CGHE Webinar 191

Eurasian relations in higher education in the context of the fast moving world scene

Date: Thursday, 25 February 2021 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Location: Zoom webinar, registration required

Speaker(s):

Simon Marginson, University of Oxford
Marijk van der Wende, Utrecht University

Event Materials

This event is now archived and we are pleased to provide the following event media and assets, along with the original event overview.

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2021 has started with signs of hope; Covid vaccine arriving, a new US president installed, and world leaders in a first-ever online World Economic Forum reconfirming the importance of international cooperation and multilateralism. But also waking up in the post-Brexit reality and with tensions rising globally over vaccine distribution and uneven economic recovery. It is early to assess the full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the shifting geo-politics on higher education globally. Will globalization be reshaped? Will the EU come closer together or drive towards further fragmentation? Will it be strong enough to rebuild globally the kind of multilateralism on which international academic cooperation has been based, and who will be its principle partner; the US, China, or both?

The pandemic is proving to be a test of solidarity and the situation is still fragile. Despite the closing of borders, cities and campuses, universities have proven to be resilient and open science and global collaboration to be invaluable in addressing this global challenge of unprecedented allure. But the future of open science and global collaboration is ambiguous. Globalization will not collapse or be simply reversed, but seems to be shifting. Most likely eastwards, building on trends emerging well before the pandemic outbreak. In particular China, with a forecasted fast economic recovery, opportunities to capitalize on the return of its academic diaspora, and sustained investments in HE and R&D, will be able to increase its weight on the global higher education scene. And thus to influence conditions for academic collaboration.

Multilateralism will be redefined between the EU, China and the US, likely resulting in new conditions for higher education globally. These will be explored in this seminar, building on a recent study on the implications of China’s New Silk Road for Eurasian relations in higher education, published by Oxford University Press.

Event Materials

This event is now archived and we are pleased to provide the following event media and assets, along with the original event overview.

Professor Simon Marginson

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, founding Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education, and higher education and social inequality. Simon led CGHE’s project 8 which investigated the public good role of higher education in ten countries. The project found that while a broad notion of public good has been largely emptied out of policy in the English-speaking countries, where economic definitions of individualised pecuniary value are dominant, recognition of the broader individual and collective outcomes of higher education continues in different ways in other jurisdictions including France, Finland, South Korea and China. The study in England discovered however that despite the narrow economic framing used by Westminster policy makers, both higher education practitioners and policy professionals believe that higher education makes a large and multiple contribution to both national and global public goods.

Marijk van der Wende

Marijk van der Wende is Distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance and a member of the Advisory Board of CGHE. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization and internationalization on higher education systems, institutions, curricula, and teaching and learning arrangements. She is also an affiliate faculty and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California Berkeley, Guest Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and member of the International Advisory Board of its Graduate School of Education.