Host Alex Usher speaks with Nicholas Dirks about the realities of university leadership amid financial pressures, political scrutiny, and growing institutional constraints. Drawing on his experience at Columbia and UC Berkeley, Dirks reflects on navigating crises around academic freedom and campus governance, and why meaningful reform in higher education is so difficult to achieve. The conversation also explores debates around institutional neutrality, interdisciplinarity, and what changes may be necessary for universities to adapt to an increasingly uncertain future.

👉 Episode Links:

• City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University
• Focus Friday

Host Alex Usher speaks with Daniel Collier and Michael Kofoed about the uncertain status and evolving role of the U.S. Department of Education under the Trump administration. They unpack why the department still exists despite efforts to dismantle it, and what that reveals about the limits of executive power.

The conversation explores key policy shifts around student aid, accreditation, and DEI, and how legally fragile or unclear directives are shaping institutional behaviour across higher education. They also examine major changes to student loan repayment, including the move to a new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), and what it means for borrowers.

Collier and Kofoed reflect on the risks of governing through executive action and how upcoming political shifts could reshape the future of federal higher education policy.

👉 Episode Links:

• “A New Attitude: Why McMahon Isn’t DeVos 2.0” (Inside Higher Ed) by Daniel Collier
• Focus Friday: Online & Distance Learning (April 17) | Register for free

Host Alex Usher speaks with Chang Da Wan about the evolution of strategic planning in Malaysian higher education, from decades-long national development plans to the newly released Higher Education Blueprint (2026–2035). They explore how a deeply embedded planning culture has shaped the system—and whether it has truly delivered on its ambitions.

The conversation examines the blueprint’s structure, including its ten policy pillars, the continued influence of neoliberal governance and performance metrics, and concerns about limited transparency and top-down decision-making. They also discuss major policy questions around pre-university pathways, equity, and the complexities of managing multiple admission systems.

The episode further looks at emerging priorities such as student wellbeing, the challenges of measuring non-academic outcomes, and the uncertain role of technology in future planning. Chang Da Wan reflects on what may be missing from the current blueprint—and what the next generation of reforms will need to address about the purpose and future of universities in Malaysia.

👉 Episode Links:

• Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint (2026–2035)
• Focus Friday: Online & Distance Learning (April 17) | Register for free

Host Alex Usher speaks with Dr. Pushkar about the shifting landscape of higher education in India. They examine a proposed new centralized regulator, ongoing funding challenges, and the growing divide between top institutions and the rest of the system.

The episode also looks at the rise of foreign branch campuses, India’s ambitions in AI education, and concerns about academic quality and research integrity.

👉 Episode Links:

• WorldEd 2.4: Higher Education in India
• HESA's Transnational Education Strategy Project

Host Alex Usher speaks with Jisun Jung, Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, about South Korea’s fast-moving higher education policy landscape amid a steep youth-population decline. They discuss the “Zombie University” law encouraging struggling private institutions to close voluntarily through compensation tied to selling assets, while public universities are pushed to merge into larger regional flagships. Jung assesses Korea’s rapid growth to 300,000 international students, warning that some regional institutions enroll students who primarily work. The conversation also covers the government’s “10 Seoul National Universities” regional investment strategy, the prolonged medical student strike triggered by a sudden plan to add 3,000 medical seats, the Yonsei AI-cheating scandal and uneven institutional responses, heavy national investment aimed at becoming a top-three AI power, and the small but concerning right-wing youth movement dubbed “Freedom University.”

👉 Episode Links:

• WorldEd 2.31: Korean Higher Education
• Focus Friday March 27: Industry-Institutional Partnerships

Host Alex Usher interviews Dr. Lily Yang (University of Hong Kong) about her book, Higher Education State and Society, comparing Chinese and Anglo-American higher education as distinct cultural worldviews rather than just systems. Yang argues cultural traditions shape how concepts like the person/individual, equity, society, and the public good are understood, and why key ideas do not translate cleanly across contexts. They discuss similarities and deeper differences in student development, contrasting human-capital and tuition-fee rationales with China’s view of higher education as a state-supported apparatus serving broader social goods. Yang explains China’s historically encompassing notion of state and society, differing meanings of liberty versus zhi (free will), and culturally bounded university autonomy and academic freedom.

👉 Episode Links:

• Higher Education State and Society, Comparing The Chinese and Anglo-American Approaches

In this episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast, host Alex Usher speaks with Saeid Golkar, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, about the structure, politics, and recent turmoil within Iran’s higher education system. The conversation explores how Iran built a large but highly centralized university system, the role of elite public institutions and the vast semi-private sector such as the Islamic Azad University, and the state’s extensive ideological oversight of universities.

Golkar also discusses the surprising rise of Iran as a major contributor to global scientific output in the early 2000s and the more recent challenges facing the sector—including demographic decline, economic pressures, and a growing brain drain. The episode examines the historical and ongoing role of students in Iranian politics, from the 1979 revolution to the protests of recent decades, and how universities have become key sites of political dissent. Together they unpack the complex relationship between higher education, state power, and social change in contemporary Iran.

👉 Episode Links:

• Register for free: Focus Friday March 13 | Using AI Across an Institution
• HESA Transnational Education Strategy Project | Learn More

In this episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast, host Alex Usher speaks with Georgi Stoytchev about the structure and future of higher education in Bulgaria.

They discuss how the system evolved after the fall of socialism, the role of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as the country’s main research hub, and Bulgaria’s distinctive national university ranking system, which uses administrative and graduate earnings data and is linked to performance-based funding.

The conversation also touches on a recent tuition fee controversy, the involvement of Gen Z in anti-corruption protests, and the demographic pressures that are likely to shape the future of Bulgarian higher education.

👉 Episode Links:

• Open Society Institute
• Register for free: Focus Friday March 13 | Using AI Across an Institution
• HESA Transnational Education Strategy Project | Learn More