The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The "state" itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people--bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader--and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students (themselves an increasingly diverse community), staff, families, employers and businesses (local, regional and multinational). This volume explores the rapidly evolving relationship between the state and higher education in Europe and in East Asia through a combination of empirical studies, secondary analyses and personal observations from many of the leading scholars in the field of comparative education studies. A scenario emerges where the state seeks to encourage stakeholder influence, while, at the same time, acts to moderate such influence in order to ensure that wider objectives are satisfied; markets are controlled, elements of demand and supply are manipulated and funding is targeted to meet particular policy priorities through a model that is described as "controlled stakeholder steering" which offers a new explanation of the relationship between the state and higher education, certainly in the countries addressed in this book. Contents include: (1) The State and Higher Education Institutions: new pressures, new relationships and new tensions (John Taylor); (2) The Changing Roles of the State and the Market in Japanese, Korean and British Higher Education: lessons for continental Europe? (Roger Goodman); (3) Universities, the State and Geography: perspectives from the United Kingdom and Japan (Fumi Kitagawa); (4) State-Academy Relations in the United Kingdom, 1960-2010 (Ivor Crewe); (5) United Kingdom Higher Education and the Binary Dilemma: whatever happened to public sector higher education? (David Watson); (6) What Japan Tells us about the State and the Future of Higher Education in France (Christian Galan); (7) German Higher Education and the State: a critical appraisal in the light of post-Bologna reforms (Hubert Ertl); (8) Reforming Italian Universities: dynamic conservatism and policy change, 1989-2010 (Paola Mattei); (9) Japanese Higher Education and the State in Transition (Motohisa Kaneko); (10) The State and Private Higher Education in Japan: the end of egalitarian policy? (Aya Yoshida); (11) The State's Role and Quasi-Market in Higher Education: Japan's trilemma (Takehiko Kariya); (12) The (Un)changing Relationship between the State and Higher Education in South Korea: some surprising continuities (Terri Kim); and (13) Afterword (Ronald Dore).