ABSTRACT
New organizational models for serving the new state and the Industrial Revolution were behind the deep transformation of universities at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As it is well known, this “university revolution” gave birth to three different university cultures, with different educational models and structures, which have survived until today: the Humboldtian, the Napoleonic, and the British model. In a few years, all countries adopted one of these models and in some cases a mix of them. They were three different solutions to a similar problem: to respond effectively to the new socio-economic needs. To a great extent the three models were successful and they served relatively well their societies for many years. Two hundred years after the “first university revolution” universities all around the world (in this case, not just European universities) are facing a new
situation provoked, as the previous “revolution,” by a profound change in the political, social, and economic context. The context is changing due to several factors, all of them with strong economic and social consequences (Mora 2001; Cerych 2002; Kweik 2004; EU-RA 2004; Altbach 2007; Teichler 2007):
• The global society. The influence of globalization on higher education is evident in many senses. The labor market of university graduates is becoming global in a double sense: not only do graduates work with increasing frequency in other countries, but they work in multinational companies whose methods of work, organization, and activities have a global character. The globalization of labor markets, and therefore of required competencies for jobs, affect the operational way of university institutions, which need to respond to educational necessities that are no longer the specific ones of immediate surroundings as recent research shows: required competencies by employers in different European countries were quite similar, but acquired competencies of graduates were more country specific (CEGES 2007a).
