Jenny J. Lee

World Yearbook of Education 2026 discusses the shifting geopolitics of Higher Education, directly engaging with an urgent call to theorize the academy as a site of power, politics, protest, and possibility. The volume brings together leading and new generations of thinkers from across the globe who draw on theoretical resources from sociology, politics, international relations, geography, gender studies, cultural studies, and post- and decolonial studies. Taken together, the chapters show how these epistemic resources can help us understand the current state of affairs in higher education and beyond. They reflect key dimensions of shifting geopolitics and their impact on higher education: multipolar superpower rivalry, autocratic populism, decolonial justice, and digital transformations. By anchoring the study of higher education in prevailing geopolitical tensions, the volume seeks to uncover the critical role of the university in contemporary global politics. By exploring higher education as a central institution caught within competing visions of world order, one rooted in international cooperation, another asserting the nation-state, and yet another challenging the very notion of the university as territorially fixed, the book offers a perspective on the university, which is in line with pivotal global developments. It is a must-read book for anyone interested in the new geopolitics of higher education and the future of the university globally.

This book, World Yearbook of Education 2026: The Shifting Geopolitics of Higher Education, directly engages with an urgent call to theorize the academy as a site of power, politics, protest, and possibility, drawing on theoretical resources from sociology, politics, international relations (IR), geography, gender studies, cultural studies, and post- and decolonial studies.

The 2018 China Initiative systematically targeted international Chinese scholars as possible spies for China. Previous research has demonstrated ways that the China Initiative engaged in racial profiling, resulting in scholars of Chinese descent feeling unwelcomed in U.S. higher education institutions and insecure in their engagement as researchers. Graduate students were not exempt. Using descriptive analyses and proportion tests, this study explores the nuanced ways that Chinese graduate students felt discriminated against and racially profiled in comparison to their non-Chinese peers during the height of the U.S. China Initiative. Framed by neo-racism, this research also assesses how those experiences impacted students’ future educational mobility plans. Chinese graduate students feel more targeted than their non-Chinese peers and they expressed an interest in leaving the United States due to these negative perceptions. As international Chinese enrollments in the United States are declining, our study seeks to identify the factors that may contribute to this trend.

While numerous case studies examined the effect of COVID-19 on international students, there has been limited scholarly attention on comprehensive crisis management strategies. Comparing crisis management strategies between the United States (US) and South Korea, this research aimed to explore international student crisis management strategies practiced at the onset of COVID-19, along with the stated rationales for the strategies. This study collected 119 news articles from the US and 90 from South Korea about ‘COVID-19’ and ‘international students’ from January to September 2020. Prominent rationales stated in both the US and Korea were students’ Health & Security and Humanitarianism & Human Rights. Korean Universities prioritized moral rationales over Economic or Political benefits of recruiting international students, which was assumed to be a practice of East Asia’s collectivist and Confucian culture. Also, Immigration & Legal Support was prioritized among universities in the US, where the government took relatively aggressive measures on visa restrictions. Despite growing interest in how universities should take the role of providing public good in higher education internationalization; Cosmopolitan Learning & Campus Diversity rationales were emphasized in neither countries.

Given the geopolitical tensions involving western nations with China and Russia, this paper investigates the extent to which China and Russia have turned toward one another, or increased their scientific collaboration. It uses bibliometric data to examine trends in China-Russia co-publications from 2013 to 2022 and the value that collaboration ...

The 2018 China Initiative systematically targeted international Chinese scholars as possible spies for China. Previous research demonstrated ways that the China Initiative engaged in racial profiling, resulting in scholars of Chinese descent feeling unwelcomed in U.S. higher education institutions and insecure in their engagement as researchers. Graduate students were not exempt. This study explores the nuanced ways that Chinese graduate students felt discriminated against and racially profiled in comparison to their non-Chinese peers during the height of the U.S. China Initiative. Additionally, this research assesses how those experiences impacted students’ future educational mobility plans. As international Chinese enrollments in the United States are declining, our study seeks to identify the factors that may be contributing to this trend.

This study investigates the quality and intensity of collaborations between US and Chinese scientists. It examines differences in the self-reported roles and responsibilities of scientists across three groups: US Chinese, US non-Chinese, and China-based scientists, and the reasons why such differences may have emerged. The study employed a sequential exploratory mixed methods design, collecting interview and survey data from US-based and China-based scientists who co-published articles related to COVID-19. The findings generally showed that Chinese scientists in the US and China were more highly involved in research projects compared to their non-Chinese counterparts. Higher levels of involvement included greater intellectual contributions, more time and energy exerted, and more financial and material support provided. The findings also revealed that differences between the three groups of scientists can be explained by the US non-Chinese scientists’ limited involvement in many projects, by the US Chinese scientists’ transmigrant experiences and their embeddedness in transnational guanxi networks, and by the focus of many projects being on COVID-19 in China.