The social role of universities has changed significantly since the end of World War II. This transformation, often referred to as the 20th-century boom in higher education, has left universities in developed countries facing serious financial and political challenges.

In the 20th century, the role of universities underwent a dramatic shift from elitist institutions that educated only a very small segment of the population to large, wide-ranging enterprises engaged in both research and the instruction of massive numbers of students.

At the end of the 19th century, there were about 80,000 university students in Europe. During the age of industrialization, the Humboldt-style university model began to spread, ushering in the expansion of higher education. By the 1930s, Europe had 650,000 university students, while the United States had already surpassed Europe with 1.1 million students. Women gained the right to attend university.

In 2023, there were 264 million university students worldwide. Excluding the African continent, most countries directed nearly half of their high school graduates toward higher education. Despite this expansion, Humboldt-style universities now represent only a small portion of global higher education institutions in the 21st century. Of the world's 23,000 universities, only about a thousand conduct the kind of research that underpins teaching. Research-intensive universities are global institutions; they recruit and teach on a global scale.

Universities in the midst of crises

In recent years, the higher education trends characteristic of the 20th century have begun to face strong headwinds — budget cuts, demographic pressure from shrinking and aging populations and the rise of populist political forces. Taken together, these factors point to a future in which talent increasingly prefers the private sector over academia.

In developed countries, universities are confronting societal and political shifts that could profoundly alter their future. An anti-globalization sentiment echoing the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) mindset is gaining ground, pressuring universities to abandon internationalization.

Universities are being accused of disregarding national interests in favor of global priorities. This pressure manifests in efforts to reduce the number of international students and faculty, suppress values that transcend national boundaries, restrict academic freedom and subject universities to political oversight.

Additionally, higher education in developed countries is experiencing a funding crisis, albeit unevenly across nations. In the United States, universities are grappling with major cuts to teaching and research imposed by the federal government, along with political pressure to reshape academic and research priorities. In the United Kingdom, underfunding is pushing some universities toward bankruptcy. In the Netherlands and Germany, universities are also facing central government austerity plans. Meanwhile, many private universities in Japan and South Korea are closing their doors, as aging societies have led to a steep decline in student numbers.

The decline in university funding and growing political pressure are clearly spilling over into the scientific sector. Global knowledge networks are shifting as science becomes increasingly multipolar, with a growing share of research activity now taking place in China.

Broadly speaking, universities today face three negative trends.

The first is the rise of anti-globalization attitudes that reject universal human rights and values, asserting national interests as supreme. These views are inherently anti-intellectual and stand in stark contrast to the rapid growth of higher education access and popularity in the 20th century, as well as the internationalization and spread of intellectual thought and its accompanying values.

The second is the funding crisis facing universal higher education in developed countries. This is partly due to the rapid increase in public debt across these nations over the past decade. High levels of government debt, combined with aging populations, are placing immense pressure on all public goods in the welfare state, most notably alongside healthcare, on science and higher education.

The third trend is societal aging and declining birthrates, which — together with the two trends above — are producing a slow but sweeping transformation in the role of universities as leaders within society.

Trends in Estonia

On December 1, 1919, when instruction began in Estonian at the University of Tartu, there were 347 students enrolled.

After a period of rapid growth in the 1990s, the number of students in Estonia has remained steady at between 43,000 and 45,000. According to forecasts, this number is expected to remain the same over the next decade. Therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that there is no anticipated increase in the academic talent pipeline in Estonia.

At the same time, the number of academic staff has increased, primarily due to government policy decisions. Over the next decade, the number of doctoral students and junior researchers — again as a result of state decisions — is expected to grow further: by 50 in 2026 and by 200 over the course of ten years.

However, alongside this increase, a new problem has emerged. The number and proportion of individuals involved in teaching at higher education institutions has declined. I see a major responsibility falling on universities to ensure that the growth in doctoral and junior research positions also supports the academic pipeline for higher education.

