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Growing enrolment rates figures, newly established universities, changes of the legal frame and of the institutional configuration illustrate the transformation of the Romanian higher education system since 1990. Although the chronology, the aims, and the modalities of these transformations have been described in a wide body of literature belonging mainly to the reformers themselves, the latter are a blind spot in the existing scholarship. To make up for this, attention is turned to the social conditions and processes underlying the reforms and to the reformers’ networks themselves (their professional, institutional, and personal itineraries). Light is thus shed on a national case with strong connections to the “academic globalization” advocated by the World Bank, UNESCO, and the EU. By taking into account the international dimension of higher education reform processes, a contribution is made to the existing literature on the transformation of the public sector not only in Romania but in eastern Europe in general.