Hi all. I thought I would take some time to have a chat about how research policy is evolving in other countries, because I think there are some lessons we need to learn here in Canada.
One piece of news that struck me this week came from Switzerland, where the federal government is slashing the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. If the Swiss, a technological powerhouse of a nation, with a broad left-right coalition in power and a more or less balanced budget, are cutting back on science like this, then we might all have to re-think the idea that being anti-Science is just a manifestation of right-wing populism. Higher education as a whole has some thinking to do.
Over to Australia, where a few months ago the government set up a Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which released a discussion paper, held consultations and got feedback (which it published) and has now released six more “issue” papers for consultation which detail government thinking in many different and more detailed ways. If this sounds magical to you, it is because you are from Canada, where the standard practice for policymaking is to do everything behind closed doors and treat stakeholders like mushrooms (in the dark with only fecal matter for company) instead of a place where policy-making is treated as a serious endeavour in which public input and expert advice is welcomed.
For today’s purposes however, what matters is not process but policy. The review is seriously considering a number of fairly radical ideas, such as creating a few national “focus areas” for research funding, which would attract higher rates of overhead and requiring institutions to focus their efforts in one of these priority areas via mission-based compacts (which are sort of like Ontario’s Multi-Year Agreements, only they are meaningful) so as to build scale and specialization.
Whew.
One thing that strikes me as odd about both the UK and Australian line of thinking is the idea that institutional specialization matters all that much. While lots of research is done at the level of the individual lab, most “big science” – the stuff people who dream about specialization have in mind when the talk about science – happens in teams which span many institutions, and more often than not across national borders as well. I get the sense that the phenomenon of institutional rankings have fried policy makers’ brains somewhat: they seem to think that the correct way to think about science is at the level of the institution, rather than labs or networks of laboratories. It’s kind of bananas. We can be glad that this kind of thinking has not infected Canadian policy too much because the network concept is more ingrained here.
Which brings me to news here at home.
The rumour out of Ottawa is that in the next few months (still not clear if this is going to be fall 2025 or Spring 2026) there will be an announcement of a new envelope of money for research. But very definitely not inquiry-driven research. No, this is money which the feds intend to spend as part of the increase in “defence” spending which is supposed to rise to 2% of GDP by 2025-2026 and 5% by 2035. So, the kinds of things it will need to go to will be “security”, likely defined relatively generously. It will be for projects in space, protection of critical infrastructure, resiliency, maybe energy production, etc. I don’t think this is going to be all about STEM and making widgets – there will be at least some room for social science in these areas and maybe humanities, too, though this seems to me a harder pitch to make. It is not clear from what I have heard if this is going to be one big pie or a series of smaller pies, divided up wither by mission or by existing granting council. But the money does seem to be on its way.
Now before I go any further, I should point out that I have not heard anyone say that these new research envelopes are actually going to contain new money beyond what was spent in 2024-25. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, that would be hard to square with the government’s deficit-fighting commitments.
In fact, if I had to guess right now, the best-case scenario would be that the Liberals will do this by taking some or all of the 88% of the Budget 2024 research commitment to the tri-councils and push it into these new envelopes (worst-case scenario: they nuke the 88% of the 2024 Budget commitment they haven’t yet spent and claw back money from existing commitments to make these new envelopes).
So, obviously no push here for institutional specialization, but where our debate echoes those of the UK and Australia is that all three governments seem to want to shift away from broad-based calls for inquiry driven research and toward more mission-based research in some vaguely defined areas of national priority. I know this is going to irritate and anger many people, but genuinely I don’t see many politically practical alternatives right now. As I said back here: if defending existing inquiry-driven tri-council budgets is the hill the sector chooses to die on, we’re all going to be in big trouble.
No one will forcing individual researchers or institutions to be part of this shift to mission-driven research, but clearly that’s where the money is going to be. So, my advice to VPs Research is: get your ducks in a row on this now. Figure out who in your institution does anything that can even tangentially be referred to as “security-enhancing”. Figure out what kinds of pitches you might want to make. Start testing your elevator pitches. There will be rewards to first movers in this area.
