IHE Spring Issue #126
From shrinking systems to shifting talent flows, evolving internationalization strategies, and the renegotiation of higher education's social compact.
The Spring 2026 issue of International Higher Education is now available!
In our Spring Issue (#126), authors examine what happens when the assumption that more students will always come finally breaks. For six decades, massification defined the modern university. Now, systems serving aging populations face enrollment declines and institutional consolidation, while systems serving large youth cohorts continue to expand, often without gains in quality or employment outcomes.
The issue explores:
Post-Massification System Challenges
Talent Mobility
Internationalization Strategies and Risks
Quality and Innovation
Student Success and Equity
The issue traces how China is shifting from expansion to governance amid intensified institutional stratification, how Germany is confronting declining enrollments and persistent underperformance in student completion, and how Anglophone Africa is grappling with rapid enrollment growth skewed toward low-cost disciplines and disconnected from labor market needs.
It explores how Japan and South Korea are leveraging international students’ social capital under demographic pressure, how Hong Kong is positioning itself as an education hub, and how Russia’s brain drain to China signals a shifting geography of academic mobility.
It also examines risks in international research collaboration, the state of internationalization strategies across Europe and the Western Balkans, what the 2025 Science Nobels reveal about research investment and global inequality, emerging trends in quality assurance, the role of innovative universities in system transformation, and persistent challenges in doctoral formation, equitable access, and university completion worldwide.
Philip G. Altbach, Founding Editor
Hans de Wit, Editor
Chris R. Glass, Editor
Gerardo Blanco, Associate Editor
Rebecca Schendel, Associate Editor
Thanks for the editorial. I work at a IS university abroad and it’s great to see how higher ed functions in other countries/regions besides the US & Western Europe. I’ve been aware of the population funnels in the global south for years, but it’s really interesting to think about the capacity and quality issues that they will face. I’m curious to see where higher education moves globally in the next five years. It will be interesting to touch base in 2031 and see!