Shifting Soft Power in Education

Meredith Woo examines the global forces reshaping higher education, from rising state influence in Asia to growing nationalism and policy fragmentation in the U.S. She reflects on how government-led efforts in countries like China have rapidly expanded university capacity, while the U.S. faces challenges delivering on public policy goals. Woo warns that reduced global engagement and the erosion of academic freedoms threaten the foundational strengths of American universities. Still, she expresses optimism in institutions that remain focused, mission-driven, and supportive of their communities — reminding us that clarity of purpose and adaptability are key to navigating uncertainty.

We're living through a very very odd and interesting time. It's quite possible, but also not possible, that we are seeing retrenchment from globalism as evidenced maybe by tariffs, and trade blocks, and also by maybe lessening reliance on maybe the US dollar going forward. And if all these things happen, and if globalization, which was supported by, American leadership and responsibility around the world, militarily, economically as seen in the case of market and US dollars, and investment, and if in fact what we see is [a] retreat from globalization, then we'll see much more kind of nationalism, much more America firstism, much more of the sovereign government having a greater say on every aspect of the economy, culture, and higher education. And so we see that probably in many parts of East Asia. But we may be seeing it in this country as well. And so, I think it's something that most people will recoil when they hear this because autonomy is such an important part of the identity of higher education in this country. But when you actually think about it, the rise of [a] very important comprehensive research university also is inseparable from the involvement of the government in the research conducted by universities. And so, as states are, more or less, liberal global entities focused on what loosely one might call industrial policy and national policies, you might see opportunities actually for higher education in ways that you might not have imagined before. And so there are a lot of interesting experiments going on - and that's what's going on in East Asia will impact what goes on here which is unusual because it was always what happens here that was felt later on in other countries and everything that happened in America was a kind of mirror of the future. But you know, things are changing. I mean, you have for instance, in [the] People's Republic of China; [the] government simply declaring a policy where in the next X number of years, you're going to triple the number of truly worldclass universities and they've done it. Period. And they have far more engineering students than we do in this country. In fact, they produce [an] equal number of engineering students as we do all graduates from higher education period. And so, you know, it's [an] interesting kind of reverse picture that we're looking at today. And so, it'll be interesting what happens. You know, I think the impact of American education in different countries was less governmental than bilateral to the extent you're looking at universities with offshoots elsewhere. It was [an] example of American universities having campuses or faculty or exchange programs, or whatever with universities in different parts of the world. The overall trend of disengagement from the world is very worrisome, right? And the reduction in autonomy in this country for universities is worrisome. Denigration of freedom of speech and freedom of ideas in this country is worrisome because these were the things autonomy of thoughts and ideas and institutions, freedom of thoughts, freedom of ideas, these are the things that made American universities the places in heaven that everybody wanted to come to. And so for those reasons, I think it is very worrisome what is happening today. What gives me optimism is when I come to a place like this that knows what it's very good at doing and does it, right? And you know, in the case of ASU, it's because it is actually designed pretty well and constantly reinvents itself and seems pretty happy doing what it does. I mean, as a matter of fact, I was at the University of Michigan two weeks ago. I was happy to go back. And that place where I spent 10 happy years always seemed like a place that, in spite of the fact that it doesn't have its mission statement that anybody remembers, it does one thing really well. People are happy when they do research. They bury their nose in the grindstone, and they do research because that's what they do. And so when I see this incredible talent doing what they do really well, and they have an institution that allows them to do that really well, I'm really happy to see that, and that gives me optimism