Should We Still be Talking about ‘Global Higher Education’?

Abstract

Can the higher education research community find a new language to describe ‘global’ higher education’? In the 1990s, the ‘global’ adjective captured the effervescent expansion of international university provision and student mobility across the planet. Powered by a strong sense of normative purpose, as well as by the neoliberal restructuring of universities as corporations, ‘global higher education’ was promoted by the imaginaries and investments of entrepreneurial Australian, North American, and European universities.  Rendered visible by rankings and citation data, ‘global higher education’ is now seen for what it is: an artefact of flows of data and capital. As the neoliberal order begins to fracture, other models of the university become more visible. Radical philosophers remind us that there is a place for creative study and reparative thought hidden within, and against, the university. Higher education researchers from across the majority world are decentering and diversifying the field, offering place-based alternative perspectives. There are new data sources for mapping science, fresh analytical languages, and radically transdisciplinary visions for knowledge-making. Is it finally time to say goodbye to the g-word?