Abstract

The paper questions the patterns of democratization that have been affecting in recent decades higher education in most countries of the world. The global opening of education systems has produced a massification of higher education. However processes of democratization in higher education are multiple and heterogeneous. Taking this point into account, author distinguishes between democratization of access, internal democratization and democratization of educational utility. In addition, he suggests to explore the way in which these processes are intertwined and articulated into national system cases: different societies have gradually built different patterns of democratization in higher education, developing different dimensions of justice in schools: the French republican elitism, the British liberalism or the so-called Swedish 'bildung'.