Host Alex Usher interviews Dr. Lily Yang (University of Hong Kong) about her book, Higher Education State and Society, comparing Chinese and Anglo-American higher education as distinct cultural worldviews rather than just systems. Yang argues cultural traditions shape how concepts like the person/individual, equity, society, and the public good are understood, and why key ideas do not translate cleanly across contexts. They discuss similarities and deeper differences in student development, contrasting human-capital and tuition-fee rationales with China’s view of higher education as a state-supported apparatus serving broader social goods. Yang explains China’s historically encompassing notion of state and society, differing meanings of liberty versus jǐ (free will), and culturally bounded university autonomy and academic freedom.

👉 Episode Links:

• Higher Education State and Society, Comparing The Chinese and Anglo-American Approaches

In this episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast, host Alex Usher speaks with Saeid Golkar, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, about the structure, politics, and recent turmoil within Iran’s higher education system. The conversation explores how Iran built a large but highly centralized university system, the role of elite public institutions and the vast semi-private sector such as the Islamic Azad University, and the state’s extensive ideological oversight of universities.

Golkar also discusses the surprising rise of Iran as a major contributor to global scientific output in the early 2000s and the more recent challenges facing the sector—including demographic decline, economic pressures, and a growing brain drain. The episode examines the historical and ongoing role of students in Iranian politics, from the 1979 revolution to the protests of recent decades, and how universities have become key sites of political dissent. Together they unpack the complex relationship between higher education, state power, and social change in contemporary Iran.

👉 Episode Links:

• Register for free: Focus Friday March 13 | Using AI Across an Institution
• HESA Transnational Education Strategy Project | Learn More

In this episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast, host Alex Usher speaks with Georgi Stoytchev about the structure and future of higher education in Bulgaria.

They discuss how the system evolved after the fall of socialism, the role of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as the country’s main research hub, and Bulgaria’s distinctive national university ranking system, which uses administrative and graduate earnings data and is linked to performance-based funding.

The conversation also touches on a recent tuition fee controversy, the involvement of Gen Z in anti-corruption protests, and the demographic pressures that are likely to shape the future of Bulgarian higher education.

👉 Episode Links:

• Open Society Institute
• Register for free: Focus Friday March 13 | Using AI Across an Institution
• HESA Transnational Education Strategy Project | Learn More