Higher Education Governance in North America

This chapter is focused on describing how systemic governance in higher education has been changing in the two Northern American federal countries. To grasp the characteristics of governance and accountability in the higher education systems of Canada and the USA, the chapter shed lights on the systemic characteristics of such systems (the types of institutions are distinguished by their respective missions and ownership), on the role of and eventual changes to the state/provincial and federal governments across time, on the impact on NPM in the activities of the systems, and finally, on the characteristics and roles of policy networks. By focusing on these four dimensions, it is possible to better describe and understand how systemic governance works in the US and Canada and how the countries have been changing by remaining quite different each other