European Integration and the Governance of Higher Education and Research (Higher Education Dynamics)

The present volume aims at analysing the change process which the European university is undergoing as a consequence of European integration efforts. In the case of higher education, these have materialised, amongst other things, in the implementation of the Bologna process, while the Lisbon summit also has important consequences for the university. Given the overall ambitions and goals of the Lisbon agenda and the Bologna process, and other relevant supranational and intergovernmental European integration processes, it is obvious that these processes have the intention to affect the university in all its basic structural features, including the way it performs its basic activities. However, the European Commission does not have a formal authority with respect to the university, nor did the governments that signed the Bologna process develop an executive administrative capacity for implementing the Bologna Declaration. As a consequence, whether and how the supranational and intergovernmental European integration processes actually affect university governance and the university as a social institution, is far from clear. This book discusses the nature and possible effects of these very complex processes by analysing the many facets and levels of higher education policy making in the European Union and a number of case studies that focus on the responses of higher education systems to external pressures for change originating from the integration process.