The OECD and Higher Education Policy: Bureaucratic Politics and the Dynamics of Agenda-Setting

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) appeared poised, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to assume a significant role on the international higher education policy landscape. The Paris-based international organisation, deploying its classic mix of governance instruments privileging cross-national comparison and the forging of a shared policy understanding, seemed to be strategically positioning itself in response to the growing internationalisation of the sector. Many in the higher education community, indeed, saw it as one of the major drivers of a neo-liberal agenda. Yet, in recent years, the OECD appears substantially to have withdrawn from the sector. Its flagship AHELO (Advanced Higher Education Learning Outcomes) initiative has failed to progress, while the organisation has also not proven able to sustain a broader portfolio of activities in the area. The present paper seeks to understand this paradoxical retrenchment, using a ‘bureaucratic politics’ approach that focuses on the understanding of organisational structures and processes. Both the organisation’s general policy drift in the higher education area and the more specific case of the apparent failure of AHELO are examined in detail. Lessons are drawn in terms of the dynamics of agenda-setting within the organisation, as well as in relation to the framing of policy issues by wider higher education stakeholder communities at the international level.