Globalisation is bringing us closer together, meaning that it is easier learn from, and react to, developments in other countries. Worldwide we are seeing governments adopting similar higher education policies, to some extent encouraged by ‘supranationals’ such as the OECD. Within these policies are common trends associated with the global ‘knowledge economy’: a rapidly expanding student body, and changes in how universities are funded and governed. There is, though, divergence in the detail. This chapter firstly examines how those global trends transpire somewhat contrastingly in Germany and England, and secondly, how students in those countries might experience higher education differently.