Why the politicisation of HE is becoming structural

Universities have always been influenced by politics. What is changing today, however, is the nature and intensity of that relationship. Politics is no longer simply an external force that occasionally affects higher education; it is increasingly becoming embedded within the structures, priorities and everyday operations of universities themselves.

Across many parts of the world, higher education has entered an era in which internationalisation is no longer guided primarily by ideals of openness, academic exchange and global cooperation. Instead, universities are increasingly being drawn into broader dynamics of strategic competition, national security concerns, ideological contestation and economic rivalry.

The implications are profound.

The road to where we are now

For several decades, internationalisation was largely associated with positive assumptions about mutual benefit. International student mobility, cross-border research collaboration and global knowledge networks were widely viewed as contributing to scientific advancement, intercultural understanding and economic growth.

That environment is changing rapidly.

Today, international partnerships are increasingly evaluated not only in terms of academic quality or financial sustainability but also through the lenses of technological security, regulatory risk and strategic national interest. Governments are tightening oversight of research cooperation, scrutinising foreign funding, restricting sensitive technologies and monitoring international collaborations more closely.

In response, universities are introducing new compliance systems, partnership reviews and institutional risk-management procedures. As recently reported by EurekAlert, many institutions are strengthening research oversight mechanisms amid rising strategic tensions.

In this sense, external political pressures are no longer operating outside the university. They are increasingly being internalised into institutional governance and academic decision-making.

This transformation is visible in multiple contexts. In the United States, strategic tensions with China have intensified scrutiny over scientific collaboration, research security and student mobility. In Australia and the United Kingdom, concerns about foreign influence, dependency on international student revenue and national resilience have increasingly shaped higher education policy discussions, as highlighted in recent reporting by The Australian.

The trend extends beyond the Anglosphere. In parts of Europe and elsewhere, universities are becoming entangled in wider ideological and geopolitical realignments.

Recent reporting by Reuters on developments in Georgia demonstrates how higher education institutions can become arenas of political struggle over national identity, democratic orientation and international alignment.

Managed openness

At the same time, universities are no longer merely passive recipients of external political pressure. Increasingly, they are becoming active mediators of strategic uncertainty and geopolitical tension.

Institutional leaders are now expected to balance competing demands: maintaining global engagement while managing political sensitivities; protecting academic freedom while complying with national regulations; pursuing internationalisation while reducing strategic vulnerabilities.

This balancing act has produced what may be described as a model of ‘managed openness’.

Under managed openness, internationalisation does not disappear. Universities continue to seek international students, global partnerships and collaborative research opportunities.

However, openness is no longer treated as politically neutral. Instead, it is becoming increasingly selective, strategically calibrated and institutionally monitored. Put differently, openness is now designed and managed rather than simply embraced. As I recently argued in Nature, openness is “no longer assumed” but increasingly “designed and managed”.

This marks an important departure from earlier phases of higher education globalisation, during which expanding international connections were often assumed to be inherently beneficial. The emerging environment is more fragmented, uncertain and politically contested.

Recent discussions in Global Policy journal similarly suggest that universities are being forced to rethink internationalisation strategies under conditions of geopolitical realignment.

Importantly, these developments are not limited to relations between states. Domestic political polarisation is also reshaping universities internally.

In some countries, higher education institutions face growing intervention over curriculum content, diversity policies, campus speech and institutional governance.

Debates surrounding nationalism, identity politics and ideological legitimacy are placing universities under unprecedented public and political scrutiny. In the United States, for example, recent commentary in The New Yorker has raised concerns about increasing political intervention and its implications for institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

The reconfiguration of internationalisation

The cumulative effect is that universities are increasingly being perceived through political and ideological lenses, regardless of whether they seek to maintain institutional neutrality.

Yet these developments do not necessarily signal the end of internationalisation. Rather, internationalisation itself is being reconfigured. Universities are adapting by diversifying partnerships, regionalising collaborations, strengthening risk governance and pursuing more strategically selective forms of engagement.

We are moving away from an era of relatively unrestricted global openness toward a more cautious, politically mediated and strategically governed model of international higher education.

The challenge for universities is therefore not whether to internationalise but how to sustain meaningful global engagement under conditions of growing fragmentation and uncertainty.

How universities navigate this tension between openness and strategic caution may become one of the defining challenges for higher education in the coming decade.

Futao Huang is a professor of higher education at the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.