ABSTRACT
Europe has become inescapable when discussing higher education policy issues. The notion of "infusion" seeks to make sense of the multifaceted transformative effects of European policies challenging the more classical notion of Europeanization. The infusion metaphor is particularly meaningful for understanding the transformative effects of Europe on higher education policies. A bias in the European higher education research field has been to focus on higher education European developments and their effects, and consequently to miss policy change related to non-higher education European rules or policies. The tension between the more neo-liberal higher education discourse of the Commission and the less liberal Bologna process are actually hotly contested in the literature. Some argue that Bologna is more and more absorbed in the neo-liberal agenda, while others highlight the distinctiveness of the Bolognese discourse More interdisciplinary work between European policy and law research is needed to better understand these dimensions of infusion of Europe in higher education.
