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After a golden age of higher education growth, what next?

The phenomenal growth of universities in the Global South began to shudder to a halt in 2013, new research into world higher education has revealed. Declining spending in China and a collapse in oil prices were primary reasons. Higher education’s halcyon days were over.

China, the big engine for higher education growth, pulled back on spending after Xi Jinping became president in 2013. Funding had been growing at around 15% a year, then suddenly slowed to about 2%, says Alex Usher, president of Toronto-based Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA), which has produced a report following four years of intensive research.

“That made a huge difference in the world higher education economy.”

The next year, due to a collapse in oil prices, a bunch of other big spending countries started pulling back on spending – Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Indonesia among them. “All of a sudden you see that the Global South, which had been catching up, has stalled,” said Usher.

“I think people will look back on those years, 2006 to 2013, as a golden age across much of the Global South. The problem is, it seems to be over.”

This article is part of a series on HE Access and Financing published by University World News in partnership with Higher Education Strategy Associates. University World News is solely responsible for the editorial content.


Usher and HESA Vice-President Jonathan Williams co-authored the report, World Higher Education: Institutions, students and funding, which will be launched on 31 March 2022 at a webinar hosted by HESA and University World News.

The webinar is titled “How Higher Education Enrolment and Financing is Changing Worldwide: The triumphs, the challenges and the growing funding gap between regions”. The speakers include Usher along with Simon Marginson, higher education professor at the University of Oxford; Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana; and Francisco Marmolejo, higher education president at the Qatar Foundation. (You can register to participate here)

Usher says that there has not previously been higher education research that has analysed, in depth, both student enrolment and funding at global and country levels. This will enable country-level comparisons across a wide range of nations.

“That’s going to have a huge effect on the ability of policy-makers in the Global South to find real-world comparators,” Usher told University World News. “There just hasn’t been good, strong comparable data in many of these countries. And so people have been left to draw on largely inappropriate policy comparators from elsewhere in the world.”

Trends in higher education

The HESA research recorded enormous growth in global higher education since 2006. Student numbers have passed 200 million and there are now nearly 90,000 institutions.

The report looked at 56 countries that cover 90% of the global higher education system. Just three countries – China, the United States and India – together accounted for 47.7% of HESA’s sample of 208.6 million students in 2018, and hosted 54% of the world’s universities and colleges, “mostly due to India, which on its own accounts for 46%”.

China and India together drove much of the worldwide student growth. Indian enrolments rose by 20 million from 2006 to 2018 – the research period – while Chinese enrolments rose by 18.4 million. Together they accounted for 54% of the rise in Global South enrolments.

“India was also the key driver of growth in educational institution counts, with its expansion from 17,973 to 40,222 accounting for 74% of global growth in institutions.”

Indeed, says the report, the overriding higher education narrative is of “unrelenting growth in the Global South”. According to Usher, between 2006 and 2012-13 were the “‘go-go’ days in the Global South. A lot of that had to do with China.”

A commodity boom benefited a lot of countries. Governments suddenly found they could afford to increase funding enough to accommodate faster growth in student numbers and to start increasing per-student spending and improve research.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise that it was the era when we got into global rankings. Because it was an era when the Global South was thinking like the Global North – that it could do a lot of the same kinds of things.” The whole rankings phenomenon started, Usher pointed out, when a Chinese university decided it had to be world class.

With huge amounts of money pouring into post-secondary education, people began to wonder how to make higher education work best, and it made sense to compare with other countries.

No surprise, not without problems

World Higher Education provides “fascinating insights” and backs up with facts and figures some trends that have been observed for years, according to Goolam Mohamedbhai, global higher education expert and former head of the International Association of Universities and of the Association of African Universities.

“The fall in student enrolment in the Global North contrasting with a rise in the Global South is not surprising. The Global North has already reached gross tertiary education rates of the order of 70% whereas Africa, for example, is trailing behind at merely 11% and needs to catch up rapidly.”

But what are the implications of this difference?

The North will continue to need trained manpower, especially in professional fields. “Will it try to lure more students from the South to its universities with scholarships and attractive post-graduation working conditions? Will we witness brain drain at a large scale again? The impact on the Global South will then be serious,” Mohamedbhai said.

“This may also result in an increase in cross-border higher education, from the North to the South, especially in terms of distance education and e-learning. But what would be the quality of such educational provision as internet access still remains poor in the South, especially in Africa?”

Similarities and differences

The HESA research found that higher education growth occurred across all five regions of the Global South, but it was not at the same rate, and regions with the least developed systems – South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – fell further behind during the research period.

“Yet it is in Sub-Saharan Africa where rates of growth have been the highest, at 153% over 12 years. In addition to India, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Vietnam, Turkey and Nigeria all more than doubled their numbers of institutions,” says the report.

In terms of student numbers, every region grew from 2006 to 2018, but the greatest growth was in East Asia, where enrolments grew by 66% to 62.1 million. South Asia had similar growth from 16.4 million to 40.5 million, or 140% in relative terms. Enrolment increased in Latin America by 73%, in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region by 103%, and in Sub-Saharan Africa by 124%.

