The Sustainable Development Goals are framed around the notion of leaving no one behind and prioritizing those most marginalized. These objectives are not being met for higher education due to the prioritization of international scholarship aid and the comparative neglect of other types of support for higher education in countries requiring assistance. Changes are needed by 2030, and strengthening higher education in lower-income countries needs to be a priority of the post-2030 global development plan.

Since 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been the main global agenda for development. The SDGs are framed around the notion of leaving no one behind and prioritizing those most marginalized. Unlike previous global development plans, the SDGs include higher education in the broader agenda but do not envisage any support for countries that require assistance to ensure quality, access, and inclusion in higher education. Indeed, Target 4b only calls for the provision of scholarships to citizens of “least developed countries, small island states and other African countries” to study in other countries.

We studied official development assistance (ODA) to higher education during the first seven years of the SDG implementation (2016–2022), focusing on ODA flows from bilateral and multilateral donors, as reported to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Our findings indicate that the SDGs have had a significant impact on most donors’ choices regarding the types of ODA to higher education granted to recipient countries, prioritizing international scholarships over investing in local higher education systems that require support. Donors have also provided most of the ODA to a select number of recipients that are not considered countries most in need of assistance, while overlooking countries with greater needs. In this article, we discuss the implications of these findings and reflect on the remaining period of the SDG implementation and the planning beyond 2030.

Politics of Foreign Aid

The allocation of ODA is primarily influenced by strategic, geopolitical, economic, and other interests and considerations of donors. This often contributes to geographic inequalities and misalignment between the provision of funding and needs on the ground. This can also significantly impact the types of ODA provided to recipient countries. Importantly, while bilateral donors tend to focus on achieving their strategic interests when providing ODA, multilateral donors have a degree of autonomy and their own strategic priorities. This allows them to make decisions about ODA provision informed by recipients’ needs instead of being driven primarily by strategic interests of individual donor countries. While foreign aid to higher education is seen as an important mechanism aimed at addressing systemic and structural challenges in recipient countries, this type of aid is frequently used to achieve strategic and other priorities of donor countries, and even some multilateral donors.

Importance of Higher Education

Higher education is key for socioeconomic development and progress in any country. The sector is responsible for conducting scholarly research and developing new knowledge, in addition to training skilled professionals. Higher education institutions act as spaces where existing ideas and conceptions of underdevelopment, inequality, development, progress, and sustainability are critiqued and debated, old concepts are refined, and new ones are developed. The role of higher education is particularly important in low-income countries that often struggle with socioeconomic, developmental, environmental, and other challenges. In these countries, a well-capacitated higher education sector can contribute to sustainable development through education, capacity-building, skills development, and research.

Neglect of Higher Education in Low-Income Countries

Higher education has faced decades of challenges in many low-income countries, both in terms of prioritization and support from local authorities and international donors. Since the 1980s, neoliberal prescriptions and structural adjustment programs have played a role in undermining and underfunding the sector. The focus of global development actors and donors on strengthening primary and secondary education while neglecting higher education has exacerbated imbalances in many countries and their educational systems, particularly in terms of the capacity of higher education to absorb high school graduates. For decades, bilateral and multilateral donors have provided international scholarships to a small number of students from low-income countries to study at universities in middle- and high-income countries as a solution for the poor state of local higher education in their home countries. As a form of tied aid, scholarship aid does not generally reach lower-income countries, as it is spent on tuition and living costs in the countries where the host universities are located (generally in the donors’ own countries).

The Impact of SDGs on Donors’ Funding Choices

Findings from our study show that the focus of the SDGs on the provision of scholarship aid to lower-income countries has had a fundamental impact on the ODA provision choices of most donors. Almost 75 percent of the overall ODA to higher education during the first seven years of the SDGs was provided as scholarship aid. This type of ODA has seen significant growth since 2016 compared to the pre-SDG period, while aid to local higher education in recipient countries has declined. Zooming in on different donor groupings shows that the majority of the aid from bilateral donors has been provided in international scholarships. On the other hand, most of the aid from multilateral donors—albeit a small portion of the overall ODA to higher education—has supported local higher education in recipient countries. Despite the rhetoric about leaving no one behind and supporting countries in need first, through donors’ selectivity in terms of the recipients of ODA, a few countries strategically important to the donors have received most of the aid to higher education since 2016, while the countries with lowest enrollment rates in higher education have been neglected.

Widening Global Inequalities and Inequities in Higher Education

The neglect of local higher education in low-income countries is a continuation of past neglect of the sector by most donors, and the combined implications are serious. The focus on the provision of international scholarships and neglect of higher education in recipient countries is contributing to further widening of global inequalities and inequities in access to higher education, leaving many people and countries behind. Ironically, this has been exacerbated by the SDGs, despite their intention to address global inequalities, which highlights the problematic nature of higher education-related priorities and targets.

Changes until 2030 and Planning for the Post-2030 Development Goals

The SDGs aspired to leave no one behind and prioritize those most marginalized. Our research shows these objectives are not being met for higher education, due to the prioritization of scholarship aid in the SDGs and the neglect of other types of support for higher education in countries that require assistance. The good news is that donors can still make important changes and refocus most bilateral aid to support countries and their systemic priorities. This requires political will and moving beyond the neoliberal agenda which has shaped much of the thinking about the SDGs, and which continues to shape the thinking about higher education and the provision of ODA to the sector. This will be a challenge in a highly complex world where aid cuts are becoming a norm. We need more advocacy by scholars, researchers, and organizations providing support to higher education in lower-income countries to find ways to prioritize the sector, and to explore alternative funding mechanisms for higher education. Scholarly, policy, and other engagements—led by the higher education sector from around the world—should start as soon as possible to plan the post-2030 development agenda, ensuring that the priority remains the strengthening of higher education within lower-income countries.

Savo Heleta is research associate with the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET), Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected].

Logan Cochrane is associate professor at the College of Public Policy, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. E-mail: [email protected].

Salwa Al-Mannai is head of policy and research, Education Above All Foundation, Doha, Qatar. E-mail: [email protected].

This article is based on a 2025 paper coauthored by Savo Heleta, Logan Cochrane and Salwa Al-Mannai, titled “The Impact of the SDGs on Donors’ Choices: Analysis of Trends and Types of Aid to Higher Education at the SDG Implementation Halfway Point,” published in The Journal of Development Studies.