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The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (launched in March 2026) and the Higher Education Global Trends Report (launched in this May) highlighted a worsening education crisis characterized by stalled access and widening economic inequalities. The reports provide important data that can assist the EU policy makers to guide higher education systems and policies at the time when the world enters the final years to achieve SDG-4 and shape the post-2030 agenda.
Background: reports’ key findings
= Rising Out-of-School Rates: There are now 273 million children and young people out of school—the seventh consecutive year of increase; this translates to more than one in six children globally, driven heavily by armed conflict, deepening poverty and rapid population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.
= Sluggish Completion Rates: At the current pace of the past 25 years, it will take the world about 80 years to achieve a 95% upper secondary completion rate.
= Higher Education Expansion vs. Inequality: Higher education enrollment has more than doubled over the last 20 years. However, severe disparities persist: a joint UNESCO and UNICEF study notes that household wealth and economic inequality deeply shape educational outcomes, from early childhood and preschool to tertiary levels.
= Early Childhood Education: While participation has grown, only 60% of primary students had at least one year of pre-primary education, and gaps between the poorest and richest remain stagnant in several regions.
Source and citation from: UNESCO- 2026 GEM Report “Access and equity: countdown to 2030”, in: https://www.unesco.org/reports/gem-report/en/2026
Note. The UNESCO Higher Education Policy Observatory (as a global information resource), covers nearly 150 countries and includes over 50 policy indicators and the full range of higher education statistics monitored by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).
More on Observatory in: https://hepo.iesalc.unesco.org/pc/page/home/
Enrolment issues
Thirty-five per cent of young people are enrolled in bachelor, masters and doctoral programs (ISCED levels 6-8), up from 27% a decade earlier: this represents 213 million students globally, or 269 million when short-cycle programs (ISCED 5) are included.
Bachelor programs account for the majority of enrolments (85%), followed by masters (13%) and doctoral programs (2%). Between 1998 and 2023, among 158 countries, the share of those with 12 years of compulsory education has increased from 8% to 26%; among 130 countries, the average duration of free education increased from 10 years to 10.8 years.
Women outnumber men in higher education and perform better, but not at senior levels. The female gross graduation ratio (30%) exceeds the overall ratio (27%).
Yet, women remain under-represented at the doctoral level and in senior academic leadership: i.e. in the academic workforce, they make up 44% of teaching personnel while holding only about one quarter of senior leadership roles.
More in: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/number-students-higher-education-more-doubled-20-years-inequalities-remain
While national policies prioritise access, completion rates reveal disparities: in several global regions, graduation levels remain well below enrolment levels. This gap is especially pronounced in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the gross enrolment ratio in ISCED 6-8 reached 53% in 2023, compared to just 24% for the gross graduation ratio.
Expanding access rarely automatically translates into equitable higher education outcomes; thus, support mechanisms throughout the higher education journey – such as financial aid and academic mentoring – can be necessary to fully benefit from higher education opportunities. With 1.4 billion students enrolled in school globally in 2024, enrolment had increased by 327 million, or 30%, in primary and secondary education since 2000. It also increased by 45% in pre-primary and by 161% in post-secondary education.
Source: https://www.unesco.org/reports/gem-report/en/2026
Investment issues
Affordability continues to be a major bottleneck. Globally, governments spend an average of 0.8% of GDP on tertiary education, with spending ranging from below 0.3% in low-income countries to over 1.5% in high-income systems.
Although government expenditure per student remains higher than that of households in most countries, governments are increasingly shifting some of the cost burden through introducing or raising tuition fees and relying on private providers.
Thirty-one per cent of countries legally mandate tuition-free public higher education. Yet, what countries consider tuition-free differs widely, pointing to a lower rate in practice; about 62% offer publicly funded national scholarship program, but these often focus on merit rather than need and rarely address non-tuition costs.
Only a minority have implemented equity-sensitive funding formulae or income-contingent loan schemes that address the structural barriers marginalised groups face, such as Australia, Chile and the Philippines.
Fiscal tightening in many contexts is intensifying the strain on higher education institutions, calling on innovative financing models to deliver quality, inclusive higher education. Performance-based funding of higher education institutions is growing, particularly in Europe but remains uneven.
In post-secondary education, 1 in 3 countries charge no tuition in public universities, almost 1 in 2 countries subsidize student housing, 4 in 10 support transport, and just under 3 in 10 subsidize textbooks.
Students’ mobility: shifting trends
Student mobility – one of the sector’s most powerful tools for international cooperation – reached 7.3 million students in 2023, tripling in the last 20 years. Despite this growth, it still benefits less than 3% of the global student cohort. Seven countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, the Russian Federation and France) have consistently hosted half of all international students over the past decade.
