Beijing could ban its students from going abroad as the ¡°drive for ideological control¡± sidelines Western universities from ¡°Xi?Jinping¡¯s China dream¡±, an?Australian conference has heard.

Canadian strategist Alex Usher said a?scenario in?which China ¡°turns off the tap of?international students¡± ¨C unthinkable a?couple of?years back ¨C was now a?distinct possibility that many Western countries had failed to?appreciate.

¡°[It] has gotten to the point where it¡¯s conceivable that China just says, ¡®We don¡¯t need the West any more,¡¯¡± Mr Usher told the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit. Beijing could decide that the ¡°ideological cost¡± of?international education was just too high, although there were signs that it also objected to the financial cost.

¡°Nobody knows what would happen if you suddenly had a catastrophic loss of Chinese students,¡± Mr Usher told the summit. In?North America, ¡°a?lot of?science and engineering labs¡­would basically shut down. That has an impact not just on universities and university finances, but on the whole innovation flow.¡±

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He said Australia had already faced China tensions ¡°as much as anyone other than the US. It¡¯s really starting to close borders as far as scientific cooperation is concerned. Higher education institutions are increasingly¡­in the sights of national security.¡±

A former director of Canada¡¯s Educational Policy Institute, Mr Usher now heads the Higher Education Strategy Associates consultancy in Toronto. He said Covid-19, Joe Biden¡¯s election as US president and the ¡°culture wars¡± were the other major recent developments impacting higher education globally.

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¡°The culture wars¡­are making some types of governments much more sceptical about universities at exactly the time universities need more government money,¡± he said. This had happened in the US, where some states were ¡°interfering¡± in the teaching of history, and was behind Australia¡¯s fee changes to make the humanities ¡°less financially rewarding¡±.

¡°It¡¯s the kind of thing you see in Hungary and Poland and much of the ex-Soviet Union. Universities like to think of themselves as being neutral bodies [that] can work with governments of any sort¡±, and being perceived as political combatants was ¡°a?real challenge. It¡¯s not a place that universities have been, in the West anyway, since World War Two.¡±

Mr Usher said new pedagogies and credentials were among the ¡°most interesting¡± things to come out of the pandemic, with a ¡°strong minority¡± of students happy to persist with online education while new credentials promised ¡°real renewal in lifelong learning. The problem is, doing that stuff well requires economies of scale.¡±

He said the sale of the edX online learning platform was perhaps the ¡°biggest story¡± of 2021. ¡°MIT and Harvard, which between them have $70?billion (?50.4?billion) in endowments, decided they didn¡¯t have enough money to keep up with the private sector in terms of having a good user experience in higher education. If that¡¯s true, I?don¡¯t know what chance the rest of us have.¡±

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Mr Usher said universities had become ¡°more attuned to political needs¡± as they confronted the scarcity of funding. While many had embraced sustainable development goals to articulate their missions, they described these ¡°ostensibly global¡± aspirations in primarily local terms. ¡°They use a global imagery but it¡¯s fiercely local, because they¡¯re terrified of what¡¯s going to happen if they are seen to be offside with local communities.¡±

Mr Usher said funding would remain an overriding concern for universities around the world. ¡°[Those in] countries that that have been dependent on government rather than fees have done very well through Covid so far. But in the medium to longer term, they¡¯re going to do the worst because they don¡¯t have the ability to get new funds.

¡°The appetite for more domestic fees is low. Left and populist governments alike [are] unlikely to concur with domestic tuition increases. What that means is you will see people cranking up competition for what I?call free market students ¨C students who pay a market rate. The fight for those students is going to be much more intense than it used to be, and that includes from the?US.¡±

Australian universities might be unrealistic if they imagine they can transition to ¡°a?new business model that¡¯s less dependent on offshore students,¡± he warned. ¡°I¡¯m not sure anybody else thinks that¡¯s possible.¡±

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com