This trend is driven by the fact that Estonians are increasingly opting out of academic careers, which have become less attractive due to a combination of factors. Financial pressures and the influence of populist forces on universities are making academic paths less appealing, causing talent to shift from higher education into the private sector. Furthermore, within academic careers themselves, the balance between effort, compensation and job security has become misaligned for many talented young people and even for more experienced individuals considering a research career.

Weak points of an academic career

Based on what I've read and my personal experience, I've compiled the most critical factors affecting academic careers. Of the seven key points, three involve shared responsibility between the state and universities, while four depend largely on self-regulation within academia.

1. Structural changes in higher education institutions have reduced the number of long-term, secure positions. In some cases, researchers have to work under temporary contracts and with fluctuating incomes for over a decade before securing a stable job.
2. Salary competitiveness has declined. The wage gap is most pronounced in engineering, data science, law, economics and business.
3. Financial stability comes late in a researcher's life. The long path of doctoral and postdoctoral study means reaching stable income later in life, resulting in smaller pensions and more difficulty purchasing a home compared to peers who enter the workforce in other sectors after earning a master's degree.
4. Academic competition has intensified. The "publish or perish" race has passed a critical threshold of practicality. Quantity is killing quality. Researchers are increasingly becoming specialists in narrow subfields and less often intellectuals whose work involves reflection, experimentation, discovery and deep discussion. The pressure to publish and secure grants is now one of the main causes of stress, burnout and career change — and this stress often leads to questionable publishing practices.
5. Teaching is undervalued in the current metrics-based system. What's overlooked is that teaching is the first way knowledge flows from universities back into society through students and the fruits of an instructor's research reach society far more quickly this way than through English-language journal articles.
6. Intellectual curiosity and mental effort have been devalued compared to metrics. What once made an academic career attractive over one in business was that a person's work was valued based on intellectual rigor, not output volume. At 26, I chose to leave the business world for that reason, but I discovered that academia, too, is governed by a system of quantitative measurement where value is expressed in financial terms.
7. New generations place greater emphasis on flexibility and mobility. Academic careers, however, come with long lead times and are rigid, particularly when it comes to moving in and out of the university system.

What to do?

At the ministry, we are working to improve the stability of funding and to prioritize long-term support over short-term grants. It is often said that the high share of competitive funding is a problem, but in my view, the issue is not whether funding is allocated competitively — it's whether that funding is short-term, spanning just a year or two, or long-term. Estonia's misfortune is its heavy reliance on European Union funding for science, which is only awarded for short- or, at best, medium-term projects.

At the national level, we can adjust the balance between short- and long-term funding. The same can be done within university-level funding systems, though that naturally requires universities to assume some financial risk.

The salary situation for teaching academics is also difficult. Even more critical is the combination of three weak points in the academic career path: the long journey to even begin such a career, the low and unstable income during and after that period in certain sectors and the delayed arrival of financial stability. I call on the University of Tartu to engage with this issue and propose ways to shorten the academic career path and accelerate the path to stability.

But what can be done about the "publish or perish" culture? About the undervaluing of teaching? About the dominance of metrics and the lack of flexibility in academic careers?

Some solutions lie beyond the decisions of any one university or even the Estonian state, because higher education functions within a framework of international competition. But there are changes that are possible — for example, recognizing the value of teaching and improving flexibility in academic career paths.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries were a golden era for Estonian universities, marked by rapid growth in student numbers, a surge into the top ranks of global science, increasing internationalization, growing financial support and staffing, the swift development of all indicators at the University of Tartu and its physical expansion throughout the city. But the forces that enabled that rapid growth have now faded. Globalization is reversing course. There is less money and fewer students.

While we cannot yet fully predict how these global shifts will affect the future of Estonian universities, we do know how the current rules of the academic world are shaping young people's career choices. Changing those rules is in our own hands.

This commentary is based on a speech delivered at the University of Tartu Development Conference on October 27, 2025.

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