In recent weeks, the plight of Gazan students and scholars accepted to UK universities has gained attention in British and international media. These individuals are recipients of highly competitive scholarships such as Chevening, as well as other academic awards. They have earned their place at some of the most prestigious institutions in the United Kingdom. Their achievements are remarkable by any standard, but especially so given that they were reached under the harshest conditions imaginable: the collapse of Gaza’s educational infrastructure under bombardment, the absence of functioning universities, and the daily struggle for survival amidst man-made famine and starvation, displacement, and violent death.
Yet despite this extraordinary resilience, these students faced the risk of losing their places before they could even set foot in the UK. The obstacle was not academic performance or funding but rather a bureaucratic and logistical impasse deriving from the Home Office requirement to provide biometric data. Following the brutal assault by Hamas and other armed organisations on Israeli civilians and military bases on October 7th, 2023 and the horrific devastation Israel has unleashed on the Palestinians in Gaza since, the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Gaza has been closed, thus preventing biometric processing.
Support for Gazan Students
As Israeli academics organised under the banner of the Black Flag Action Group, opposed to the ongoing war in Gaza, we mobilised in support of these students. Over 140 signatories, including Israeli students and scholars at British universities as well as Israeli graduates from British universities, urged the UK government to act decisively and inclusively. In our open letter, we stressed that no administrative hurdle should prevent prospective students from taking up the places they have already earned. When laboratories, libraries, lecture halls and archives lie in ruins, the opportunity to study abroad is not just a personal achievement; it constitutes a lifeline for the ongoing intellectual and professional life of Gazan Palestinians. To have denied these students their places would have been to contradict the UK’s own commitments under schemes like Chevening, which are premised on the idea that education can foster leadership, dialogue, and international understanding.
Window of Hope and Future Implications
On 3 September 2025, the UK government announced that it would expedite visas for Chevening scholars and others to travel to a third country for biometric processing. We were also very relieved to hear that a group of 34 Palestinian students with places at UK universities have safely arrived in the UK to begin their studies after being evacuated from Gaza last week. These are surely welcome steps, but urgent policy questions for higher education in the UK still remain, including what seem to be the remaining rules preventing students from Gaza from bringing family members with them. In fact, as recently reported by the BBC at least four mothers and one father have so far declined places because they would not leave their children behind. As the recent public discussion shows, these go beyond the immediate emergency and touch on structural issues that universities and government alike must confront:
Visa and Mobility Frameworks: Current biometric requirements are ill-suited to situations of war and humanitarian crisis. Universities and advocacy groups must press the Home Office to establish flexible, transparent, and accountable procedures for students from conflict zones.
Equity of Access: Scholarship schemes such as Chevening are designed to promote global leadership. Yet their credibility is undermined if access is contingent not only on merit but also on whether students can survive a war zone and navigate opaque visa procedures.
Moral Responsibility of universities to students and their dependents: UK institutions that have offered places to Gazan students cannot treat their admission as symbolic. They must actively lobby the government, provide legal and financial assistance, and ensure that students’ right to education is not hollow.
The plight of Gazan students is not an abstract problem. It is about gifted men and women who have already demonstrated courage, brilliance, and commitment. Universities, civil society, and policymakers have an ethical obligation to work together to ensure that the promise of higher education for Gazan students in the British system of higher education will not be abandoned at the very moment it is most needed.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell ColemanThe U.S. Department of Justice and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education have reached a preliminary settlement agreement that would end the state’s policy of offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who graduate from Kentucky high schools.
The agreement comes after the DOJ filed a federal lawsuit in June challenging Kentucky’s practice of extending in-state residency status—and the accompanying lower tuition rates—to any student who completes high school in the state, regardless of immigration status. The Justice Department argued this policy creates unequal treatment by providing financial benefits to undocumented immigrants while denying the same rates to U.S. citizens living in other states.
“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in announcing the federal lawsuit.
The legal challenge reflects broader federal immigration enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, which has issued executive orders aimed at preventing undocumented immigrants from accessing taxpayer-funded benefits or preferential treatment in government programs.
Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman has supported the federal position, arguing that state policy conflicts with federal law prohibiting undocumented immigrants from receiving college benefits unless identical benefits are available to all U.S. citizens. In July, Coleman urged the Council on Postsecondary Education to voluntarily withdraw the regulation rather than pursue costly litigation.