At the same time, new mobility patterns are emerging. Countries such as Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates have seen student numbers increase at least fivefold in the past decade, now closely trailing France. Intra-regional mobility is also on the rise. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the share of students studying within the region grew from 24% to 43% over the past two decades, with Argentina as a leading destination.
The largest portion of students from the Arab States are now in the Gulf countries and Jordan, compared to Western Europe and North America a decade ago. Ensuring the fair, transparent and non-discriminatory recognition of higher education qualifications is essential to making mobility more equitable. Seventy-five per cent of countries have policies in place to recognise foreign qualifications.
Note. Nearly 100 have joined the UNESCO Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education and one or more UNESCO regional recognition conventions (including the 1997 Lisbon Convention for Europe, 2011 Tokyo Convention for Asia and the Pacific, 2014 Addis Convention for Africa, 2019 Buenos Aires Convention for Latin America and the Caribbean and 2022 Arab States Convention), contributing to a global space of cooperation and solidarity.
Governance aspects in education policy
Higher education governance models often seek to balance public oversight with institutional autonomy. Most countries have established national legal frameworks to regulate the sector, with around 88% overseeing it at the national level. In half of all cases, responsibility lies directly with a ministry or equivalent authority.
While 67% of countries formally guarantee institutional autonomy, its implementation varies considerably. Academic freedom, legally protected in 65% of cases, has reportedly declined in at least 34 countries over the past decade.
The capacity of higher education institutions to deliver quality teaching, research and innovation is closely linked to how well academic staff are supported.
More than two-thirds (69%) of countries prioritise career and professional development in national higher education plans, while a minority explicitly refer to improving academic staff’s well-being.
Source: https://indico.un.org/event/1023371/timetable/?view=standard_numbered
Digital transformation is also reshaping the sector. More than 60% of faculty report using AI in their work, yet 80% indicate that their institutions lack clear guidance on its use. While digital technologies and AI create new learning opportunities, they also raise ethical concerns and risk widening inequalities. While the UN-2030 Agenda acknowledged that governments should set their own national targets based on their circumstances, little was done in this way, with education a notable exception. Since 2022, 80% of countries have communicated national targets for eight indicators to be achieved by 2030, with progress monitored annually by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the GEM Report.
Source and citations used in the article are from: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260513111529544.
Among the authors of the mentioned commentaries are: B. Chakroun, director of the Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems at UNESCO and interim director of UNESCO IESALC. V. Gutovic, the head of UNESCO IESALC’s policy analysis and international cooperation portfolio, and M. Bouckaert serves as a policy analyst.
The European content
The Council of the European Union has agreed a position on the next Erasmus+ program (2028-2034) that would see a broadening of its remit and of future opportunities for non-EU countries to participate in some activities. The council has agreed to propose extending the scope of the program and extending access to more non-EU countries via a new option of “partial association”. However, the “position” did not respond to calls from the states to raise the budget from €40.8 billion to €60 billion; or the call from the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education, to raise it to €58 billion to support the proposed ambitious additional education actions.
Reference to the Council proposal for a regulation (May, 2026) at: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8265-2026-INIT/en/pdf
Under the proposal, the Erasmus+ program will continue to support youth exchanges and DiscoverEU strategy, through which young people travel and explore the diversity of Europe and learn about European cultural heritage and history. The Council has agreed to rename the “Erasmus+ scholarships” as “talent and excellence development opportunities”, broadening the scope of the new initiative to include other programs with a transnational dimension beyond joint study programs.
Erasmus+ will also help accelerate new practices that improve the quality and relevance of education, training and youth systems across Europe at national, regional and local levels.
The EU-wide proposed program for 2028-2034 reflects a continued evolution beyond traditional student mobility, supporting skills development, institutional cooperation and lifelong learning across education and training systems. The future program is structured around two main pillars: learning opportunities for all; capacity building through cooperation between organisations and institutions and support for policy development.
The proposal provides for a budget for Erasmus+ of €40.8 billion – which reflects a 30% increase compared to the combined budget of €27.7 billion for Erasmus+ and the ESC in 2025; but the actual budget will be agreed upon during the negotiations on the next MFF covering the period 2028 to 2034.
Source and citations from: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260514111351802
The Council’s position recognises the role of European Universities alliances and explicitly states that Erasmus+ should sustainably support the core education mission of the alliances, enabling systemic impact through long-term union-level action. According to the Council, the European Universities Alliances represent a group of European higher education institutions, that have entered into transnational long-term, structural cooperation that is offering joint education provision, aiming at high-quality education, knowledge transfer, high levels of mobility, research and innovation in “servicing the society”.
Source: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8265-2026-INIT/en/pdf