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  • NEWS FEATURE

The great university shake-up: four charts show how global higher education is changing

More students than ever are studying across international borders, but where and what they learn is shifting.
By
  1. Dan Garisto

    1. Dan Garisto is a science journalist in Syracuse, New York.

Conceptual illustration showing university students sitting at their desks on a plane.

Illustration by Paweł Jońca

If the 264 million students enrolled in higher education around the globe were a country, it would be the fifth most populous in the world. Some 53% of its citizens would identify as women and most would be located in Asia. Residents would speak and study in hundreds of languages, but English would dominate.

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Nature 645, 836-839 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03028-1

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