2026 Entrepreneurship Issue

New year, same challenges, but more urgent

At a tumultuous moment for international higher education, it is worth being honest about what the past six months have made unmistakably clear. This is no longer a cyclical downturn or a short-term policy wobble. It is a structural reset, driven by governments reasserting control over a tertiary education sector they increasingly distrust.

In December 2023, writing in University World News, I described a “nightmare before Christmas” for universities across Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom — a warning that has proved conservative.

We could spend a whole article on the impact of the new US administration on US higher education, but we will keep it short. Suffice it to say the outlook is far from positive. The funding crisis did not merely arrive early in 2024. It accelerated. And the erosion of institutional autonomy is now explicit rather than implied, a pattern since reinforced by sustained reporting in Times Higher Education, The PIE News and The Guardian.