Abstract

In the concluding remarks, the editors reflect upon lacunae and implications of the chapters presented before. We discuss the legitimacy of choosing nation states as levels of analysis, the problem of international cooperation in the SSH and the absence of useful typologies of countries in the sphere of higher education as well as possible indicators upon which such typologies could be built. Using our own data as well as data from international organizations, we ask furthermore why disciplines show different growth rates between countries and over time. While we are unable to present detailed explanations of the growth of disciplines, we offer two more abstract ‘models’ indicating what we believe determines different growth rates of disciplines in international comparison.