Problems in education have a habit of becoming crises. Walter Moberly published The Crisis in the University in 1949; Peter Scott gave us The Crisis of the University in 1984. Cynics might observe that in 35 years it is the preposition and not the proposition that has changed. Christopher Ball speaks in his opening paper in this special issue of the Oxford Review of Education of a broad crisis created by the failure of a triple alliance between the world of employment, the government and the education service in the United Kingdom. John Ashworth concludes his contribution by indicting the complacency in higher education which encourages each to guard his corner until the winds of change dissipate. W. D. Halls in his paper believes that the controversy about the function of the university has never been so acute. Never in the United Kingdom have the universities been under such threat from central government. Professor A. H. Halsey, in his 1984 Charles Carter lecture [1], warns of a future polarised society in which education becomes the main polariser. In the Federal Republic of Germany there has also been crisis. From the blackest 12 years of their long history the German universities emerged to face bravely the challenge of reconstruction and reintegration into the Western tradition in which they had previously played a leading role. Nearly 20 years of stability in education followed, until there was talk of 'catastrophe' with the publication of Georg Picht's Die deutsche Bildungskatastrophe in 1964. There followed the student troubles of 1967/8 when there were fears for the political and social stability of the nation. And now the crisis, as in the UK, is one of numbers and economics: how can a nation of 61 million continue to sustain a student population of 1.3 million? How can the Massenuniversitat continue to provide a university education which does not neglect the needs of individual students? Oxford provided the setting for the third in a series [2] of Anglo-German symposia in which current manifestations of the crisis in higher education in the two countries could be discussed. The present writers were jointly responsible for the organisation and some 35 educationists and other experts convened at Brasenose College from 19 to 22 March 1985 [3]. Included among them were, on the British side, the Chairman of the Board of the National Advisory Body for Public Sector Higher Education in England (the NAB), Mr Christopher Ball (Warden of Keble College, Oxford); the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, Professor John Ashworth; and Professor A. H. Halsey, Director of the Department of Social and