ONE IN THREE STUDENTS GLOBALLY IS enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers. The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, or 32.9 percent of global enrollment.

While the US has historically towered over the rest of the world in terms of the size of its private sector, the proportion of students in the country in private higher education stands at 27.5 percent, lower than the global average, and it now accounts for only 10 percent of global private enrollment.

Private universities share of enrollments is highest in Latin America (48.8 percent) and Asia (42.1 percent), but the sector is far from limited to a small number of countries: 97.6 percent of the worlds total tertiary enrollment is in higher education systems with “dual-sector provision”, and in all regions, at least 10 percent of students are in the private sector, according to the research.

The research draws on a dataset developed by the Program for Research on Private Higher Education, a global scholarly network founded by Daniel Levy, distinguished professor in the School of Education at the State University of New York Albany. The data covers 192 countries and is sourced primarily from the Institute of Statistics at the Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), as well as other cross-border agencies and national organisations.

A paper describing the dataset, newly published in the journal Higher Education, says while higher education has “long and overwhelmingly (been) seen beyond the US as an essentially public sector function with no or only marginal private presence”, it has become very much a dual-sector phenomenon globally. This has occurred despite unprecedented growth in public enrollment and indicates how governments have been unable to meet soaring demand for higher education via the creation of public university systems.

Of the 179 countries showing enrollment by sector, only ten nations seem to have no private higher education, according to the analysis. The country with the largest private sector is India, home to 21.9 percent of global private enrollment, with over 12 million students — more than twice the size of the US.

Liz Reisberg, an independent higher education consultant and research fellow at Boston Colleges Center for International Higher Education, says private higher education is both “inevitable and necessary” as the “public sector will never have the resources to meet either the scale of demand or its diversity”.