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journals and to top positions in global rankings have become
driving forces for internationalization and mobility. Increasing
the numbers of international students and scholars and of
coauthored international publications are driving rationales for
national and institutional internationalization schemes (de Wit
and Altbach, 2021). The Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated
the importance of the knowledge economy and of internatio-
nal cooperation, but the recent geopolitical tensions endanger
international cooperation and stimulate knowledge security by
national governments.
Where massification results in the call for more and di-
verse higher education institutions with challenges of quality
overall and in particular of research, the knowledge economy
calls for more excellence in education and in research. Many
governments, in particular in the global North but increasin-
gly also in the South, have created excellence programs and
investment schemes to become more competitive globally,
develop world-class universities, and move higher in the ran-
kings. In other words, “On the one hand, there is a call for
increased access and equity, while at the same time, govern-
ments and institutions of higher education are striving to reach
excellence in research and teaching and learning.” (De Wit
and Altbach, 2023) These Excellence initiatives have brought
about a differentiation within national systems, by separating
an elite sector of world-class level universities from other, more
nationally and regionally oriented, research universities. Ran-
kings—national, regional, global, institutional, by discipline,
and across an increasing number of other dimensions—have
come to play a central role in the construction of excellence
schemes.

Future implications and commitments

Massification and related privatization, the strive for excellen-
ce and internationalization have defined the past decades in
higher education. It has resulted in a more neoliberal empha-

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