Within the context of continuously increasing participation targets, prolonged economic austerity, the demands of the knowledge economy, and rising fears concerning the growing marketization of higher education, many European countries are facing tough policy choices with regard to their higher education system.

This paper will examine the responses to these dynamics in a selected group of states, with particular emphasis on Ireland. European governments are currently reviewing their higher education landscapes and increasingly promoting the policy of differentiation between higher education institutions as an ever more necessary tool towards modernising their higher education systems in order to preserve mission diversity and maximize the economic returns of public funding.

Differentiation was initiated in the 1960s in many European countries by transforming predominantly university-dominated systems into binary systems of higher education. Through the analysis of official European and Irish public policy documents I hope to establish a clear link between the EU’s agenda for the modernisation of higher education and the current reconfiguration of the Irish higher education system, in particular sharper differentiation. Many Irish stakeholders have called for a rationalisation of the system, and it is within this context that a focus on differentiation has reappeared.

Although I will focus on Ireland, an overview of higher education reforms in several European states will enable me to point towards further evidence of an emerging European trend to prioritise differentiation. Therefore, I will be adding a comparative approach to the study of the reassertion of the policy of differentiation. Through a selection of case studies, I want to demonstrate to what extent differentiation is a key policy in the broader modernisation agenda for higher education, whether it is in France, Germany, Ireland and England. After having dealt with policy rhetoric, I will examine the level of implementation of this policy, through the visible concrete steps taken by both governments and institutions of higher education, through funding decisions and/or institutional strategic plans.

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