Long term perspectives on higher education: student movements, human capital and expert culture

Abstract This special issue aims at providing an empirical, analytically grounded perspective on foremost European higher education, while pointing at historical references, path-dependencies, critical junctures, and “original” institutional settings determined by the interaction of new forms with historical legacies. The contributions collected depict different facets of long term transformations of higher educations and, in some cases, their interplay with critical moments characterized by ample and abrupt transformations. Geographically, this issue includes study-cases localized in Central and Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania), Western Europe (Italy and Germany) and Africa (Ghana). One of the express aims of the special issue is to bring together analyses focusing on national and/or local case studies, which have the potential to constitute the basis for comparative analysis.