Worlds of Higher Education Transformed? Toward Varieties of Academic Capitalism

Higher education sits at the center of societies’ efforts to generate economic growth and secure social security. Yet, the politics of the sector’s institutional transformation remain under-studied. This paper provides an important conceptual foundation for the comparative study of distributional conflict in contemporary higher education by providing a framework that conceives of institutional evolution in terms of a state-sanctioned liberalization. As such, the analysis views variation among outcomes as representing contrasting implementations of a reform agenda that is widely shared among the rich democracies. This lens makes compatible two perspectives on contemporary reforms: one diagnosing national convergence on “academic capitalism” as a global reform script; and one arguing for lasting divergence in how countries from different worlds of human capital formation tackle new policy trade-offs. The paper uses the framework to explore implementation effects in the recent transformation of state-university relations across the United States, Germany and Norway.