New book examines global higher education in an era of upheaval

Higher education and research have expanded rapidly over the past decade, becoming more international while increasingly shaped by political and economic conflict. In a new book, Global Higher Education in Times of Upheaval, leading scholar Professor Simon Marginson analyses the major trends and tensions transforming universities worldwide.

Drawing on extensive global data, the book explores key issues including the need for higher education as a public good as well as private good, shifting geopolitical dynamics, the negative impacts of Brexit, and the effects of nativist politics and US–China tensions on research collaboration and academic mobility.

Marginson also critiques the continued dominance of Western institutions and knowledge, calling for a more inclusive, multipolar global science that embraces diverse languages and perspectives, and international education that is based on cultural sharing and respect.

The book highlights unresolved challenges around social equality and global justice, the limitations of human capital theory, and growing pressures on universities to prioritise graduate employability over knowledge-based learning and national agendas over global missions.

Professor Simon Marginson said: “A nativist revolt against international connections in the UK and much of the West may not seem a fortuitous time to argue for cultural plurality and cultural respect and against the taken-for-granted dominance of any one culture, in general and in higher education and science.

“But in education we must hold to the truth and say and do what is right. I am sure that in the global setting, he er butong (harmony in diversity, the approach to governance and cooperation that is embodied in embryonic form in the EU) is the only approach that makes sense.

“Harmony in diversity is the only general formula so far devised that enables each of the world’s interdependent communities to evolve with free agency, while rendering difference as a resource not a problem, and also while addressing crucial questions of common values, human rights, the collective good and peaceful relations within the whole.

“Harmony in diversity transcends the ‘might is right’ world now so evident in the era of Trump and Putin, which threatens great danger and destruction to the ecosystem and to us all. Educating people for a viable global order that respects and negotiates diversity: this is the only feasible way forward, in higher education, ecology and human affairs.”

Published by Bloomsbury Academic for the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), with open access funded by UKRI, the book offers critical insights into power relations in global higher education.

The book available to download for free.