Today's guest, for the final episode of the season, is William C. Kirby, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and formerly that university’s dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. Two years ago he wrote a book called Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University for Germany to America to China. Dr. Kirby, having had the rare good fortune to teach in all three countries is extremely well-placed to talk about how the top institutions in all three have evolved over the decade.

Our guests this week are Andrea Petö from the Central European University in Vienna and Jo-Anne Dillabough of Cambridge University in the UK. These two are collaborators on the UK ESRC project Higher Education, States of Precarity and Conflict in the 'Global North' and 'Global South': UK, Hungary, South Africa, and Turkey and the Horizon Europe project Rising nationalisms, shifting geopolitics and the future of European higher education and research openness. In early May, they jointly penned an article for University World News entitled New Deceptions: How Illiberalism is hijacking the university. Today’s discussion ranges over the history of higher education (haven’t universities been illiberal for most of their history), institutional ownership (are private universities necessarily illiberal?) and the role of federalism in moderating illiberalism.

This week's guest is Dr. Gero Federkeil, head of international projects at the Centrum fur Hochschulenwicklung, or Center for Higher Education, in Gütersloh, Germany. He's with us to talk about two totally unrelated topics: the changing profile of university enrolments in Germany, and rankings — specifically U-Multirank.