Study success policy patterns in higher education regimes: More similarities than differences?

Abstract

Greater participation in higher education and the improvement in completion rates are on the agenda in most European countries. At the same time, higher education has been through a range of reforms (e.g. the Bologna process) making higher education systems more similar, even though regime-inherent differences still exist. With the backdrop of these ambiguities, the aim of this article is to investigate differences and similarities in study success policies in higher education across four European country cases, classified as liberal, socio-democratic, conservative and hybrid. The policies are related to funding, teaching and learning as well as to student information and support. Using secondary case study data, we do not find a clear trend of policy patterns reflecting the different higher educational regimes. However, in line with the literature, for funding we find a pattern that clearly reflects the different regimes. Given limitations, we suggest some implications for further research.