Factors generating change in European higher education have been multilayered, interrelated and often common throughout the continent. The article, drawing from current research and policy debates, discusses the three issues: marketization, privatization, and the competition for public funding; conflicting demands and the teaching/research divide in European universities; and European academics and their transforming institutions. The article concludes that emergent complexities, directly or indirectly, refer to the academic profession. Both academics and academic institutions are highly adaptable to external circumstances and change has always been the defining feature of national higher education systems. But the changes envisaged by policymakers, at both national and especially supranational levels, are structural, fundamental and go to the very heart of the academic enterprise.