American isolationism brings HE opportunities elsewhere

American isolationism and tariff wars could pave the way for greater collaboration between universities in Commonwealth countries to reduce inequality, according to Professor Colin Riordan, secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU).

Speaking in an exclusive interview with University World News Editor-in-Chief Brendan O’Malley, he said changes to the world order and a move by the United States away from international cooperation offered new opportunities for Commonwealth countries to work together in higher education.

Riordan referred to the breakdown in relations between the United States and Canada following the election of Donald Trump, who has “dismantled the traditional relationship and replaced it with a much more transactional one”.

“Mark Carney, the new [Canadian] prime minister, who is a Commonwealth scholar, understands the Commonwealth, and there may well be opportunities for Commonwealth countries to work together and collaborate,” Riordan said.
“That’s very much what the ACU has always done since our foundation in 1913. The new Commonwealth secretary general, Shirley Botchwey, has put trade as one of her key strategic pillars, so the principles are there.

“If you look at the Commonwealth charter, there is a paragraph supporting multilateral, fair, open access trade between Commonwealth members. So that’s there in the principles. And I think it would certainly involve higher education if we want it to.”

In higher education, trade includes the recruitment of international students, because when students move from one country to another, it counts as an export.

Regarding the impact on international student flows of changes in higher education implemented by the Trump administration, he said there is an “opportunity, in line with the Commonwealth charter, to really look at how we reduce inequality and introduce more equity within the Commonwealth”.

Riordan was speaking ahead of the organisation’s 2025 Congress, which is taking place in Nairobi in November with the theme, ‘Connected and resilient: Commonwealth universities charting global change’. The event will bring together university vice-chancellors and leading voices in higher education from around the world to discuss critical challenges facing the sector.

He said one way of bringing trading principles into the sector globally was to help to reduce inequality and to innovate in finding solutions to climate change.

One of the advantages that the ACU had over other international university associations was its mix of well-established universities and smaller, relatively new institutions which were at the frontline of climate change. This enabled members to work together to innovate solutions to climate change and to help develop resilience globally.

Funding pressures

However, universities globally continued to face many challenges, with funding being the most pressing.

“Universities around the world, and certainly in the Commonwealth, are all under pressure for funding, and this is partly a result of, I think, the enormous pressure on the public finances which has arisen out of the COVID pandemic,” Riordan said.

“This really drained the coffers of universities, and indeed governments, and has made it more difficult to support the sector,” he said.

“Another issue is public scepticism about science, research, [and] universities in general. There's been a real change in attitude over the last 10 or 15 years. Universities, once seen generally as a force for good in society, through the culture wars and the polarisation, particularly after the 2008 financial crash, which brought many things into sharp focus, now find themselves having to justify their position. And, frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that, as it’s important that universities should make those arguments and demonstrate why they are relevant.

“I know that our members spend considerable time and effort on ensuring that the public and governments understand, and all the relevant audiences, particularly students and parents right around the Commonwealth, understand that universities are important for their personal futures and for the future of the world.”

A sector in need of government support

The biggest decline in higher education in recent decades has occurred in high-income countries, Riordan said, compared with low- to medium-income countries, where universities are a vital part of the commitment to national development, to building a country and taking it forward.

“The issue that is common to all of them is a lack of, and competition for, resources,” he added. “It is quite understandable that education ministers, and for that matter prime ministers and treasury ministers across the Commonwealth, see early years education as the big priority, which is understandable when 60% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t go to school.

“But higher education is a critical part of the education ecosystem, and you can’t just have early years on its own. In the best systems, early years, secondary, and tertiary education all work together.

“In the higher education sector, you’ll be educating the teachers and looking at how to craft the best policies to foster primary education and how to make resources go further and support government in that respect.

“The argument that we want to make to Commonwealth governments is that higher education is not just an enormously important good in itself, but it is also very important for the rest of the education ecosystem.”

However, trying to structure higher education so it is sustainable was “a very knotty problem”, and developing countries did not necessarily have lessons to learn from more established systems.

“It is essentially about getting the interests of the individual in the correct balance with the interests of the taxpayer, because there’s a benefit to both,” Riordan added. “And it is not just about the crude calculations of income but the intangible knock-on effects in communities that arise from a university education.”

Strategy for engaging governments

A recent meeting of the ACU’s Higher Education Task Force, attended by Riordan and other higher education leaders, discussed how to get governments more engaged with the higher education sectors in their respective countries.

“What is very helpful about the ACU is that we can share that learning,” he said. “What we’re doing [with the task force] is developing policy proposals and options that will be useful to education ministers in the Commonwealth, that they can then take to their finance ministers and prime ministers to get support for their policies.

“We have conducted a study* which delves into the relationship between investment in tertiary education and prosperity and economic growth for each Commonwealth country,” he added, stating that while this information might already be available in some countries there will be many ACU members who have never had that information available. “It will be useful for them to have so they can make those arguments,” he said.

Fertile ground for ideas

Looking ahead to the coming together of university leaders in Kenya in November, Riordan said the spirit of collaboration and diversity was a “fertile ground” for ideas and mutual discovery.

“We have so much in common,” he said. “There is a high degree of commonality there, not least the English language, but also, you know, the sort of heritage and traditions and structures.

“However unhappy the origins are, we’re now in the 21st century and looking to the future. We’re very aware of the past, and we don't deny where the Commonwealth came from. But let’s not forget, the Commonwealth is a voluntary association of nations. Nobody has to be a member, and you have to choose to join. It’s entirely voluntary.

“And that goes as well, of course, for our membership. People choose to be a member of an organisation that brings people together from an extraordinarily diverse set of countries but with a common basis on which to have a discussion and a common language to do it in, and that is highly beneficial.”