ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyse the development of university governance in the Netherlands from circa 1960 until the present. It argues that the multi-actor network-based mode of governance, a stronger role for the European Union in university governance as a supra-national agency could serve to further focus and strengthen the quality and impact of education, research and innovation of European universities. The chapter shows that the corporate actor has been severely tied up in a bewildering web of contradictory government regulation, as governments increasingly realise the importance of universities to the development of society and the economy. It also argues that the ‘Macron initiative’ to create European universities could offer a way out of the jungle of recent policy reforms, as a first step to a new governance paradigm that takes into consideration the international character of universities. The post-war growth of universities resulted in 1960 in a significant change in the governance structure of Dutch universities.