“The federal government has set its immigration policy, and the Council must regulate in accordance with it,” Coleman wrote to the CPE. “To that end, I urge the Council to withdraw its regulation rather than litigate what I believe will be, and should be, a losing fight.”
Under the tentative settlement terms, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education has acknowledged that its tuition policy violates federal law and agreed to terminate it immediately. However, the agreement remains pending approval from U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove in the Eastern District of Kentucky.
The Kentucky case mirrors a similar federal challenge resolved earlier this year, when Texas reached a settlement with the DOJ over comparable in-state tuition policies for undocumented students.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a prominent Latino civil rights organization, has filed a motion seeking to intervene in the Kentucky lawsuit on behalf of affected students. The motion remains under judicial review. MALDEF was previously denied intervention rights in the parallel Texas case.
The policy change could significantly impact college affordability for undocumented students who have spent their formative years in Kentucky’s educational system. In-state tuition rates are typically substantially lower than out-of-state rates, making higher education more accessible for students from families with limited financial resources.
International Education Assistant Minister Julian Hill. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has been met with widespread criticism from the federal and NSW governments for its plan to cut 1100 subjects including its entire teacher education program.
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With the UK Government moving to a posture of ‘war fighting readiness’ amid intensifying global conflict, a new HEPI Policy Note warns higher education remains an untapped asset in national preparedness.
The Wartime University: The role of Higher Education in Civil Readiness by Gary Fisher argues UK universities must be recognised as central pillars of national security and resilience. The paper highlights how higher education institutions represent a ‘composite capability’ to enhance and sustain civil readiness, spanning defence, health, skills, logistics and democratic continuity, but warns this potential remains under-recognised and poorly integrated into emergency planning frameworks.
You can read the press release and access the full report here.
Credentialed media at the University of Colorado are once again free to share simulations of game footage. The university has removed a provision from its media policy that barred outlets from sharing “[s]imulated video or slideshows mimicking game action.”
As FIRE wrote in our letter to CU, the policy impermissibly restrained journalists from choosing to use “‘simulated game action’ or a slideshow to display game data.” That kind of choice is exactly the sort of editorial decision the First Amendment requires be left to journalists, not the government.
Conditioning credentials on this unconstitutional requirement restricted the First Amendment freedoms of journalists miles away from the field, court, or swimming pool. While universities can sell exclusive broadcasting rights to their sporting events, they can’t dictate how media members report on what happened in an athletic competition..
Our letter called on CU to repeal the policy. Thankfully, it did.
This welcome change comes as a direct result of that letter. In his reply, Athletic Director Rick George acknowledged that the university’s policy was far broader than administrators had first realized. He also affirmed CU’s strong commitment to free expression and committed to repealing the policy, which went well beyond the university’s obligations as a member of the Big 12 Conference and signatory to the conference’s media rights deal.
CU’s response here is exactly what universities should do when their policies fall short of their First Amendment obligations: acknowledge the problem, commit to protecting expression, and promptly fix the issue. And it’s surely part of the reason the university is ranked fifth in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, with a majority of students saying CU is at least somewhat clear that the administration protects free speech on campus.
FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative is pleased to see CU put the free press over profits. Other universities should take a page from the Buffaloes’ book.
FIRE defends the rights of students and faculty members — no matter their views — at public and private universities and colleges in the United States. If you are a student or a faculty member facing investigation or punishment for your speech, submit your case to FIRE today. If you’re a college journalist facing censorship or a media law question, call the Student Press Freedom Initiative 24-hour hotline at 717-734-SPFI (7734). If you’re faculty member at a public college or university, call the Faculty Legal Defense Fund 24-hour hotline at 254-500-FLDF (3533).
One year after I reported on New York City parents’ reactions to a proposed ban on cellphones in the classroom, students and teachers have returned to schools with that ban in place.
When I asked families on my 4,000-plus-member NYC School Secrets mailing list how they felt about the new restriction, I received answers ranging from enthusiasm to concern.
“Phones and smartwatches in classrooms and school hallways are more than just a distraction — they’re a barrier to learning, focus and social development,” according to Manhattan’s Arwynn H.J.
“Bring on the ban,” cheered Bronx parent and teacher Jackie Marashlian. “My high school students were ready to air-scroll me toward the ceiling with their fingers, so bored with whatever it was I was trying to impart to them. One day we had a WiFi glitch and I saw my students’ beautiful eyes for the very first time. Bring kids back to face-to-face interaction and socializing during lunch breaks.”
