up in the kind of events you described—first in the late 80s and then throughout the 90s. And that’s actually quite common. When student groups are loosely organized and not statutory, with many different associations and organizations floating around, they tend to get swept up in big political movements when those arise.

    Now, while you’re right that Otpor was technically a youth movement, in practice, it was largely dominated by students. That group of people was widely credited with the overthrow of Milosevic. We’ve actually visited some of the student accommodations where they were organizing, and you can really see how that must have worked—how students would have been talking to each other, coordinating, and mobilizing.

    Beyond that point, things get a bit more complicated.

    Alex Usher: So, Otpor was student-led, but not student union-led. That’s the distinction here?

    Jim Dickinson: Yeah.

    Alex Usher: Let’s get to current events. It’s November 1st, 2024. We’re at the railway station in Novi Sad, which is Serbia’s second-largest city. What happens next?

    Jim Dickinson: So, a canopy collapses, killing 15 people. By the time they’d completed their assessment about 24 hours later, the death toll had risen to 15. Pretty quickly, rumors started going around that this must be linked to corruption.

    There’s been a series of complex, controversial deals linked to some Chinese companies involving infrastructure projects across different parts of the country. So the view was that this was negligence, this was corruption, and that this was another example—right on their doorstep in this big student city—of the Serbian government’s corruption causing harm and death.

    Social media videos of the canopy collapsing on young people were pretty heartbreaking, and they went viral very quickly.

    What was interesting at that point was that this student group based in the Faculty of Philosophy, which had already been upset about the formal student union elections in their faculty and at the University of Novi Sad, then switched their attention from occupying the faculty building over student union election politics.

    They turned their focus to this incident, and quite quickly organized a blockade of the railway station, a blockade of the faculty, and then things kind of swept on from there.

    Alex Usher: I get that—it’s understandable why the collapse of a public building might make people upset about corruption. But why is it youth leading this charge? I mean, it’s not unnatural, but it’s also not a given that students would be the ones leading this.

    Why them and not some other group in society? Or even opposition parties? Why a small group of disaffected philosophy students?

    Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, in many ways, that is the big question. I’m sure if the Serbian Progressive Party knew the answer, Alex, they’d have stopped it by now.

    I think the reality is that all of those involved in formal mechanisms of politics—to some extent—are discredited. And that’s something you see across many political systems, right? There’s a general distrust of politicians and of formal politics, both on the right and the left, in North America and across Europe.

    What’s interesting about this group of students is that, in many ways, you’ll find a similar type of group at almost every relatively elite, fairly academic, large university in the world. You’ve got the students who get elected to official positions, wear suits, and sit down with the rector, vice-chancellor, or president. And then there’s this other, rougher-looking group—the ones who like to think about bigger political issues. They’re the ones who will blockade a building, go on a protest, or join a demonstration.

    This particular group has probably always been there, usually complaining about student union elections. Then, suddenly, this huge tragedy happens in the city, and they find their big issue—something they can build their movement around.

    Often, they talk about building a social movement, but it’s hard to do when the issues they focus on don’t gain traction. This, however, was not a hard issue to mobilize around. It was a tragedy, it was clear-cut, and off the back of that, they took action.

    Alex Usher: That’s early November. The protests build and build, and by early December, they’ve secured the resignation of the minister of construction.

    So, at this point, what were the student movement’s aims? I get that they were upset about corruption, but what were they actually demanding in these demonstrations? And, given how informal the structure was, who was deciding what those demands were?

    Jim Dickinson: It’s really interesting because the demands haven’t really changed since then. Some were directly related to the tragedy, some were broader, and some were focused on higher education.

    Actually, if you look at some of the pro-Palestinian blockades and demonstrations in different countries over the past couple of years, they’ve also had a mix of demands like this.

    In this case, there were demands to publish all the documents related to the reconstruction of the station. There were calls to ensure that no criminal proceedings would be brought against protest participants. There was also a demand for the dismissal of all public officials who had assaulted students and professors—of which there were quite a few.

    Then there were demands related to higher education, like increasing the budget for higher education by 20%. And what’s fascinating is that this list of demands hasn’t really changed.

    Now, to answer your question about leadership—one of the defining characteristics of this kind of activism, which some people see as very old-fashioned, is that it’s highly decentralized. Decisions are made collectively, with lots of people sitting in circles discussing them. There’s no single figurehead. They’ve really tried to stick to those principles, even though, historically, that kind of approach sometimes falls apart depending on which allegorical novel you read.

    Despite the media’s efforts to identify particular ringleaders or intellectual figures behind the movement, it’s been difficult to pin down a single “bad guy” or figurehead. This stands in stark contrast to the formal student movement, which operates like a traditional hierarchy—a structured system where representatives elect other representatives, and so on.

    Alex Usher: So, it’s a little like the Occupy movement?

    Jim Dickinson: Yeah, very, very similar.

    Alex Usher: Over the course of December and January, the movement builds to the point where, eventually, the prime minister resigns on January 28th. That wasn’t even one of the demands, but it happened anyway. To make that happen, they had to build a coalition—not just within the student movement, which is one thing, but also by making links across civil society, with other groups like legal organizations, unions, teachers’ unions, and so on. How did a group of students manage that, especially given how decentralized their power structure was?

    Jim Dickinson: Part of it was about peaceful protest. If you look at historical examples like the Prague protests or the Velvet Revolution, they were always very deliberately peaceful, even though allegations are often thrown at them.

