The nexus between research and policy in higher education as in other sectors of society is multimodal and not adequately captured by the notion of a cultural gap between the world of practice and the world of research. Neither can the relationship be seen as unidirectional. This paper sketches out the range of uses of research in policy-making, from instrumental to symbolic use, as well as different formats for how to organize research and expertise into policy-making. These modalities and their implications are discussed with reference to developments in higher education governance in Europe over the past decades. It is argued that the current horizontalization of higher education constitutes a double challenge: (1) giving "special treatment" to higher education in policy-making becomes difficult when it is subsumed to the service of other sectors; and (2) it becomes inadequate to research higher education inside a sector "silo".