For several decades, higher education systems have undergone continuous waves of reform, driven by a combination of concerns about the changing labour needs of the economy, competition within the global-knowledge economy, and nationally competitive positioning strategies to enhance the performance of higher education systems. Yet, despite far-ranging international pressures, including the emergence of an international higher education market, enormous growth in cross-border student mobility, and pressures to achieve universities of world class standing, boost research productivity and impact, and compete in global league tables, the suites of policy, policy designs and sector outcomes continue to be marked as much by hybridity as they are of similarity or convergence. This volume explores these complex governance outcomes from a theoretical and empirical comparative perspective, addressing those vectors precipitating change in the modalities and instruments of governance, and how they interface at the systemic and institutional levels, and across geographic regions.

Part I. Theorizing Governance in Higher Education: 1. Theorizing the governance of higher education: beyond the 'Republic of Scholars' Ontology Giliberto Capano and Darryl S. L. Jarvis; Part II. Systems, Processes, and Dynamics of Governance in Higher Education: 2. The regulatory state and the labour process Kanishka Jayasuriya, Greg Mccarthy and Xianlin Song; 3. Systemic governance: convergence or hybridization? Giliberto Capano; 4. Institutional governance: factors, actors, and consequences of attempting to converge on the AnglöAmerican model Marino Regini; 5. Capture and drift in emerging international governance arrangements: the role of meta-organizations in higher education quality assurance Ase Gornitzka, Peter Maassen and Bjørn Stensaker; 6. Understanding convergence and divergence in the internationalization of higher education from a world society perspective Renze Kolster and Don F. Westerheijden; 7. Convergence through research performance measurement? Comparing talk and practices in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom Jenny M. Lewis; 8. Accountability and governance in European higher education Michael Dobbins and Jens Jungblut; 9. Towards new models of decision making within university governance in anglophone nations Julie Rowlands; 10. Governance in public and private higher education in Europe: patterns, divergences, and convergences Pedro N. Teixeira and Robin Middlehurst; Part III. Geographies of Governance: 11. Higher education governance in North America Giliberto Capano and Jun Jie Woo; 12. Governance trends in European higher education Harry F. De Boer and Jeroen Huisman; 13. Governance and corruption in east and southeast Asian higher education: close cousins, close encounters Anthony Welch; 14. Fixing the system? Trends in African higher education governance Rose Amazan and Kassahun Kebede Dawo; 15. Neoliberals versus post-neoliberals in the formation of governance regimes in Latin America's higher education Miguel Alejandro Gonzalez-Ledesma and German Alvarez-Mendiola; Index.