Over the last thirty years, universities have moved towards a universal system of higher education, their objectives have changed significantly and, consequently, they are looking at making changes to their systems of governance and management. These changes can only be fully understood in the context of university tradition and culture. In this paper, concepts such as autonomy, collegial democracy and the status of teaching staff will be discussed from the perspective of the new developments, which have taken place in European higher education. Finally, new trends in university governing and management will be presented and discussed.

We shall analyse the different characteristics of entrepreneurs, the self‐employed, and employees in public, private and non‐profit organisations, based on a sample of young European higher education graduates. Using graduates’ self‐assessment from a survey, several sets of characteristics such as social‐demographic traits, educational and occupational experiences and levels of competences are considered. A descriptive analysis shows, first, that graduates who start their own business have different profiles in relation to elements leading to their occupational decision after graduation; and, second, that labour market status achieved by entrepreneur graduates implies relatively more demanding activities, higher earnings and higher job satisfaction than non‐entrepreneur graduates.

The labour market rewards for a number of required human capital competences are analysed using a sample of young European higher education graduates. Factor analysis is applied to classify competences by jobs into eight orthogonal groups, namely participative, methodological, specialised, organisational, applying rules, physical, generic and socio-emotional competences. Estimates for the total rewards for competences are obtained through conventional wage regression, whereas estimates of the total rewards are derived in terms of job satisfaction through ordered logit regression. Explanatory variables include personal characteristics, job attributes, occupational titles, fields of study, type of higher education institution and country dummies. Results on wage rewards show that jobs with higher requirements of participative and methodological competences are best paid; conversely, jobs with higher requirements of organisational, applying-rules and physical competences are worse paid. Results on total rewards suggest that jobs with higher requirements of competences increase graduates' satisfaction, the only exception being applying-rules competences.

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The current structure of higher education in Spain was established in 1983 by the University Reform Act. This brought great change in the legal framework of Spanish universities, which, until then, had been regulated by the central authorities of the Ministry of Education, transforming them into autonomous bodies with a wide scope for self-government. The direct responsibility over universities was transferred from the central authorities to those of the autonomous regions. This process of devolution was only completed in 1997.Higher education in Spain consists almost exclusively of universities. In addition, an incipient vocational post-secondary education is being developed and there are also some Languages, Music and Military Schools outside the university system. There are 46 public universities and 16 private ones. Two are Open Universities, one is public (the UNED) and the other (Oberta de Catalunya) is formally private but is promoted by the regional Government of Catalonia. Six of the private universities are linked to the Catholic Church.Three universities focus on engineering (Polite Âcnicas of Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia), but most have a broad range of programmes ranging from engineering to humanities. There is not a strong differentiation, although some younger universities, many of which were created by the segregation of campuses of older ones and are located in smaller cities, focus on short-cycle programmes.There are three basic types of university programmes: short-cycle programmes, which are more vocationally oriented and last for three years (although some engineering programmes last for four years); long-cycle programmes, which last for four, five or six years, five being the most standard; and doctoral programmes, which add two years of course work and require the preparation of a research-oriented thesis following upon a long-cycle degree.After completing academic secondary education, students must pass an entrance exam if they wish to enter long-cycle university programmes and the short-cycle programmes in greatest demand. The main aim of this exam is to monitor standards of educational achievement in the secondary schools, both public and private, and give universities a criterion for allocating students to the different programmes according to the demand and the results of that exam (Mora, 1996). Yet access to higher education is quite open in Spain and there are no strict limits for staying enrolled in the programmes.