While higher education and research are widely recognized as crucial for social and economic development, those responsible for planning and delivering these vital services will face formidable challenges in coming years. In many countries, higher education systems will struggle to sustain coherence in the face of: resource challenges driven by scarcity of public funding; demographic change, with a number of countries facing significant population ageing and changes in ethnic mix, and others stretched by growing numbers of young people; heightened national and international competition for students and research funds; growing expectations from those who provide support for higher education of […] …