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Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly pressured to enhance teaching and research excellence whilst ensuring their relevance to society. These demands, combined with changing structural and ideational dynamics across the sector, are resulting in a set of new tensions and dilemmas at multiple levels. We posit that the ways in which HEIs are responding to these challenges are, to an extent, a function of the models and ideals they have embraced historically in the form of specific ‘ideal type’ models or archetypes of HEIs. These provide local actors with a template, not only for organising internal tasks but also for helping to resolve emerging tensions and dilemmas, such as what tasks to prioritise and under what circumstances. In this chapter, we first identify such tensions and dilemmas and second investigate how these are being addressed across the board against the backdrop of the excellence–relevance interplay and in the context of the multiplicity of tasks and values characterising contemporary HEIs in Northern Europe.