Diversification and Integration: The Vocationalisation of the German Higher Education System

Abstract

Besides its continuing expansion, recent developments in the German higher education system can be subsumed primarily under two headings: diversification and integration. In both respects, there exists an implicit general trend towards a more vocationally or professionally oriented conception of advanced learning. The reasons for this are manifold, but are in one way or another related to the quantitative expansion: the large increase in student numbers, which many countries have experienced over the last twenty or thirty years, and which in the German context continues almost uninterruptedly, is both an accompanying feature as well as a consequence of growing needs and expectations from the labour market, the employment system and society at large (for a general analysis, see OECD, 1991). While ever-growing demand for highly qualified manpower in times of rapidly changing technological and economic circumstances continues to be a major determinant of this expansionist phase, it has also strongly influenced the specific ways in which the German higher education system has been transformed. As we shall try to describe, this overall development occurred primarily through a process of institutional diversification of the traditional system of higher learning, i.e. through the emergence of alternative and more practically oriented forms of professional training. In the most recent past, however, this overall development has been supplemented by a specific and unique internal process, with the integration of the former German Democratic Republic, including its higher education system, into the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus we can at present see a dual development of seemingly antagonistic forces of differentiation and integration within the same system. This article sets out to describe these processes. We shall begin with an account of the differentiation of the state sector in higher education, and the implementation of the Fachhochschulen in particular. The fact that this process of diversification has not yet come to an end will then be analysed by reference to the most recent phenomenon: the privately organised 'third sector'. Next we examine the process of internal integration and the consequences of unification for the former East German system of higher education in particular. In the conclusions, we shall attempt to describe present tertiary adaptations to new needs and expectations in state and society.