Institutional change in the German higher education system: From professional dominance to managed education.

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Institutional changes in the German system of Higher Education are remarkable. Within the last 60 years, the system of professional dominance inspired by the Humboldtian model of a rule-governed community of scholars (Scott, 2006; Olsen, 2007) based on values of free inquiry, academic autonomy and self-regulation has gradually transformed to a new regime of managed education (M¸nch, 2011). With the rise of mass education in the late 1960s and 1970s coupled with more fundamental reforms in university governance, the model of professional dominance was already unsettled. Federal control and democratization of Higher Education became guiding pillars of a new era that displaced the initial logic of professional dominance. After three decades of internal democracy and federal control, the system was again challenged by declining student numbers, a low degree of international visibility and the general demand for the reorganizing of public services in the name of competition, innovativeness and cost-efficiency. The typical public universities in Germany encountered a demandñresponse imbalance (Clark, 1998) as with the limited resources outstanding research and high standards in teaching became difficult to realize. The seeds were created for the rise of a new system of managed education with the entrepreneurial university as the emerging organizational form. The hallmarks of managed education are threefold (M¸nch, 2011). First, based on a market ideology the education system has been reformed in the name of competition, excellence and efficiency.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHandbook on the entrepreneurial University
EditorsAlain Fayolle, Dana Redford
Number of pages24
Place of PublicationCheltenham
PublisherEdward Elgar Publishing
Publication date01.01.2014
Pages112 - 135
ISBN (Print)978-1-78100-701-3
ISBN (Electronic)9781781007020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2014