Can Higher Education Be Inclusive Without Putting Global South Knowledge on Equal Footing?

Universities increasingly speak the language of inclusion, diversity and equal opportunity, yet the knowledge students encounter can remain far less diverse than the institutions' public commitments suggest. A study titled "Decolonizing the Hegemonic Curriculum: Towards an Inclusive Curriculum from the Global South," published in Societies by Mercy Julieta Logroño, Inés Lozano-Cabezas and María Angeles Martínez-Ruiz, examines this tension through the experience of academics at Universidad Central del Ecuador.

The Ecuadorian case provides a useful lens for a much broader challenge confronting higher education. Universities can expand access, adopt anti-discrimination policies and diversify student populations while leaving largely untouched the systems that determine whose theories are taught, which forms of evidence are considered authoritative and which communities are treated as producers rather than recipients of knowledge. The study suggests that inclusion becomes incomplete when it stops at the university gate instead of reaching curriculum design, teaching practice and knowledge production.

Researchers interviewed 40 academics at Universidad Central del Ecuador using open-ended questions and qualitative coding to explore perceptions of social inclusion, gender, Global North influence, Global South knowledge, cultural recognition and curriculum reform. The findings cannot be generalized statistically beyond the institution, but they expose questions that universities across developing and developed countries increasingly confront as higher education becomes more internationalized.

Inclusion can expand on paper while remaining narrow in the classroom

Higher education policy often treats inclusion as a question of who gains admission. Universities are assessed by enrolment, participation and representation, yet those indicators reveal relatively little about whether students encounter curricula that recognize their histories, social conditions and intellectual traditions once they arrive.

The Ecuador study illustrates this distinction clearly. Although 41.43% of coded narratives described curricula as containing a social perspective, the researchers found that 58.57% reflected either a partial, limited or absent social orientation. More strikingly, only 5.13% of coded responses were classified as reflecting an adequate gender perspective, while the overwhelming majority described gender considerations as insufficient or missing.

These findings point toward a policy problem broader than Ecuador. An institution can comply with formal equality requirements while continuing to teach through frameworks that underrepresent particular social experiences. Inclusion therefore depends not only on admitting previously excluded groups, but also on examining course content, pedagogical assumptions, assessment systems, research priorities and the institutional culture surrounding them.

Gender provides a particularly revealing example. Adding a specialist module or including a few additional readings may improve representation without changing how gender influences the wider curriculum. The study's participants repeatedly connected meaningful reform with teacher capacity, institutional practice and the integration of gender perspectives across disciplines rather than confining them to isolated academic spaces.

Decolonizing education is not about replacing one canon with another

Debates about decolonizing universities are sometimes reduced to a contest between Western and non-Western knowledge. The research presents a more complicated picture. Faculty participants overwhelmingly perceived a strong Global North influence in their curricula, while many also argued for knowledge that better reflected local history, indigenous traditions, cultural experience and social realities.

The study reports that 94.12% of relevant coded responses supported moving toward a stronger Global South perspective, particularly because participants associated it with knowledge that was more contextual, diverse and connected to local realities. Yet some respondents defended the universality of knowledge, while others preferred dialogue between knowledge systems rather than a sharp intellectual separation between North and South.

Decolonization need not mean discarding research produced in Europe or North America, nor should geography become a substitute for intellectual quality. The more consequential question is whether particular traditions have acquired such institutional dominance that alternative ways of framing problems struggle to enter teaching, research and professional training.

A globally connected university should arguably expose students to ideas produced across regions while asking how well those ideas travel between contexts. Economic models, public-health frameworks, educational theories or environmental policies developed under one set of institutions may remain valuable elsewhere, but their assumptions need scrutiny when transferred to societies with different political economies, cultural traditions and development challenges.

Ecuador exposes a wider implementation gap in university reform

Academic support for change does not automatically produce institutional transformation. One of the study's most revealing findings is the distance between enthusiasm for decolonization and the availability of concrete mechanisms for implementing it.

The researchers found strong support for bringing curricula closer to Global South knowledge, but considerably less emphasis on political change, funding, institutional participation and practical implementation. Political reforms accounted for 26.06% of coded proposals, while faculty also called for teacher training, stronger gender and intersectional perspectives, curricula reflecting indigenous and Afro-descendant knowledge, and closer links between universities, research and society.

This implementation problem can easily extend beyond decolonization. Universities frequently adopt ambitious strategies on inclusion, sustainability, digital transformation or interdisciplinary education, only to discover that curriculum reform requires changes in budgets, faculty incentives, accreditation requirements, recruitment, professional development and decision-making structures.

Course content is rarely changed in isolation. Faculty need time and expertise to redesign teaching. Institutions need mechanisms for involving students and communities without sacrificing academic standards. Research systems need incentives that reward locally relevant scholarship alongside internationally visible publication. Governments and accreditation bodies may also have to allow greater curricular flexibility if national or global standards unintentionally reinforce uniformity.

Ecuador functions less as a model to be copied than as an example of the institutional difficulty of translating reformist ideas into durable systems. The study itself acknowledges that participants offered fewer detailed proposals for implementation than expressions of support for change, and the authors identify this gap as a priority for the next phase of research.

Universities need to rethink how knowledge, incentives and power interact

Curriculum reform cannot be separated from university governance. Decisions over what students learn are shaped by who designs programmes, which publications carry professional prestige, how faculty promotion works, what accreditation systems reward and where research funding flows.

For developing countries, the stakes are particularly high. Universities are expected to train professionals capable of solving local problems while simultaneously competing within international systems of rankings, publication and accreditation. Global academic standards can support quality and collaboration, but they can also create incentives to reproduce research agendas developed elsewhere if locally grounded scholarship receives less visibility or professional reward.

A more inclusive model would not require universities to retreat from global science. It would require them to become stronger contributors to it. Building research capacity in developing countries, supporting scholarship in local languages, creating partnerships with indigenous and community institutions, and investing in context-specific knowledge could widen the intellectual base from which global problems are understood.

The study also exposes a tension between symbolic diversification and structural reform. Adding new authors to reading lists is relatively easy. Revising academic incentives, funding locally relevant research, training faculty, integrating gender across disciplines and giving marginalized communities a meaningful voice in curriculum development demand considerably more institutional commitment.

Notably, the research examines one university, involves 40 academics and relies on qualitative interpretation. Participant anonymity prevented the researchers from reporting characteristics such as department, age or academic rank, limiting the ability to determine how views varied across disciplines or professional groups.

That said, the study raises a question relevant far beyond Ecuador: whether universities can call themselves inclusive while leaving the hierarchy of knowledge largely unchanged. Access determines who enters higher education, but curriculum helps determine whose experiences become intellectually visible once they are inside.