Global Higher Education in Times of Upheaval: On Common Goods, Geopolitics and Decolonization
By (Author) Professor Simon Marginson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
22nd January 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Hardback
320
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
This open access book collects papers on the major trends in international higher education from leading scholar Simon Marginson, who led the UKs Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) from 2015-2024.
In the last decade higher education and research has grown rapidly, becoming more international and embroiled in politics and economics of an increasingly conflicted world. Surveying these developments, Marginson judiciously identifies and discusses the major trends, events, issues and dilemmas that have shaped and are still shaping global higher education. With exemplary worldwide reach, these papers, sole or lead authored by Marginson, consider the relation between public good and private good in higher education; the changing geo-politics of higher education; the growing role of the higher education sector and its increasing destabilisation; the impact of Brexit in the UK; how nativist politics and U.S./China tensions are disrupting cooperation in research and the free movement of ideas and people across national borders; the undue dominance of Western institutions and knowledge in global higher education in what is now a multi-polar world and the need to open global science to diverse languages and insights; the unresolved dilemmas and challenges for higher education resulting from its failure to conclusively progress on either social equality at home or global justice abroad; and the growing demands for greater focus on graduate employability and national not global mission.
Global Higher Education in Times of Upheaval maps global higher education with strong and accessible data, while also exploring and developing key concepts for understanding worldwide trends and developments in higher education and science, and analysing these in terms of relations of power. It will provide critical new insights in how to improve the delivery and impact of higher education globally.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.
For more than three decades, Simon Marginson has been widely regarded as one of the most perceptive and insightful analysts of the shifting geopolitics of higher education. The breadth of his scholarship is truly remarkable, addressing issues that range from the political economy of internationalisation to global science and research collaborations. In this timely collection of essays, he turns his critical gaze upon the challenges systems of higher education now confront to reimagine their purposes and governance within the context of increasing levels of complexity, upheaval, and volatility. -- Fazal Rizvi, Emeritus Professor, Universities of Melbourne Australia and USA.
Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, UK. He was Director of the UKRI Centre for Global Higher Education 2015-2024.