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Our international well-being has never felt so fragile for most of us alive today. Amid this backdrop, the international perspective--which this report offers--is critical to our understanding of emerging trends, issues, and priorities in higher education. Author Jamil Salmi thoroughly catalogs the global issues in higher education that have been caused--or in some cases just intensified--by the pandemic. He offers insight into what is working and not working in very different contexts across the globe, and summarizes lessons learned for higher education leaders and policymakers at the institutional and national levels.

In the past few years, growing concerns about the rising costs of university education and soaring levels of indebtedness among graduates have led to strong student protests in places as diverse as Berkeley, Bogota, Johannesburg, Juba, Khartoum, Lilongwe, London, Madrid, Montreal, Santiago and Seoul (Salmi, 2017). As a result, several governments have acceded to students' demands for free higher education, notably in Chile and South Africa, followed by initiatives to eliminate or reduce tuition fees in Italy, Japan, and South Korea. In this context, this short article looks at three nations, Mauritius, Mexico and the Philippines, that have recently joined the group of countries seeking to decrease the financial burden on students by eliminating fees for all or at least for those students coming from the lowest income groups. In each case, the article mentions the political economy conditions explaining the policy decision and attempts to assess the likely equity, quality and financial sustainability impact of the new tuition policy.

A recent report published in the United Kingdom proposed the image of "an avalanche" to describe the radical changes affecting tertiary education in many parts of the world (Barber, Donnelly and Rizvi, 2013). Indeed, powerful transformative forces of three kinds--rupture factors, crisis factors and stimulus factors--are challenging tertiary education systems all over the planet. First, a growing number of rupture factors are at play in transforming the ecosystem in which tertiary education institutions are operating, drastically influencing how they perform their teaching and research functions. Second, as a result of the 2007 financial downturn, the tertiary education sector in most regions of the world has been affected by serious crisis factors. The third type of factors are the stimulus factors that refer to the availability of significant additional funding for tertiary education in a small number of countries where governments consider that the role of universities in support of innovation and growth is so important that they deserve extra resources. Against this background of complex forces at play, tertiary education enrollment has continued to increase rapidly in most parts of the world. The main objective of this report is to analyze how the interplay among governments, quality assurance agencies and tertiary education institutions has evolved in the past decade. After a brief summary of the history of quality assurance, the report documents the evolution of the role of the State vis-à-vis quality assurance agencies in recent years, identifying significant developments, key issues and new challenges. Next, the growing importance of new forms of accountability, such as rankings and measures of learning outcomes are explored. The report concludes by proposing a few principles to help reach an appropriate balance between autonomy and accountability as they apply to the relationship between governments and quality assurance agencies.

This report was prepared at the request of the Government of Malaysia (GOM) as a contribution to the long term development objectives for the university sector under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. The GOM is considering new policy directions to make the country a more competitive player in the world economy. Such a strategy will require bold innovations in many sectors, including the university system whose contribution to greater value-added production should come from the generation and diffusion of relevant knowledge and the production of a critical mass of graduates with appropriate skills. Malaysia is thus attempting to transform its universities into dynamic and responsive institutions which can hold their place internationally. In this context, the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) have requested analytical and advisory services from the World Bank to help develop a strategic vision for the evolution of the country's universities towards becoming world class. The present study, which seeks to add value by sharing international experience with relevant strategies and policy measures, provides practical short-term, medium-term and long-term recommendations and an action plan for the government's consideration, and served as an input into the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010). This report assesses and analyzes the current state of the Malaysian university system and makes recommendations on ways to further strengthen existing higher education institutions. It looks in particular at the policy framework needed to support the growth and development of the higher education system--legal framework, quality assurance systems, incentives for investment, R&D policies, financing mechanisms that help low income students access education, and public financing programs that direct subsidies to strategically important institutions or fields of study. This report aims to identify key challenges and appropriate solutions which could constitute relevant policy advice for the GOM. The report is organized into two main parts. It starts with a diagnosis of the present situation, relying on a range of key indicators to benchmark Malaysia's national innovation and higher education systems against select Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and East Asian countries and on an in-depth analysis of the universities' main strengths and areas of weaknesses. The second part provides policy recommendations and detailed action plans to improve the Malaysian higher education system, with special attention paid to the research and innovation nexus, graduate employment, quality assurance systems, financing mechanisms, and the governance and management framework. Annexes include: (1) Terms of Reference of the Study; (2) List of Institutions Visited and Persons Met; (3) Classification of Countries by Models of National Technological Learning; (4) Resource Diversification Matrix for Public Higher; (5) Monitoring Indicators for the Student Loan Program; (6) Which Allocation Mechanism is more Effective?; (7) Indicators Used by International Ranking Exercises; (8) Rankings of Business Administration Schools; and (9) Recent "Excellence" Initiatives. (Contains 41 tables, 28 figures, 40 boxes, and 135 footnotes.) [This report was prepared by the East Asia and the Pacific Region of the World Bank.]

In recent decades, a growing number of countries have sought innovative solutions to the substantial challenges they face in financing tertiary education. One of the principal challenges is that the demand for education beyond the secondary level in most countries around the world is growing far faster than the ability or willingness of governments to provide public resources that are adequate to meet this demand. This paper examines a range of recent experiences with both traditional and more innovative allocation mechanisms in tertiary education worldwide. The objective of the paper is to survey the landscape of innovation and highlight lessons that can help policymakers in developing and transition countries formulate strategies for increasing the effectiveness of their public policies for tertiary education. The paper begins by proposing a typology that describes both traditional and innovative approaches to resource allocation that are being used or considered in various countries. This typology includes approaches that fund institutions directly and indirectly through students as well as those that fund students and their families.