“As a middle school teacher in the Bronx and parent of an eighth grader, I think the cellphone ban is fantastic,” agreed Debra. “While my son is ‘devastated’ he can’t have his phone, it scares me that he’s said he doesn’t know what to do at lunch/recess without a phone. Kids have become so reliant on technology, even when they are with their peers, that often they are not really WITH their peers; they are all just staring at their phones. I hope the cellphone ban leads more students to be both physically and mentally present.”
For mom Elaine Daly, the phone ban affects her more than her special-needs daughter. “My child is 11 and knows she is not to use the phone in school. My parental controls blocks, locks and limits access. But I need her phone to be on so I can also track her, since the NYCSchools bus app always says: Driver offline.”
Jen C., who reported the ban has been going well with her child in elementary school, sees a bigger issue for her high school-age son. “He has homework online and likes to get started during his free periods. However, he’s not allowed to use his laptop, and there are not enough school issued laptops. I feel that teachers should give off-line work, or the school needs to give access to laptops.”
Parents of older students were the ones most likely to be against the blanket edict.
“You can’t have the same policy for kids 6 years old and for 17 years old,” mom Pilar Ruiz Cobo raged. “This policy is crazy for seniors. Yesterday, my daughter had her first college adviser class, and only five kids could work because the rest didn’t remember their passwords to Naviance and the Common App. The verification code was sent only to their phones. Children who don’t study, don’t study with and without phones, now the children who actually work have to work double at home.”
A Queens mom pinpointed another problem. “Many high school students leave the premises for lunch, and my son’s school is one of those. He said they’re not allowed to take their phones. Children need to use phones outside of school for various reasons; to use phone pay, to contact their parents for lunch money or any updates, etc…”
The policy varies from school to school. At some, students are allowed to request their phones back when temporarily leaving the premises. However, the larger the school, the less likely it is to have enough staff to handle such exchanges.
“An interesting aspect of this policy is that although it was presented as a smartphone ban, it’s actually much more expansive, including tablets and laptops,” pointed out dad Adam C. “This presents a challenge for high school students who rely on laptops for receiving, completing and submitting assignments through Google Classroom.”
“They say parents have to provide their own laptop pouch (there are none similar to Yonder), and they can’t store laptops in backpacks,” confirmed Queens mom Y.N. “My son has afterschool sports activities and likes to do his homework on his laptop in between. I think he’ll have to take it with him and hope they don’t confiscate.”
“While I’m not opposed to keeping students off platforms like Snapchat during school hours,” Adam continued, “They should be able to connect a laptop to a school-managed Wi-Fi network for school-related purposes, and the current policy doesn’t provide the schools with much leeway around this.”
But Y.N. doesn’t believe that’s accurate. “I already voiced my concern to the Student Leadership Team (SLT). At the Panel for Education Policy, they said these rules are fluid. Because the regulations came after the SLTs were done for the year, the chancellor said they should be able to change them. She said a plan had to be made before Day One, but it doesn’t mean that adjustments can’t be made at the school level. ‘Tinkering’ was the word they kept using.”
If that’s the case, perhaps NYC can pull back from its traditional one-size-fits-all approach and allow individual schools to “tinker” and set limitations based on the needs and feedback of their community, adjusting policy based on grade level, academic requirements and a multitude of other factors.
With the clutch of traditional higher education flashpoints accounted for – A level and SQA results days, and a clearing season reported to be particularly fraught in some quarters – the summer is drawing to a close, and a new academic year is upon us.
Eighteen year olds are set to attend universities in record numbers, up 5 per cent year on year and up 27 per cent since 2016. This is unquestionably a great thing. However, it masks a troublingly stubborn decline in mature students numbers.
In recent years, the number of these students – those aged 21 and over (or 25 and over for postgraduate study) – entering UK universities has been falling at an alarming rate, down by 26 per cent since 2016 according to UCAS. This decline may sound like a niche concern, but it carries big implications for the wider economy, for skills shortages, and for the prospects of people who want to reskill later in life.
As the government prepares to roll out the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), there’s an urgent opportunity to rethink how the sector and society support adult learners and to ensure that lifelong education becomes a central pillar of our skills system.
