Preliminary Material / Gaële Goastellec and France Picard -- Introduction / Gaële Goastellec and France Picard -- How Do University, Higher Education and Research Contribute to Societal Well-Being? / Michèle Lamont -- A Persian Grandee in Lausanne / Sheldon Rothblatt -- A New Social Contract for Higher Education? / Peter Maassen -- Higher Education and Public Good / Simon Marginson -- Defending Knowledge as the Public Good of Higher Education / Joanna Williams -- Partisan Politics in Higher Education Policy / Jens Jungblut -- Access, Equity and Regional Development / Rómulo Pinheiro -- Shrinking Higher Education Systems / Madalena Fonseca , Sara Encarnação and Elsa Justino -- Pathways to Higher Education in France and Switzerland / Jake Murdoch , Christine Guégnard , Maarten Koomen , Christian Imdorf and Sandra Hupka-Brunner -- The Development of the Québec Higher Education System / France Picard , Pierre Canisius Kamanzi and Julie Labrosse -- Engineering Access to Higher Education through Higher Education Fairs / Agnès van Zanten and Amélia Legavre -- Conclusion / France Picard and Gaële Goastellec -- About the Authors / Gaële Goastellec and France Picard.

Universities are not only economic engines but societal ones. This book interrogates the embeddedness of Higher Education (HE) systems in national social contracts, and discusses how their renegotiation is at play in the organisation of students’ access to universities. Structured around the central concept of the social contract, the growing recognition of the role of HE in its implementation, and regulations governing both individual and collective access, Higher Education in Societies: A Multiscale Perspective , explores the shifting mission of HE over the years from one thought to produce an elite to one of distributive justice by presenting research at the macro, meso and micro levels. In bringing together researchers from different countries, continents, and disciplines to study the same issue through a multiscale analysis, this book forms the starting line for further theoretical and methodological debate on the value of weaving together different approaches to the study of HE, including historical, comparative, sociological, organisational, institutional, quantitative, and qualitative.

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