“At the country level, enrolments more than doubled in 14 countries and tripled in six: Ethiopia, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Turkey. Thailand was the only country in the Global South to experience a decline in total enrolments,” according to HESA.

Rapid relative growth in enrolments in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa largely reflect the regions’ low baseline enrolment rates. “Despite their considerable enrolment increases, these regions in fact lost ground, proportionately, compared to other regions in the Global South.”

There were also high gains in gross enrolment rates. In MENA, rates rose by 34 percentage points, and in Latin America and East Asia by approximately 22 percentage points, whereas in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa the gains were only 14 and five percentage points.

Turkey achieved a remarkable increase in enrolment rates – 78 percentage points. Six other countries achieved increases of more than 25 percentage points – Peru, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Chile, Algeria and China. In relative terms, 16 countries more than doubled their enrolment rate, including most especially Kenya (up 3.6-fold), Bangladesh (up 3.3-fold), Turkey and Ethiopia (up 3.1-fold), and Morocco (up 2.8-fold).

Eldho Mathews, a senior adviser at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in New Delhi, is also not surprised by the impressive growth of universities in India.

He pointed out that higher education received policy priority from the government during the research period. This has been reflected in major initiatives such as Institutions of Eminence, Study in India, Academic Bank of Credits and others

Public and private higher education

Globally, public provision accounted for 70% of higher education students in 2018, but its share has been slowly declining, says the report. “This slow shift is entirely due to the rising importance of private provision in the Global South.”

The private sector’s growth trajectory since 2006 has been driven by India, which accounts for 39.8% of global private enrolment growth – although the data are unreliable.

HESA makes the point that public universities are generally large and stable, while private institutions respond better to fluctuating demand. This may be useful in the Global South, where higher education systems “can change dramatically in size from year to year”.

Professor Philip G Altbach, distinguished fellow in the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College in the United States, points out that much of India’s private expansion has been in “demand-absorbing” institutions that are of poor quality and for-profit.

However: “There has also been the development of non-profit top quality private universities in countries like India that are innovative and attractive especially to the emerging middle classes.”

Mathews concurs. Until recently, the private sector was dominated by institutions that shared some common features, such as teaching-oriented programmes to cater to the job market, dependence on tuition and other fees from students as a major source of income, lack of job security for academic staff, and less prestige than public universities.

However, the most visible trend in recent years has been the growth of “elite” private universities in different parts of India, Mathews told University World News.

“The emergence of new ‘elite’ private universities backed by corporate actors reflects the changing nature of the relationship between the state and higher education during the post-liberalisation period, starting from the 1990s.

“An important question is whether this process will be a stable phenomenon, or whether it simply reflects a temporary response to domestic market demands.”

Counts of public higher education in the Global South are steady across most years and regions, apart from some volatility and measurement issues in South Asia and India. For instance, HESA counted “private aided” institutions in India as “public” because of their public funding, and this likely resulted in private higher education being understated.

South Asia was the only region in the Global South where the number of public universities and colleges reduced over the research period, albeit marginally. “Increases in the other regions amounted to 22% in MENA, 27% in Latin America, 42% in East Asia and 69% in Sub-Saharan Africa,” says the report.

“The number of private institutions in the Global South grew dramatically from 2006 to 2018 due to spectacular growth of 277% in South Asia. The number of private providers in Sub-Saharan Africa actually increased at a comparable rate of 219%, but from a low base, while growth in MENA was 135% but only reached a 2018 figure of 869. Lastly, growth in Latin America and East Asia was approximately equivalent at just over 20% over the 12 years.”

As a result of private growth, the share of students in public higher education declined across most of the Global South, MENA being the exception. There is high variation, though: public institutions enrolled 86% of students in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2018, but 45% of students in Latin America.

The report notes that the two regions with the fastest growth in student numbers – South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – also had the greatest shift towards private provision.

There is also considerable diversity between countries. The share of students attending public higher education fell by a remarkable 24 percentage points in Tanzania, and by between nine and 13 percentage points in South Africa, Chile, Ghana, Malaysia and India, the report says.

“Conversely, three countries increased their proportion of public provision over our period of study by 12 percentage points each: Indonesia, the Philippines and Bangladesh.”

Public spending on higher education

The HESA research found that global public spending on higher education rose significantly from 2006 to 2018, to reach nearly US$1 trillion. Again, most of the growth was in the Global South. And most of it happened before 2013.

Global South governments focused much of the funding on massifying higher education. As a result, student and university numbers grew rapidly but spending per student dropped.

Globally, total public higher education spending increased in real US$ every year during the research period. “The total reached US$992.4 billion in 2018, up from US$615.5 billion in 2006, corresponding to an average annual growth rate of 4%,” the report says. Growth averaged 6.8% per year from 2006 to 2010, and then dropped to 2.7% per year.

In the Global South, total public higher education expenditures more than doubled between 2006 and 2018, from US$192.7 billion to US$434.5 billion

Most of the growth was in East Asia, which accounted for US$199 billion or 46% of public higher education expenditures in the Global South in 2018.

