Within the last sixty years, the system of professional dominance inspired by the Humboldtian model of a rule-governed community of scholars based on values of free inquiry, academic autonomy, and self-regulation has gradually transformed to a new regime of managed education. On the macro level, we contribute a broader, longitudinal analysis of the institutional changes
that have unfolded during the postwar period. By employing a theoretical framework of organizational institutionalism, we identify three eras of the higher educational system in postwar Germany: the era of professional dominance, the era of federal involvement and democratization, and the era of managed education associated with the rise of the entrepreneurial university. On the micro level, we show with an illustrative case of one of the most radical transformations of a university in the German postwar period how a more traditional public university was turned into an entrepreneurial one as a strategic response to institutional changes.