Page 36 - UNAM-GCUB2022

more, as is common in high-income countries. Even in coun-
tries in Africa, still at the “elite” phase with a GER of less than
15 percent, the demand for higher education is rapidly expan-
ding as a result of improved primary and secondary education
and an emerging middle-class. On the other hand, in countries
that have already moved far beyond a 50 percent GER (“uni-
versal enrollment”), such as in Canada, Japan, South Korea,
the U.K., and the U.S., continental Europe, and Australia, for
demographic and other reasons, the supply of tertiary places
is starting to exceed demand, in particular in STEM fields. (De
Wit and Altbach, 2021).
The implications of this massification process for higher
education are diverse. In the first place, it has resulted in a
substantive increase in private higher education, in particu-
lar in the Global South, by lack of sufficient public resources.
This private sector in many countries has even surpassed the
public sector, in number of institutions as well as students.
Latin America is an example and within that region countries
like Brazil and Mexico. This private sector also increasingly is
for-profit and that part of the private sector – compared to the
not-for-profit and public sector – in general operates at the
lower quality level of higher education.
In the second place, it has stimulated international de-
gree mobility of students, looking for a study opportunity el-
sewhere by lack of (quality) offer at home. This has resulted
in an ongoing increase of numbers of international students to
over 5 million before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, then
stopped drastically in 2020-2021 and is picking up again in
2022-2023. Although the pandemic in combination with other
factors, such as geopolitical tensions with China and Russia,
has its impact on mobility patterns and numbers, the mid- and
long-term implications are still difficult to foresee. India seems
to have passed China as the main sending country and the
market share of the main English-speaking and teaching re-
ceiving countries is under pressure from more regional pla-
yers in the Global South.

36