“Until 2013, East Asian governments increased spending by a remarkable 15.5% per year, but afterwards growth fell back to merely 1.6% per year,” the report finds. The next highest spending region is MENA at US$79.6 billion in 2018, followed by Latin America at US$71.3 billion, South Asia at US$63.7 billion and Sub-Saharan Africa at US$21.3 billion.

On a per student basis, MENA has the highest public spending on higher education in the Global South at US$4,324 in 2018. This, the report points out, is closer to the figure in the former Eastern Bloc than to any other Global South region.

Next comes Latin America (US$3,209), followed by East Asia (US$3,198) and Sub-Saharan Africa (US$3,030). “South Asia is by far the lowest spending region per student at just US$1,575 in 2018, or 46% below the average for the Global South as a whole.”

Significantly, the HESA research found that in all regions, spending in 2018 was below the peak spending year in the research period.

In terms of Global South countries, says the report, Saudi Arabia is an outlier regarding total public spending on higher education. Indeed, its per-student spending of US$19,593 ranks Saudi Arabia third in the world, behind only Switzerland and Singapore.

“The next highest spending country in the Global South, Tanzania, spent US$5,635 per student. At the low end, Indonesia, Cameroon and Bangladesh all spent less than US$900 per student in 2018.” “In total, 14 countries in the Global South increased spending per student, and 17 countries reduced it.”

Higher education as a percentage of GDP

Governments of MENA spend considerably more as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) than other regions of the Global South. Indeed, their spending is comparable and at times higher than the Global North region of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Thus, MENA can claim to be the highest investing region in the world.

In the decade from 2006, spending in the MENA region grew from 0.8% to 1.3% of GDP before falling back again slightly. “Spending relative to GDP increased in all other regions as well over the full 12 years, but more modestly.”

Saudi Arabia spent over eight times more of GDP on higher education than Indonesia in 2018. Saudi spending relative to GDP was the highest in the world in 2018.

Other examples were Burkina Faso, which increased higher education spending relative to GDP by one full percentage point. “Algeria, Iran and Chile all increased spending relative to GDP by 0.6 percentage points. Egypt stands out for reducing its higher education spending relative to GDP by half (0.7 percentage points).”

“One point of note here is that a number of African governments – some in very poor countries such as Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire – are spending quite large proportions of national wealth on higher education.”

Conversely, says the report: “Turkey manages to produce its world-leading participation rates with a relatively low level of public investment.”

A look into the future

The rise of higher education enrolment and spending, with a focus on research, has been driven by the desire of many countries in the South to catch up with the world’s knowledge-based, innovation-centric economies, said Professor Joshua Ka-ho Mok, vice-president of Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

“While we are celebrating the growth of higher education in the Global South, we must examine closely whether the rapid expansion would compromise quality, especially when resources may not be sufficient to support growth,” Ka-ho Mok told University World News.

“Public investment is always limited, hence many universities in the Global South are privately funded. Quality assurance and student learning, and research quality, become issues of concern.”

Mohamedbhai anticipates a future where private higher education continues to play a growing role. In several African countries, the number of private institutions already exceeds the number of public ones. “Private enrolment is still lower than public enrolment – but increasing rapidly,” he told University World News.

“At one time it was thought that private higher education institutions are of poor quality. This is not necessarily true now. A significant number of private institutions in Africa, especially the faith-based ones, are as good if not better than public ones.”

There are two worrying aspects to this trend. “First, the majority of private institutions run only undergraduate courses, not postgraduate ones (except for the ubiquitous MBA), and hardly undertake any research. This will hamper Africa’s development.

“Second, most of the private institutions do not offer programmes in science and technology, because these require costly equipment and labs. Again, this will have a negative impact on Africa’s development,” Mohamedbhai said.

Given the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, many universities in the Global South may have been adversely affected in terms of funding support in the last two years, as well as previously by the slow-down in funding that happened from 2013.

Meanwhile, demand for higher education in the Global South has continued to rise relentlessly. Governments have realised that the thirst for higher education would have to be satisfied, according to Usher.

At the turn of the century, many experts thought growth would be funded by rising private inflows, for instance through student fees. “But that didn’t happen,” says Usher. “Actually, there are a lot of countries, China included, where student contributions are down as a percentage of university budgets. “So governments have not only got stuck trying to deal with increased demand, but they’re doing it without [the anticipated] private contributions.”

It is likely that public budgets in the Global South will continue to tighten. “It is not going to be the same in every country, but as governments rediscover scarcity in the Global South, they are going to have to start thinking about things like collecting tuition fees.” Another route, which is limiting participation, would be “politically very tricky”.

The big future challenge, Usher predicts, will be a lot of countries having to figure out how to deal with scarcity. “It’s always easy to be a higher education policy-maker when dollars keep going up, but making policy when dollars are scarce … that’s tough.”

To register to participate in the UWN-HESA webinar, “How Higher Education Enrolment and Financing is Changing Worldwide: The triumphs, the challenges and the growing funding gap between regions”, click here.