The paper examines the importance of global and local factors in the current development of universities in Western countries. Globalisation is a fashionable theoretical stance but care needs to be taken in applying it to education, not least because social theorists cannot agree on definitions and implications. Three concepts dealing with recent changes to universities-new managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities-are examined for their usefulness in explaining what is happening to universities in Europe and North America. Following a critical analysis of the theoretical and empirical basis of Slaughter & Leslie's 'Academic Capitalism' and Clark's 'Creating Entrepreneurial Universities', it is suggested that, in searching for similarities and convergence in universities in different countries, more localised factors affecting higher education institutions may be under-emphasised. Furthermore, some of the data used in the comparative case-studies of universities analysed in the paper do nor provide methodologically robust evidence to support all of the claims being made. It is suggested that in future comparative work on trends in higher education, more attention should be paid both to methodological matters and to the local-global axis.
