The Governance of European Higher Education - (Bloomsbury Higher Education Research) by Michael Shattock & Aniko Horvath & Jürgen Enders (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Governance of European Higher Education: Convergence or Divergence analyses governance at state and institutional levels in five European higher education systems chosen as representative of European higher education as a whole: Germany, Hungary, Norway, Portugal and the UK (as in England, Scotland and Wales). Drawing on 180 detailed face-to-face interviews with policymakers and universities the book explores the extent to which governance and systems have been converging or diverging towards or away from a common European model over the last decade and records the evidence of growing directional controls exercised by the various states.

Review Quotes

"Assuming a comparative stance and drawing on rich empirical material, this book represents a major contribution to the knowledge on higher education governance in Europe." --António M. Magalhães, Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto and Director of the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES), Portugal

"If you want to know whether common problems and challenges faced by higher education systems in different European countries lead to similar solutions, urgently read this book. It will help you to understand why and how apparent convergences in discourses hide increasing divergences at the level of national policymaking and university governance." --Christine Musselin, Sciences Po, CSO, CNRS, France

"An excellent account of current developments in European higher education. The authors' international experience assures breadth of knowledge and balanced judgement. Wide-ranging interviews impart freshness, immediacy and humanity to their analysis. A book to savour and enjoy." --Rosalind Pritchard, Ulster University, UK

"A well-written academic achievement demonstrating how comparative case studies leads to new insights about current developments in European higher education." --Bjørn Stensaker, University of Oslo, Norway

"The growing diversification in applying the NPM model among the higher education systems of continental Europe and in particular with reference to the UK is described with special accuracy thanks in particular to a wide field - research which allows it to bring out the different pressures of nation-states on universities." --Roberto Moscati, Former Full Professor of Sociology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

About the Author

Michael Shattock is Visiting Professor at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, UK.

Aniko Horvath is Assistant Professor in the Department of Organization Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is Researcher at the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) at the University of Oxford, UK.

Jurgen Enders is Professor of Higher Education Management at the University of Bath, UK.