Report

HEPI Soft-Power Index 2024

Think tank: HEPI

Author(s): Nick Hillman

October 10, 2024

This report from UK think tank HEPI publishes the results of its eighth annual Soft-Power Index.

The Higher Education Policy Institute has published the results of its eighth annual Soft-Power Index. The Index measures the number of senior serving world leaders – defined as monarchs, presidents and prime ministers – educated at a higher level in countries other than their own.

This year’s results show: 70 serving world leaders received higher education in the US; and 58 serving world leaders received higher education in the UK. When the Index began in 2017, higher level institutions in the UK had educated one more world leader than those in the US. But in the period since, the US has overtaken the UK and has built up a commanding lead.

This year, the US has pulled further away. In fact, there has been the biggest one-year increase in the number of senior world leaders educated in the US (+5) alongside no change in the number educated in the UK. So the gap between these two countries is now the largest it has ever been since the Index began.

The US first overtook the UK in 2018, when there was one more world leader educated in the US than the UK. The US then extended its lead in each of the four subsequent years: in 2019 three more world leaders had been educated in the US than the UK, in 2020 this figure rose to five, then to seven in 2021 and then to 11 in 2022.

The gap shrunk somewhat last year, meaning that in 2023 seven more world leaders were educated in the US than in the UK. But this year, the gap has grown bigger than ever and now stands at 12.