The current picture
While the signs from clearing so far offer some encouragement, due perhaps to a sluggish economy, the data remains stark. Over the past decade or more, the number of mature students entering higher education has steadily declined, down 43 per cent since 2012.
The causes are multifaceted, but a shift began with the introduction of higher fees in 2012 and has persisted – it is well established that mature students tend to be more debt-averse, so this coupled with the rising cost of living and the upfront financial commitment of a degree will no doubt put off many.
Others may well be put off by a lack of flexibility. While real strides have been made in this area, particularly at modern universities, the structures of funding and regulation mean a lot of courses are still designed for school-leavers with the time and freedom to study full-time. Family responsibilities, limited employer support for training and the still-dominant perception that universities are designed for 18-year-olds will also play a role.
The pandemic briefly nudged some adults back into learning, but the overall trend remains downward. Without targeted action, these numbers are unlikely to recover on their own.
A price to pay
Why does this matter beyond the university sector? Because a thriving economy depends on people being able to learn, retrain, and adapt throughout their lives. Mature students often bring real-world experience into classrooms and tend to choose courses that fill urgent skills shortages – in health and social care, teaching, engineering, IT, and other high-demand sectors.
When these pathways dry up, industries suffer. Skills gaps are prevalent across key sectors and have been estimated by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation to cost the economy almost £40bn per year. Without a pipeline of retrained workers, employers struggle to fill gaps, productivity growth stalls, and regional economies miss opportunities to regenerate.
It’s also an issue of social mobility. For people whose school results closed off higher education the first time around, mature study offers a second chance to change careers, boost their earnings, and improve their families’ prospects. If that route disappears, inequality widens – and our economy pays the price.
A new hope?
The LLE, due to launch in 2026, aims to reshape post-18 education in England by enabling a move away from the traditional three- or four-year degree as the default model. Instead, individuals will be able to draw on a single pot of funding – equivalent to four years of study, or around £38,000 – and use it flexibly over their lifetimes, taking courses in smaller, more targeted chunks.
In principle, this modular approach could open the door for adults with work and family commitments, allowing them to pursue short courses when needed and return later for further study without losing access to funding. By making learning more flexible, affordable, and tied to labour market needs, the LLE is pitched as a way to lower barriers that currently deter many mature learners, particularly in an economy being reshaped by AI, automation, and the green transition.
Yet the promise of the scheme is far from guaranteed. The rollout is proving complex, with uncertainties over how funding will be administered, whether universities and colleges will be equipped to redesign courses in modular formats, and how easily learners will be able to navigate the system. Awareness is another challenge: adults with established careers and busy lives may not know the scheme exists, or may find the process of accessing funding too bureaucratic to be worth the effort. Employers, meanwhile, will need to support staff in using the entitlement – something that cannot be assumed.
There are also cultural and practical reasons to doubt whether large numbers of mature learners will take up the LLE. Adults may be reluctant to re-enter formal education, particularly if they are anxious about returning to study, lack confidence with digital learning, or doubt the value of small qualifications in the job market. Others may weigh the potential benefits against the costs – not only financial, but also in time and disruption to family or work responsibilities – and decide against it.
In short, while the LLE represents a bold attempt to modernise lifelong education, its success will depend on whether the system can overcome significant implementation hurdles and whether mature learners themselves see it as accessible, relevant, and worthwhile.
The role of modern universities
Universities are at the heart of this challenge. They too cannot rest on their laurels and must continue to consider how they design, market, and deliver their courses if they are to serve lifelong learners as effectively as they serve 18-year-olds fresh from colleges. Modern universities, which traditionally teach the majority of mature undergraduates, must continue to lead this agenda from the front.
Partnerships with local employers, another area in which modern universities lead, are key. By aligning courses with regional economic needs – for example, creating pathways into green technologies, health and care, or digital sectors – universities can help ensure that adults return to education with a clear line of sight to better jobs.
But a cultural shift is just as important. Universities need to be hubs for lifelong learning, not just finishing schools for young adults, and the government has significant work to do in getting the word out to the general public that the opportunity to study or re-train is there to be taken.
The decline in mature students is more than a higher education story. It’s a warning sign for our economy and for our ability to adapt to change. The LLE offers a chance to reverse the trend – but only if universities, employers, and policymakers work together to make lifelong learning a reality.
