Higher education as a subfield of comparative research in the social sciences

The article discusses various approaches to the definition of the boundaries of comparative higher education researches as scientific and learning activities. The author captures the following paradox: while there is an institutionalized state of comparative education, there is no clear understanding of the term’s meaning in the relevant literature. The author formulates a functional definition of the comparative education. The paper considers the need for separation of comparative higher education studies as an autonomous subfield of the comparative education in social science.