Higher education systems have changed significantly in recent decades in response to rising global challenges and various national politicy initiatives. Like elsewhere the Portuguese higher education system has also suffered important changes recently, namely in terms of the operation of its institutions, in its context and societal demands and in policy initiatives at the institutional and systemic levels. My reserach program aims at the analysis of those change dynamics, namely in institutional governance, in the development of quality assurance and performance management systems, in the effects of those changes in professional groups in academia and in the professional and employability of higher education graduates.