This dissertation recognizes that the emergence of post-apartheid South Africa as the most popular study destination in Africa follows racial segregation, regional destabilization, and international isolation during apartheid. Today, the country's public higher education institutions face intensifying pressures to respond simultaneously to national, regional, and global policy imperatives that often conflict in the missions and daily functioning of the public universities. To understand how the different imaginaries of national, regional and international higher education policy imperatives are conceptualized, contested, institutionalized and experienced, I conducted an institutional ethnography of one of the country's top-rated, desegregated and formerly-White public universities. Data consisted of more than 100 hours of audio-recorded interviews with 26 top and mid-level administrators, 15 faculty and staff members, 30 non-national students, and 19 black and white South African students; participant observations of on-campus and off-campus events and meetings; and review of institutional documents (e.g. strategic frameworks, surveys, reports, and enrollment statistics). Data was mainly analyzed by concept mapping, which involved developing visuals to capture and represent patterns, interpretations, and relational concepts emerging from the research texts. Based on the analytic categories emerging from the data, I developed a four-quadrant mapping of "discursive frames," "policy discourses," "organizing logics," and "racial" and "national identity markers" that shaped institutional policy contests in negotiating what it means for universities to serve public purposes. Findings show that the global competition imperative to internationalize the university privileged depoliticized policy practices based on market-oriented best practices that excluded and alienated historically marginalized black South Africans. Conversely, the national racial justice imperative to transform and decolonize the university was premised on nationalistic and racialized conceptions of racial justice that de-prioritized regional solidarity/cooperation and de-legitimized the multiracial thrust of social cohesion imperatives. The mobilization strategy premised on equity, nationality, and blackness thus alienated non-national and non-black student constituencies, prompting them to mobilize around quality, inclusiveness and social cohesion. The research underscores the policy and practice implications attending the drawing of boundaries and borders in determining who public universities in deeply connected regions belong to and who they should serve, and in constraining possibilities for cross-national and cross-racial solidarities. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]