Conclusioni : dove vanno le università europee e perché

In the last 30 years we can detect three major drivers of change in European higher education. The first one is the transition to a ‘mass university’, that is the demand for ‘generalized access’ to higher education. The second is the advent of a ‘knowledge economy’, which implies a growing demand for the socio-economic use of such higher education ‘products’ as high professional skills and research. The third has been the unfolding of the ‘Bologna process’, and more generally of policies of harmonization of the European higher education systems to foster mobility, transparency and comparability. These three drivers of change are often seen to be a consequence of demands by both external and internal actors, which forced all higher education systems to increase their openness to the outside environment and the market, though to varying degrees and in variable ways. As a result, the three poles of the traditional HE governance (the state, the academic communities and the university administrations) became more permeable to a market logic. A greater openness to the market has had a major impact on universities’ missions, priorities, activities and internal balance of power. The three drivers above have reinforced each other in producing this outcome. Within this framework, the chapter discusses two conclusions drawn from the comparative research carried on. First, the opening up of European universities to the market has been led more by governments than by external actors’ demand. Second, the penetration of market relations in universities has been limited and partial. What we observe more often are cooperative relations, or an autonomous attempt by internal actors to anticipate external demand.