Going beyond Europe: What does Comparative Regionalism offer to European Integration in the Knowledge Domain?

One of the four research themes proposed in European integration in the knowledge domain is to go ‘Beyond Europe’ and to examine the multiple change processes transforming the University in other world regions. Implicit in this research agenda is the notion of comparison, especially between the Euro-pean experience and those elsewhere. This Paper takes stock of the academic research completed on comparative higher education regionalism over the last decade and shows that this is a research theme that has a lot of potential for contemporary political research. One of the country cases originally suggested by Maassen and colleagues for comparison is the USA. In this paper, we show how comparisons with other world regions such as Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America offer insights into how universities work with the multi-directional change pressures they have been experiencing. We will give particu-lar attention to the role of the regional organisations in facilitating, mitigating, and channelling these change processes.