What do the next 10 years hold for global higher education?
In 2006, an international group of Fulbright New Century Scholars came together to discuss the challenges facing higher education – from massification of higher education and the transformation of higher education from a public good to a private good to the knowledge economy and the impact of new technologies.
Fifteen years on, those challenges are still with us and we are also facing the fallout from COVID-19. It is an opportune moment to look at them again.
Massification has advanced on a larger scale, which is especially visible in very large countries such as China and India. In the countries where mass systems of higher education were already established by the end of the 20th century, massification driven by the social aspirations of the population has now reached the 50% mark, the level of high participation.