This article examines the progressive interlinking of higher education policy spaces around the globe with a particular focus on Europe and its project for globalizing higher education, and the implications of this for other national and regional economies. The text begins with the European Higher Education Area, outlining the key features of the competitive European project in higher education. It traces how the multilateral Bologna Process to create a unified higher education architecture in Europe has been re-shaped and re-directed by the EU's Lisbon 2000 strategy for competitiveness and the re-launching of the Lisbon 2005 agenda. This agenda has allowed higher education to be co-opted as a platform for the European Union's broader strategies of regionalization and globalization to create both "minds" and "markets" for the European knowledge-economy, leading to the emergence of a more integrated and relational global system of higher education. Europe's actions are also shaped by its own state building project which tends to favour engaging with regions and promoting inter-regionalism as a platform for negotiating globally.
Bologna Process; Europe; higher education; regionalization; globalization
