The European Higher Education Area is a flexible, meta framework, to accomodate all the national systems. Therefore, a large place is left to self-organisation. Three case study are presented here:
- dynamics of international mobility flows,
- the concept of self-extracting quality management systems,
- sectoral qualification frameworks viewed as complex adaptive systems

In conclusion, to characterize evolution and structural changes in European higher education it is necessary to adopt a systemic approach. There is a lot of research on particular aspects of higher education using systems dynamics. However, there is a wide gap between the research on systems dynamics in HE, Educational policy makers and Academic practice. There are now favorable conditions to bridge these gaps, a valuable effort can thus be made in sectors such as quality assurance, mobility and qualifications frameworks.