“Politics is for short-term cycles, education is for the long-term,” said Baroness Usha Prashar, independent member of the UK House of Lords, speaking at the Reinventing Higher Education conference 2025, led by IE University, in London.
Prashar told university leaders in the room that institutions must not get “buffeted by the political pressures of the day,” urging them to think creatively to find ways of preserving core values.
Prashar pointed to cases in the US where she said universities were being “creative” and giving equality initiatives different names to save them from abolition under Trump’s anti-DEI crusade.
The US is perhaps the most striking current example of education coming under political pressure as the Trump administration attempts to reshape American higher education.
Earlier this month, the government rolled out its so-called “compact” for higher education to all US colleges, promising preferential federal funding for institutions that agree to a slew of commitments widely seen as an attack on academic research and institutional autonomy.
Faith Abiodun, executive director of United World Colleges (UWC) international, echoed Prashar’s advocacy, stating: “We can’t leave education to political leaders”, and warning that isolated institutions were more likely to be targeted.
He highlighted the dilemma faced by many US universities, compelled to choose between following the “pseudo kings” or lose access to vital federal funding.
Abiodun said the US previously attracted 60% of UWC’s school graduates, funded by the world’s largest privately funded tertiary education scholarship, but that students were fast turning away from the destination.
While Europe has stepped up efforts to attract talent pivoting away from the US – evident in the European Commission’s recent “Choose Europe for Science” campaign – IE University president Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño emphasised international education wasn’t a “zero-sum game”.
“A number of continental European universities have benefitted from these increased barriers to mobility, but I don’t think it’s good news because in the end it puts up barriers to cross border mobility and good globalisation,” he told The PIE.
“Disruptions in the US are negative for all players.”
Amid heightened visa restrictions and increased compliance measures across all of the ‘big four’ study destinations, western universities are ramping up efforts to establish branch campuses to reach students in traditional source destinations.
While providing “rich educational opportunities” for students who otherwise might be unable to access an international education, as well as allowing students and faculty to travel between campuses, Iñiguez warned that TNE was “at once an opportunity and a threat” which in some ways represents a step backwards from globalisation.
Politics is for short-term cycles, education is for the long-term
Baroness Usha Prashar CBE, UK House of Lords
In the US, the impact of declining international enrolments has not been felt uniformly across institutions, with the University of Notre Dame seeing “almost exactly the same yield of international undergraduate and postgraduate students” this semester, Notre Dame vice president and associate provost, David Go, told delegates.
“As a research university in the pursuit of truth we can position ourselves as nonpartisan and independent.”
“Universities can and should be the place for difficult conversations, which is at the root of diplomatic activity,” said Go, highlighting a recent event at Notre Dame which hosted two governors – one democratic and one republican – to discuss how to disagree well.
“While the broader political discourse in the US favours disagreeing poorly, to have two of our leaders come and have that conversation helped at least reset some of that discourse,” he said.
Elsewhere, speakers emphasised the importance of institutional neutrality to create spaces where people can disagree, at a time when universities are under increased pressure to take a political stance.
Julie Sanders, vice chancellor of Royal Holloway University in the UK, highlighted the necessity of institutions fostering debate when the political sphere is becoming more binary.
For Sanders, universities should be places for intellectual debate but also places of refuge for migrant students, highlighting the UK’s Chevening Scholarship which is one of the routes through which the UK opened its doors to Gazan students fleeing the war.