In a fast-changing world, education cannot stop at 21. The people of Britain need a system that allows people to keep learning, keep adapting, and keep contributing to the economy throughout their lives.
International students are placing getting a quality education over policy developments – with the UK keeping its spot as the preferred desitnation for 80% of nearly 1,000 pathway students surveyed by NCUK.
A new report covering the survey’s findings analyses data from 921 students across 88 countries studying an international foundation year or Master’s preparatino programs, looking at their motivations for studying in top destinations, as well as other preferences.
It found that Australia was the second most popular choice, with 4% of students surveyed marking it as their preference, followed by Canada, the US, New Zealand and Ireland at 3%. Meanwhile, the most coveted programs are business and computer science, as the preferred subjects for just under a third (31%) of respondents.
Students’ continued preference for the UK comes in spite of a slew of policy changes affecting international students. In May, the government unveiled its long-awaited immigration white paper, setting out the way Keir Starmer’s Labour party intends to tackle migration over the coming years.
It included plans to reduce the Graduate Route by six months to a total of 18 months, as well as new compliance metrics that higher education institutions must in order to continue recrutiing international students. Tougher Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) requirements are set to take effect this month, meaning that universities will face penalties if more than 5% of their students’ visas are rejected, down from 10%.
And last September, the UK increased international student maintenance requirements for the first time since 2020. Under the new rules, students coming to London must show evidence of having £1,483 per month, while studying outside of London need proof that they have at least £1,136 per month.
But NCUK’s chief marketing officer Andy Howells pointed out that students are looking beyond arbitrary political decision when choosing their preferred study destination, thinking instead about their long-term prospects.
“This research demonstrates that international students are sophisticated decision-makers who look beyond political headlines to focus on educational quality and career outcomes,” he said. “While policy changes generate significant discussion in our sector, students are primarily motivated by the academic excellence and opportunities that institutions can provide.”
The survey found that, of a sample size of 646 students, just 12% who said they were considering studying in the UK said that financial requiremwnr increases would stop them from applying to UK instiutuons.
However, the popularity of other major study destinations were ore impacted by political headwinds, the survey found.
Over a third (36%) interested in applying the Australian institutions said that proposed international enrolment caps would affect their decision, while 26% of those looking to study in Canada said they would no longer apply to Canadian institutions over policy changes – particularly changes to the country’s postgraduate work permit scheme.
And almost four in 10 (38%) considering the US said Donald Trump’s second presidency would negatively impact their choice to study in America.
For the majority of students surveyed (69.9%), education quality is the primary driver leading them to seek study abroad opportunities, closely followed by enhanced career development opportunities (56.4%) and gaining new knowledge (55.2%).
The survey also shone a light on students’ post-graduation plans. Half of respondents said they wanted to stay in their study destination, with 31% planning to work and 19% looking at further studies.
This research demonstrates that international students are sophisticated decision-makers who look beyond political headlines to focus on educational quality and career outcomes Andy Howells, NCUK
But a growing number of students plan to return to their hoe country immediately after graduating, with 23% saying they want to do this – up from 18% in last year’s survey.
Immigration has continued to be a hot topic in the UK as the anti-immigration Reform party grows in popularity.
Just earlier this week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper drew ire from the international education sector after announcing that the government will be tougher on overseas students who make asylum claims that “lack merit” as a means to stay in the country after their visa expires.
Some 10,000 students have already been texted and emailed warning them that they will not be allowed to stay in the UK if they have no legal right to remain and explicitly warning them against making bogus asylum claims.
Hamish Coates, Ellen Hazelkorn, Hans de Wit, Tessa Delaquil, and Angel Calderon
Hans de Wit, Ellen Hazelkorn and Hamish Coates are editors and Tessa DeLaquil is associate editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education. Angel Calderon is a member of the PRiHE Editorial Board. This blog is based on their editorial for issue 2, 2025.
It often feels like there is lots more ranting and moaning than imagining and evidencing around higher education these days. With excellent policy research, it does not have to be this way.
