Replication Data for: "Globalisation, Higher Education, and Neoliberal Values: Evidence from the Bologna Process"

Globalisation's emphasis on the knowledge economy gradually shifted universities' objectives away from fostering social cohesion towards developing market skills. What kind of citizenship has emerged from this process? Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, I study the political economy legacy of the largest ever market-oriented transformation in higher education—the Bologna Process—for European millennials. I find evidence for a ‘neoliberal hypothesis’: Among the affected cohorts of European graduates, the reform substantially increased the perceived importance of achieving status and wealth. By contrast, I find no evidence for a ‘humanist hypothesis’: The reform did not change the perceived importance of global equality and environmental issues. Ironically, the Bologna Process heightened the perceived importance of status and wealth without delivering actual gains in either: it left income and employment outcomes unchanged, suggesting that the neoliberal bias operated through culture, not economics. My findings dispute that universities indoctrinate students into left-wing politics, and suggest that institutional pressures—not idiosyncratic generational morals—construct the ‘student customer’.