Higher Education

In this briefing note compendium, UNESCO IESALC presents the findings of a thematic consultation dedicated to rethinking merit and critically discussing the structural barriers surrounding this concept. The briefing note compendium presents experts’ views on the various challenges associated with merit and some ideas to restart the debate and promote the right to higher education from a social justice perspective.

Within this compendium is a paper published by Delphine Dorsi entitled 'Capacity or Merit? Rethinking notions in access to higher education', pp.18-19.

This report, jointly produced by Right to Education Initiative; La FAGE, Fédération des Associations Générales Etudiantes; and Global Students Forum, focuses on the right to higher education, questioning France’s compliance with its obligations regarding article 2.2 and article 13.2 (c) of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Higher education is part of the right to education, protected under international human rights law. This means that states have the obligation to protect respect and fulfil the right to higher education and that there are ways to hold them accountable for violations or deprivations of the right to higher education.

Delphine Dorsi, Director of Right to Education Initiative and Jamil Salmi, Global Tertiary Education Expert join Emma Sabzalieva, Head of Research and Foresight (UNESCO IESALC) to talk about inclusion policies and initiatives around the world and how they connect to the right to higher education. 

Higher education is too often dissociated from the right to education. In many countries tuition fees are on the rise, and only the privileged have access to, or succeed in completing, higher education, making it difficult to argue that there is an actual right to higher education to be enforced. However, international human rights law is clear: the right to education includes the obligation of states to ensure that higher education is made accessible to all based on capacity.

The number of forcibly displaced persons is on the rise worldwide, and they are displaced for increasingly protracted periods. Access to education for refugee children and youth remains a major concern, including at the higher education level. While data on refugee access to higher education remain scarce and incomplete, it is estimated that only 3 per cent of refugees were enrolled in higher education in 2021. This figure stands in contrast to a global gross enrolment ratio (GER)1 in higher education of 38 per cent worldwide in 2018.

In 1995, the parents of an Indian pupil brought a case against University of Natal because her application to medical school was rejected despite the satisfactory results she obtained in her qualifying examinations. They claimed that the admission process was discriminatory because it did not consider all the applications equally, but set higher admission standards for Indian students and lower ones for African students.