The Europeanization of the Polish Higher Education (HE) system results from the inter-play of several factors: post-communist legacies, liberal transformations and the EU accession conditionality, which coincided with the launch of the Bologna Process (BP). While the systemic transformations implied a vast privatisation of the HE system, the BP defined the role of the sector as supporting a ‘knowledge-based economy’, an agenda promoted by the Lisbon strategy and international institutions in the field. Taking into account these variables is important to understand the institutional context and the perceptions and priorities of the political, administrative and scientific elites, whose representatives were involved in HE reforms.