Transnational higher education (THE) has surged in Cameroon, accompanied by a structural pattern of predatory practice. This article reports a three-year nationwide investigation, led by senior officials within the national higher education authority, covering 46 authorised private higher education institutions (PHEIs), 429 delocalised programmes, and 13,611 students. Of the 378 programmes we could verify against foreign registers, 377 (99.7
More than a decade after Bridget Terry Long identified the supply side of higher education as a blind spot in the economics of education, the financial dimension of that supply side remains conspicuously undertheorized. This paper takes up that gap through the case of Chile’s gratuidad, a policy that offers an unusually revealing view of a broader shift in the political economy of higher education: the partial turn from student-financed, market-oriented systems back toward public financing, achieved not by restoring institutional revenue autonomy but by having the state set prices and cap enrollment. Introduced in 2016, gratuidad now provides free tuition to students from the poorest 60 percent of the income distribution at participating institutions and has generated a substantial body of research. Yet this literature has been almost entirely demand-oriented, examining who benefits, how enrollment patterns shift, and whether the policy advances equity. This conceptual paper argues that such questions, while important, are analytically incomplete: gratuidad is not only a subsidy to students but also a restructuring of institutional revenue, one that replaces a market-determined revenue stream with a regulated one capped in both price and quantity. While an established supply-side literature examines institutions as organizations, it has largely bracketed their financial capacity. Drawing on Winston’s (1999) institutional economics and Bowen’s (1980) revenue theory of costs, the paper develops a supply-side framework for evaluating higher education finance policy, organized around three questions, (1) whether institutional financial conditions predict student outcomes, (2) how institutions reallocate resources under regulated revenue constraints, and (3) whether the policy functions as a regulatory selection mechanism shaping institutional survival and illustrates their tractability with an exploratory analysis of institutional financial heterogeneity under gratuidad. The policy implication is direct: a free-tuition policy cannot be fully evaluated without understanding the financial conditions of the institutions charged with delivering it.
The European Universities Initiative seeks long-term structural cooperation through a funding model that remains largely project-based. This article examines when temporary supranational funding can generate resilient transnational capacity and how long, at what level and for which functions Erasmus+ should support European University Alliances. It combines documentary policy analysis, legal-status mapping of 65 funded alliances and eight Seal of Excellence alliances, and four policy scenarios. Withdrawal scenarios apply primarily to funded alliances; Seal holders are treated as boundary cases because they operate without dedicated EUI grants. Official evidence indicates growth in joint provision, mobility, governance, regional engagement and policy experimentation, but evaluation remains output-orientated and largely reflects periods of active funding. Twenty-one alliances have verified legal-personality pathways, concentrated in the earliest cohorts, indicating formalization rather than financial resilience. Scenario analysis suggests that abrupt withdrawal would produce differentiated outcomes shaped by resource capacity and perceived alliance value; central teams, shared platforms and alliance services are more exposed than embedded programmes and academic networks. Indefinite undifferentiated funding could reinforce project dependence. The article proposes an eight-to-ten-year staged transition, exceptionally extendable to twelve years, combining predictable EU support, capacity-sensitive co-financing, full-cost transparency and targeted funding for European public goods.
This article critically assesses the alignment between Morocco’s public guidance schemes for international students and its national development goals. Specifically, it investigates the capacity of these mechanisms to transform student mobility from a potential ‘brain drain’ into a tangible ‘brain gain’. Employing a qualitative case study approach, we conducted a systematic content analysis of 204 mobility programmes and scholarships promoted by the Ministry of Higher Education (2019–2022). These data were triangulated with semi-structured interviews with three key institutional stakeholders, selected through purposive sampling and analysed until theoretical saturation was achieved. The analysis reveals three structural weaknesses in the current policy framework: (1) a passive incentive strategy that focuses almost exclusively on funding while remaining disconnected from national skill shortages; (2) a ‘missing link’ regarding student support during the study-abroad period; and (3) a complete absence of institutional mechanisms for attracting and reintegrating graduates upon completion of their studies. Empirically, this study provides the first systematic mapping of Morocco’s outbound mobility arrangements. Theoretically, it proposes a three-phase analytical model—departure, sojourn, return—demonstrating how flawed career guidance policies can inadvertently institutionalise a passive brain drain pattern even when political discourse explicitly favours circular migration and human capital retention. The paper concludes with concrete recommendations for reframing Moroccan guidance policy and identifies the limits of guidance as a sovereign tool given the structural leverage held by destination countries.
This article examines professors from six academic disciplines at German universities as policy-relevant actors and investigates how political and party-political attitudes relate to their willingness to engage at the science–policy interface. Drawing on original survey data, we analyze professors’ preferences for direct cooperation with political actors using ordinary least squares regression models. We situate professors’ engagement within changing institutional expectations, the “mission dilemma” arising from expanding tasks beyond research and teaching, and the potential risk of politicization. Contrary to our initial expectations, most hypothesized relationships are not supported. Neither ideological orientation nor sympathy for specific political parties is significantly associated with professors’ willingness to cooperate with political actors. Political interest and cultural capital emerge as relevant factors. Overall, our findings challenge common assumptions about the relationship between professors’ political attitudes and their willingness to engage in policy advice in Germany.
