Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. How Do University, Higher Education and Research Contribute to Societal Well-Being?; 2. A Persian Grandee in Lausanne; 3. A New Social Contract for Higher Education?; 4. Higher Education and Public Good: A Global Study; 5. Defending Knowledge as the Public Good of Higher Education; 6. Partisan Politics in Higher Education Policy: How Does the Left-Right Divide of Political Parties Matter in Higher Education Policy in Western Europe?; 7. Access, Equity and Regional Development: A Norwegian Tale; 8. Shrinking Higher Education Systems: Portugal, Figures, and Policies; 9. Pathways to Higher Education in France and Switzerland: Do Vocational Tracks Facilitate Access to Higher Education for Immigrant Students?; 10. The Development of the Québec Higher Education System: Why At-risk College Students Remain a Political Priority; 11. Engineering Access to Higher Education through Higher Education Fairs; Conclusion; About the Authors.

Universities are not only economic engines but societal ones. This book interrogates the embeddedness of Higher Education (HE) systems in national social contracts, and discusses how their renegotiation is at play in the organisation of students' access to universities.
Structured around the central concept of the social contract, the growing recognition of the role of HE in its implementation, and regulations governing both individual and collective access, Higher Education in Societies: A Multiscale Perspective, explores the shifting mission of HE over the years from one thought to produce an elite to one of distributive justice by presenting research at the macro, meso and micro levels. In bringing together researchers from different countries, continents, and disciplines to study the same issue through a multiscale analysis, this book forms the starting line for further theoretical and methodological debate on the value of weaving together different approaches to the study of HE, including historical, comparative, sociological, organisational, institutional, quantitative, and qualitative.