    So, good framing was key—absolutely sticking to those principles. And then, night after night, day after day, at each protest, they slowly built support from wider society. As time went on, they captured the imagination of more and more people. First, musicians got involved, then lawyers, then farmers, then taxi drivers.

    Each time a new group joined or more people expressed sympathy, the movement grew. And there’s historical precedent for this—going back to the late 80s and early 90s—where what started as a student movement began to voice deeper concerns about corruption, about the direction of the government, about how citizens are treated, and about the growing disconnect between the public and politicians. And they used powerful, simple, visually striking imagery. You might have seen the red hands in some of the protest photos—symbolizing “blood on their hands.” That really resonated with people.

    Because these countries have been through this kind of thing before—where students lead the charge and wider society gets behind them—there was this sense that both the students and the broader public felt the weight of history on their shoulders. And from there, it just kept growing.

    I was watching over Christmas—one night, there were 10,000 people in the streets, then 12,000 the next night, then 15,000. It just kept building. And every time the government tried to use traditional authoritarian tactics, the protesters held their nerve. They maintained their dignity, and in doing so, they were able to expose the government as authoritarian—cracking down on people who were making perfectly reasonable demands.

    Alex Usher: So that’s what’s happening in the streets. But what about the campuses? Are they shut down? Is there a strike? Is there a risk of losing the school year? And how are university administrations dealing with all of this?

    Jim Dickinson: That’s a really interesting question.

    Quite often—and this is probably true in the UK, certainly true in Canada and the U.S.—when there’s a blockade of a building, an occupation, or a major protest, you still get a form of teaching happening. There are efforts to ensure that education continues, though it might not be the same curriculum the university originally intended, and it often takes on a particular political edge.

    So, what they’ve been doing is blockading faculty buildings and university buildings, stopping some administrative functions from happening. But some teaching is still taking place.

    Now, whether that translates into exams happening or students receiving certificates at the end of the year varies widely. It depends on the campus, the faculty, and the university.

    A lot of that comes down to the level of support for the movement. So, it depends on what you mean by a “write-off.” There’s plenty of evidence that students are still getting an education, but if you’re the kind of student who isn’t interested in any of this and just wants your diploma at the end of the year, then it’s probably a disaster.

    Alex Usher: Just so listeners and viewers know, we’re recording this on February 11th—nine days before the air date. This is the 101st day of the protests. What do you think the endgame is here? What would it take at this point for students to achieve the aims you talked about earlier? Or are they going to have to settle for half a loaf?

    Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, it’s really interesting.

    Just this week—or maybe it was right at the end of last week, I’ve lost track—they got the 20% budget increase, for example. Nobody expected that to happen two weeks ago. So, slowly, they’re managing to achieve pretty much everything except the dismissal of all the public officials they’ve been demanding.

    The problem, of course, is that even if they achieve all of those demands, they still won’t have reached their broader political goal—which is that they believe this is a deeply corrupt government. And while they don’t frame it in party political terms, they think this populist government needs to go. So, the endgame starts to get tricky for them.

    They’ve already achieved far more than most people expected. And historically, there’s precedent for this. There were plenty of student uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1960s that captured the public’s imagination but ultimately didn’t lead to political change.

    So, once most of the demands are met and we get closer to the end of the academic year, will the movement start to fizzle out? Who knows?

    But for many of the people involved, they’re probably already thinking, “We’ve accomplished a hell of a lot more than we ever thought we would.” And certainly a lot more than the official student movement was ever going to achieve on these issues.

    Alex Usher: That brings me to my last question. This has been a success for the student movement—if you can call it that—but not necessarily a success for student unions. So, what do you think the impact will be on more official student organizations going forward? Are unions likely to be supplanted by something a little more anarchist? Or do they just go back to providing the same services they always have?

    Jim Dickinson: I mean, look—across the world, the bigger, more sophisticated, and more formally recognized student unions are, and the more access they have to decision-makers, the more mistrust tends to build.

    Both the textbooks and reality tell us that when student leaders start spending too much time with people who aren’t students, people begin to see them as too close to decision-makers. And that dynamic exists in every student movement around the world.

    The real question for a system like Serbia’s—which has student unions written into the constitution and structured to mirror the conference of rectors, university presidents, and vice-chancellors—is whether, in hindsight, that structure is simply too close to power.

    And that comes down to one of two concerns.

    If the official student movement hasn’t actually been controlled by the government but just appears too close to it, then there’s some broader reflection needed on the system’s credibility. But if it has been deliberately set up as a way for a corrupt national government to control it—to act as a puppet master—then that carries much bigger implications.

    Either way, you have to assume that where student energy is focused will shift. And that’s key because there’s only so much student energy available.

    Right now, the biggest problem for formal student unions is that student energy hasn’t gone into electing people to run the social committee or to be the faculty vice president and have a chat with the dean about curriculum.

    This year, the bulk of student energy has gone into something bigger—and they’ve won. That’s something a lot of people, both within the sector and seemingly within the country as a whole, will have to reckon with.

    Alex Usher: Jim, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us today. And I just want to take a moment to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, as well as you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining us. If you have any questions about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to reach out at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education podcast—subscribe to our YouTube channel today. Next week, we’re off, but join us two weeks from today when our guest will be Israeli scholar Maya Wind. She’s a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.

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