Digitalization of Higher Education: An Introduction to the Issues

This article is an introduction to and overview of the main topics addressed by the authors of this Special Issue. Their emphasis is on the policy issues that are relevant to higher education, not the technical dimension of digitalization. The articles, covering 14 countries or regions from five continents, show the many communalities and challenges of the transformation to digital state and society, but also significant differences between them, especially between the countries of the ‘global North’ and the ‘global South’. These challenges and divides are clearly visible from the analysis of digitalization of Higher Education in the countries and regions covered in this issue.