ABSTRACT
In recent years, higher education has been immersed in a sea of transformations and transitions of a very different nature. The commodifi cation and the transnationalization of higher education and the increasing fl uxes of cross-border provision of university services, together with the increasing role played by economic international organizations in higher education affairs, are probably the most remarkable examples of the changes currently being manifested in the fi eld. The intensifi cation of economic globalization has become a key causal force of these changes. On the one hand, the process of economic globalization, which promotes the territorial integration of the economy on a world scale, pressures universities to provide the means for the smooth functioning of the global economy as well as for the competitiveness of countries, corporations and persons at the international level. On the other hand, economic globalization, understood as the expansion of the capitalist economy to new spheres, places pressure on universities to modify their nature and their raison d’être. Thus, in addition to being a medium of the economy, universities in themselves have become objects and products of the economy. Today, universities are managed very similarly to private corporations and the operations of many of them do not differ in any signifi cant way from those of the conventional industry that makes up the global economy: they establish branch campuses abroad, engage in mergers and takeovers, become part of stock markets and realize export activities abroad.
