The underfunding of higher education and the resulting lack of capacity; universities becoming more reluctant to collaborate due to geopolitical shifts and the imbalance between the Global South and the Global North are just some of the global, national and regional challenges facing universities today.

This is according to five leading academics who took part in the session titled Trends in Global and Regional Contexts of Universities, of the HELM Summit 2022 that wound up yesterday, online. The summit was organised by Universities South Africa’s (USAf’s) Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) programme, in collaboration with the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS), a representative association of Deans of Arts and Sciences in the United States of America.

The five scholars share their views below.