The thesis is an interpretive account and analysis ofthe influence of the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on higher education policy in
Ireland. Documentary sources associated with two OECD reviews are used to
explore the roots of policy changes in Ireland's higher education system The first, a
report on technician training in 1964, became the catalyst for the creation of a binary
higher education system The second, a 2004 report on the financing and governance
of higher education, has become the source document of contemporary policy
changes in the system The OECD's higher education agenda has itself evolved over
the decades. The study examines different phases of that evolution and how they
impacted on both the content and the transmission of its influence on national
policies. Moreover, a convergence between OECD policies and its peer review
system with those of the European Union has greatly strengthened the agenda setting
capacity of the OECD in Ireland. Hence the thesis is a study of the politics of policy
formation in one sector during two separate episodes of change. The study looks at
the often -tortuous routes taken to design reform programmes in tune with OECD
recommendations and the long-term results of the measures adopted. What emerges
is a case study of an important trend in contemporary policy development. While
issues are locally defined, the space for an exclusively national competence in
education matters has eroded so that policy initiatives have taken on a supranational
dimension in which the OECD is the pre-eminent player
