Shaping the future of higher education: Launch of UNESCO’s global trends report

The second panel focused on the global dimension of higher education transformation, emphasizing the importance of trust, student mobility, and system interoperability. In this context, data from the report shows that the number of students going abroad for higher education has more than tripled over the past two decades, rising from 2.1 million in 2000 to nearly 7.3 million in 2023. Yet mobility benefits only 3% of the global student population, with significant regional disparities. In this context, refugee students account for only 9%, a low number for a population that moves by need and not by choice.

Another positive aspect of internationalization has been the increase in intra-regional mobility, which is reshaping previous patterns and strengthening mobility within regions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the share of intra-regional mobility rose from 24% to 43% between 2000 and 2022, with Argentina as the leading destination. Internationally mobile students from the Arab States are increasingly concentrated in the Gulf countries and Jordan, marking a shift away from the dominance of Western Europe and North America a decade earlier.

In this global context, the role of UNESCO's global and regional conventions on the recognition of qualifications, along with networks of recognition authorities and the UNESCO Passport, was highlighted as critical to enabling fair, transparent, and inclusive student mobility. These mechanisms provide flexible pathways for recognizing qualifications for all, including refugees and displaced persons. Through these initiatives, UNESCO has fostered an ecosystem that facilitates multilateralism and collaboration among countries.

Among the barriers that hinder the development of student mobility in some regions are lack of funding, political conflicts, safety concerns, and family expectations-for instance, affecting female students in certain contexts. These challenges call for the implementation of equity mechanisms to support mobility, particularly for equity-deserving groups. However, identifying gaps in higher education systems and designing more inclusive and sustainable policies-beyond access-requires stronger global data systems to transform knowledge into action.