In my presentation, I illustrate a qualitative methodological approach in analyzing higher education dynamics. Drawing on earlier research of complex dynamics, the theoretical framework emphasizes the role of the research material as basis for building a theoretical model. The research material consists of 25 thematic interviews with key persons in the Finnish higher education political system in 2008 and document data from the different actors since the 1980s. Another building block for the model is agenda-setting theories. I describe a three-step construction of a theoretical model, which is in the core of the whole analysis. In the first phase the emphasis is on trying to understand the interviewees’ and actors’ point of view. In the second phase the different data is related to each other. In the third phase the findings are related to the theoretical model, which has been built side-by-side with the analysis. Another important part of the third phase is the testing of the results and finding possible conflicting interpretations. The presentation is based on my dissertation on Finnish higher education dynamics. It is part of the project Power, Supranational Regimes and New University Governance funded by the Academy of Finland in 2007–2010.