Reform by New Establishment: Europe's Young Universities

Abstract

1. Introduction

From the early sixties to the mid-seventies the landscape of European higher education went through a phase of incisive changes, the most significant outward sign of which was the many newly founded universities, colleges, and other institutions of the tertiary education system. This groundswell of institution building is without parallel in the history of univer - sities. Neither the wave of new foundings that followed the religious disputes of the Reformation and Counter -Reformation in Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nor the creation of the Prussian professional colleges in the eighteenth century, nor the creation of the so-called "civic universities" in Great Britain in the turn of the century reached the extent of the reforms of the past decade, quite apart from the fact that earlier changes all took place within national confines.