In an international perspective, one can in the recent decade identify an increasing political interest in the outcomes of higher education (Maasen and Stensaker 2011). This interest can be related to both the efficiency and the effectiveness at system, institutional and individual level and contains ideas on how higher education should improve its linkages to society This paper identifies some of the key measures that have been launched, and that seems to attract interest at political level in a sample of OECD-countries. On this background the paper discusses what sort of higher education – society relationship that policy-makers seems to favour, and examines critically how these ambitions may be reached through the measures sought implemented. One of the key findings of the paper is that there are considerable political ambiguity concerning whether the higher education – society relationship should be more loosely coupled or more instrumental, and the paper ends by drawing up possible implications of this ambiguity for the teaching and learning environments in higher education and professional formation.