Assoc. Prof. Dr. Julien Jacqmin

The growing presence of private financial vehicles like private equity, patient capital, and strategic corporate holdings in European higher education institutions is reshaping institutional ownership in ways that existing accountability frameworks cannot address. This presenation argues that these new private forms of ownership introduce an opaque intermediate layer of control between capital and the teaching institution, a double-agency structure in which disclosure obligations run only to investors, never to the public or to regulators. Accountability in European higher education operates through several distinct mechanisms, hierarchical, professional, and social, and each assumes the recognized institution is also the site of real decision-making. None of them reach the group or fund level where strategic and financial decisions are actually made. Drawing on comparative regulatory and document analysis, the presentation develops this argument through a national case study and comparative material from several other European markets. This diagnostic maps the mismatch and asks why it is distinctively acute in Europe.

Julien Jacqmin is an associate professor of economics at NEOMA Business School. His research examines governance in the higher education and energy sectors, with work published in journals including Research Policy, Economics of Education Review, Energy Policy and Studies in Higher Education. His current research agenda focuses on the emergence of new actors in higher education and energy markets, and the governance and regulatory challenges their entry poses for established institutional frameworks. His work combines economic analysis with close attention to regulatory design, contributing to broader debates on how sectoral governance adapts as new organizational forms and ownership structures reshape traditionally public-interest domains.