Western higher education systems are poor models for equity

In 2022 we delivered the 5th annual World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED), focusing on advocacy for equity in higher education across the world. The struggle to provide opportunities for students from all backgrounds to enter and succeed in higher education has only intensified since the last WAHED.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House and the steady rise in populism across the world have meant equitable access and success in higher education have to confront not just economic and structural but also ideological barriers. It can no longer be assumed that equity commands widespread support in principle but is hard to deliver in practice. Now the principle itself is in question.

We are now preparing to bring back WAHED on 28 October this year, with a call for organisations across the world to organise events or activities in their own organisations and localities. The aim is to catalyse and create the practical innovation and challenging discussion essential to moving this agenda forward.

The centrepiece of WAHED 2025 will be our hybrid World Access to Higher Education Day Conference 2025, hosted by the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. We hope this will turn the global lens on higher education equity in Africa and the Global South.

Another consequence of the second Trump administration has been a capturing of the focus on equity to foreground US issues due to its confrontational stance on higher education in the US.

It has also cut international funding to programmes in Africa and the Global South which either directly or indirectly aim to support higher education equity as well as funding for US universities. The attention is now firmly on what happens in the US and then the Global North.

New equity models

Nevertheless, the greatest challenges in terms of equitable access and success still remain in Africa and the Global South. The wealthiest are up to 33 times more likely to participate in higher education than the poorest in Africa, compared to a gap of just 1.4 times in high-income countries.

Yet, even given these issues, Africa is still forecast to increase its overall number of higher education students by 64 million by 2034 – more than the entire population of Italy.

Squaring this circle of expansion and equity will inevitably require innovation, especially in the face of limited resources. It will also require the graduate labour market to keep pace with the production of graduates.

The principle of equitable access starts to feel the strain when, as has happened in parts of Asia, graduate unemployment starts to rapidly increase. But expansion also brings with it opportunities for equity.

Older, established higher education systems in Europe and North America provide poor role models where equity is concerned – as do older, more prestigious universities across the world. They were established when higher education was the preserve of elites and built their culture, structures and reputations on this basis.

Their influence has permeated Western university systems, meaning that equity has always struggled for attention, and continues to do so, while the remaking of university systems to integrate equity has been a slow, gradual process.

However, the opportunity exists in Africa to build systems and universities that embed equity within them. This means mainstreaming work that is being undertaken on the continent to address these widespread inequalities.

Beyond this work, the ways in which higher education is delivered may need to change with the introduction of flexible courses which integrate within them different hierarchies of knowledge.

These should closely align with economic and societal needs and be rooted in Afrocentric epistemology. This does not imply the jettisoning of traditional academic subjects but rather their evolution within a different non-Western context.

Broadening the equity focus

How equity in higher education in Africa and the Global South is influenced by Western universities also has to broaden out. The present approach to internationalisation by such institutions does not foreground equitable access; rather, it focuses on the expansion of their footprints via transnational operations or increasing international students.

Scholarship programmes do make a difference, and examples exist of programmes that attempt to embed equity into what they do, such as the work of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK.

But scholarships need to be one aspect of what engaging in equity and the Global South means for Western universities, and they should not subsume the entire dialogue.

Power differentials within higher education globally are huge, but countries in the Global South do hold some strong cards.

As universities in Europe and the Global North face economic pressures at home, many are eagerly seeking new ways of generating income.

If they are to capture parts of emerging higher education markets, then Western institutions should build equity into the models they are trying to export. Carbon copies of the inequality-based models that Western nations have relied upon should not be accepted.

The global focus on what equitable access to and success in higher education means needs to be re-balanced, moving it away from a reliance on entirely Western problems and Western solutions. For this to happen, though, those outside the West need to take ownership of the issue.

Professor Graeme Atherton is director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN) and Professor Peter John is chair of WAHEN, and vice-chancellor of the University of West London, UK.