ABSTRACT. This editorial introduces Volume 1 of the special issue The Academic Fairytale: Myth and Reality of International Education, titled ‘Un/settling the Fairytale: Lived Realities and Care.’ It examines how the promises of international higher education (mobility, meritocracy, academic freedom, inclusion and transformation) are complicated by the lived realities of students and scholars navigating colonial inheritances, neoliberal logics, racialised standards of excellence, language hierarchies, visa regimes, institutional absences and epistemic gatekeeping. Bringing together autoethnographic, poetic, dialogic, feminist, hauntological, Indigenous, diasporic and creative-reflexive contributions, the volume treats lived experience not as an anecdotal supplement but as theory, method and epistemic intervention. Across the collection, three recurring tensions emerge: conditional belonging and the production of foreignness; epistemic gatekeeping and the master’s tools; and care, solidarity and post-fairytale possibilities. This editorial argues that the academic fairytale does not simply misrepresent international education but actively organises desire, recognition, legitimacy and survival within unequal institutional structures. Volume 1, therefore, invites readers to consider what forms of scholarship, care and institutional responsibility might be needed not only to survive academia but to remake it.

Keywords: international higher education; academic fairytale; conditional belonging; epistemic gatekeeping; relational care; post-fairytale futures.

How to cite: El Mazbouh, M., Ramirez, E., & Rodriguez, C. (2026). Un/settling the academic fairytale: Myths and realities of international higher education. Knowledge Cultures, 14(2), 7‒17. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc14220261

Received February 28, 2026 • Received in revised form June 22, 2026
Accepted July 15, 2026 • Available online August 1, 2026