Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. The United States of America: Changes and Challenges in a Highly Decentralized System Anthony/Glen A Jones and Christian Noumi. 2. Canada: Provincial Responsibility, Federal Influence, and the Challenge of Coordination/Simon Marginson. 3. Australia: Benefits and Limits of the Centralized Approach/Ulrich Teichler. 4. Germany: Continuous Inter-governmental Negotiations/Robert Evan Verhine and Lys M V Dantas. 5. Brazil: Problematics of the Tri-partite Federal Framework/B G Tilak. 6. India: The Unfulfilled Need for Cooperative Federalism Jandhyala/Imanol Ordorika, Roberto Rodríguez-Gómez and Marion Lloyd. 7. Mexico: Dilemmas of Federalism in a Highly Politicized and Semi-decentralized System/Isak Froumin and Oleg Leshukov. 8. The Russian Federation: Pragmatic Centralism in a Large and Heterogeneous Country/Rong Wang and Po Yang. 9. China: The ‘Commanding Heights’ Strategy Revisited. Index. Higher Education in Federal Countries: A Comparative Study is a unique study of higher education in nine federal countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China and India. In this book, leading international scholars discuss the role of federalism and how it shapes higher education in major nation-state actors on the world stage. The editors develop an overarching comparative analysis of the dynamics of central and regional power in higher education, and the national case studies explain how each federal and federal-like higher education system has evolved and how it functions in what are highly varied contexts. The book makes a major contribution to higher education studies and defines a new field of comparative analysis. It also provides important insights into comparative governance and the study of federalism and federal arrangements, with their particular historical, political, legal and economic dimensions.