The immediate post-millennium era was arguably a golden age for universities, with huge interest in massification, investment, especially in research, and institutional autonomy. But the global financial crisis followed a decade later by global pandemic shocked higher education into different worlds. Most countries still promulgate objectives for a sustainable and cost-efficient, equitable and accessible, high quality education system as the basis for growth. In OECD countries, however, assumptions that massification would on its own provide opportunities for everyone with mechanisms for social inclusion and social mobility are being heavily questioned. In developing and emerging economies, the challenge is meeting demand and being able to absorb graduates. Yet, too many countries and research-focused universities keep chasing ‘quick prestige’, leaving others to put up with disproportionately lower funding, as well as poorer facilities, resources and opportunities.
Wealth and opportunity inequalities are increasingly greater within rather than between countries. At the same time, questions about educational outcomes such as employability, skills gaps and skills mismatches and over-qualification which have been long ignored by academic communities as irrelevant, are gaining public and policy traction. Governments and industries document the shift away from credentials towards greater focus on competencies – what people can do with what they know – and alternative accreditation processes.
A few large countries are in the foothills of a demographic cliff, while others are (currently) privileged by demand. Traditional public systems in many countries face an identity crisis and appear too sluggish to grasp new opportunities. Parts of the private subsector are progressively active and more responsive to the needs of diverse and older learners and to competency-based learning, micro-credentials and other forms of just-in-time learning. Accordingly, the private sector is the fastest growing segment of postsecondary education worldwide.
Countries vary considerably in their ability to cover costs associated with policy objectives due to revenue challenges and competitive demands elsewhere within society and the economy, alongside student and public unease about cost. Certain systems promote a laissez-faire or marketised approach whereby individual colleges and institutions (public and private) pursue their own agendas, while others grasp at opportunities for a more strategic state-led approach. Countries are beginning to examine the opportunities of a more joined-up post-secondary tertiary system (Hazelkorn, 2025). As Piketty has written, “it is access to skills and diffusion of knowledge that allow inequality to be reduced both within countries and at the international level” (2020: 534). But funding a mass system is very different from one catering to a small minority especially at a time when geopolitical/geoeconomic power shifts reshape the global landscape.
Deglobalisation and populist nationalism are shaking these issues out differently around the world. In many countries, these tensions are contributing to a growing sense of people and communities being left behind, and to social unrest. The dominance of information technology over universities, challenging the value of graduates for entry-level work and of faculty, will spur heightened questioning of the value of higher education (Coates, 2017; The Guardian, 2025; Roose, 2025). While others look on in disbelief, there is a sense that this may not be a problem for higher education today, though it is likely to be so one day.
It is too easy to blame governments and other external stakeholders. What role has higher education played itself, and what role can it play into the future? Is the sector, especially the public side, sufficiently strategic, forward-looking and adaptable? What are the implications for the governance of the system and of its many institutions? Or is it wandering unchained in the global wilds? Universities praise themselves as being one of the world’s oldest and most enduring institution, but as Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Once, such questions may have been ludicrous to provoke at the outset of a Policy Reviews in Higher Education (PRIHE) editorial. Not anymore. Accordingly, in the balance of this editorial we sketch frontier topics which higher education can embrace to drive positive reform, then current journal contributions (Figure 1). We conclude with a call to engage and transform.
Figure 1: Current and frontier contributions
Any higher education policy zealot who has read Arnold Lobel’s brilliant treatise on Owl’s strange bumps in the bed (in which the Owl is afraid to go to sleep because of two strange bumps at the bottom of his bed, which are, in fact, his feet) (Lobel, 1982) understands that fear is created by running scared and can be tackled by uncovering and addressing matters in ways that unlock innovation and progress.
Policy Reviews in Higher Education plays this important role, though to date with fewer endearing drawings. Springing from inspiring intellectual dialogue with a member of the PRIHE Editorial Board and consequently guest author, Angel Calderon, we mark out a handful of narratives to carry forward policy research over the coming decades:
Moving beyond academic comfort communities
Handling looming demographic shifts and diversity
Addressing concerns about academic value
Creatively unpacking university clusterings and characteristics
Leaders who lead in smart ways.
Higher education researchers must explore how universities and the academics who comprise them can move beyond comfort communities. This means finding ways to move beyond conservative research literatures and straightjacketing bibliometrics, beyond discipline and collegial communities, beyond the academic treadmill, beyond the subsector itself, and beyond naval-gazing research. A doctorate followed by decades toiling in the same institution is no prudent recipe for forging broader cognitive or tangible engagement with enterprise and industry (public and private) and the broader world. How can career trajectories be redefined to evoke and even provoke experimentation, fertilisation, and broader contribution?
