The aim of the essay is to provide a descriptive and analytical account of the process of structural change in European higher education systems and institutions which characterizes the last decade. The Bologna Process creates a new institutional environment and new organizational requirements for higher education systems and institutions leading to a blurring between university and non-university institutions. The emerging of international system of rankings is contributing to the tendency to overtake the previously diversified systems structure and institutions towards unified and stratified systems. In this landscape the alternative convergence or diversification seems not to be appropriate to account the ongoing changing process. It is argued that a different dynamic is taking place, more related to structural convergence, organizational differentiation and stratification of institutions.