Policy researchers must find productive ways for helping universities handle looming demographic shifts. The Asian investment in higher education which has fuelled the last thirty years will plateau and in major instances decline. Smart countries and universities are already looking beyond increasingly risky ‘foreign and school-leaver markets’ at reconfigured alignments with career-inspiring work and adult life. As yet, however, few if any countries have policy and associated regulation or funding to spur new ventures and directions. Beyond the sensible need for regional or perhaps global ‘harmonisation’, what is the scope for more imaginative forward-thinking about the sort of institutional reconfigurations needed to deliver for societies in 2050? Also, universities continue to see international students as an alternative for demographic declines as well as for income generation, adopting imperialist approaches to new markets rather than anticipating global and local shifts. Internationalisation is still seen as an income source based on mobility flows, instead of as a possible change agent for innovation in education, research and service to society.
Genuine political concerns about academic quality and value are unlikely to be assuaged by fluffing up the fame of elite researchers who typically have little to do with students or voting communities. Graduate outcomes and relevance are some of the most pressing challenges for all governments pushing people to question the value of higher education and ensure it translates into good jobs. Broadening rankings to include topics like sustainability, while useful, misses the more substantial need to focus on local engagement rather than global striving. It is folly to think that all the ~88,000 higher education institutions (UNESCO, 2022: 12) should aspire to look the same. Pursuit of ‘world-class’ sameness is no substitute for critical research and delivery of more robust and compelling public information on value, quality of educational delivery and outcomes, and at the same time nuanced differentiation of the difference each and every institution can make. And arguably rankings bear increasing responsibility for distorting funding allocations and institutional/government priorities across many post-secondary systems.
Higher education sector growth in recent decades has spawned exciting, misunderstood and very important institutional and national configurations. There is an urgent need to creatively unpack university clusterings. Far too much time and money has been invested in studying groups characterised by bibliometric performance. More interestingly, there are university-defined groups, ranging from ‘presidents’ dinner clubs’ to disciplinary groups of nationally aligned associations. There are broader political, cultural and religious associations. There are groups connected through graduate or professional diasporas, or research connections. There is an emergent clustering of associations shaped by geopolitical/geoeconomic and national security imperatives. Ownership and tax-status has long been a means of shuffling universities into groups. What novel patterns and projections can be revealed?
With the intent of curating even more purposeful contributions, PRIHErecently launched a call for experts around the world to curate cognate collections on a high-impact policy contributions. These contributions which relate to hot topics in higher education policy seek to engage a group of scholars around important themes, and work with the journal and related networks to convene hybrid global seminars and deliver substantial insights on consequential frontier issues. PRIHE’s Editorial Board and Editors have spotlighted six shaping themes which raise questions, insights and issues to be addressed by policy, drawing on experiences from around the world. These include:
Proving contributions: Restoring public trust in higher education and universities
Emerging formations: Transnational, online and private higher education, regulation, ethics
Global challenges: Sustaining autonomy, academic freedom, purposeful research, independence
Lifelong learning: Valuing higher learning and skills across the lifespan, and
Valuing education: Raising the profile of large-scale teaching and learning.
Higher education in many if not most countries is confronting strong headwinds and needs strident thinking and reform rather than rent-seeking complacency. Carving out intellectual architectures to stimulate dialogue from disorder creates tailwinds for the tough work then required to create and promulgate the evidence which may sway policy and reform practice. In this editorial we have advanced a handful of non-ignorable developments as a guide for authorship, deliberation, and reforming practice.
Reference: Hazelkorn, E (2025) ‘Building a Unified Tertiary Education System. Trends and Propositions to Provoke Discussion, Trending Topics’ New Directions for Community Colleges Forthcoming.
Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates. She is Professor Emeritus, Technological University Dublin.
Hamish Coates is professor of public policy, director of the Higher Education Futures Lab, and global tertiary education expert.
Hans de Wit is Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, Senior Fellow of the international Association of Universities.
Tessa DeLaquil is postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Education at University College Dublin.
Angel Calderon is Director of Strategic Insights at RMIT University and expert on global tertiary education.
