Why are higher education participation rates in Germany so low? Institutional barriers to higher education expansion

Abstract

Countries around the world have witnessed educational expansion at all levels, leading to the massification of tertiary education and training. Tertiary education has become a major factor of economic competitiveness in an increasingly science‐based global economy and a key response to shifts in national labour markets. Within the EU, the reform of skill formation systems has been advanced by the Lisbon strategy, with the Bologna and Copenhagen processes in higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET) articulating and diffusing overarching goals in European skill formation. If European benchmarks call for at least 40% of all 30‐ to 34‐year‐olds to hold a tertiary‐level certificate, Germany exhibits a relatively low proportion of each cohort entering HE and attaining that qualification level (28%). We analyse this ‘German exceptionalism’, locating a range of factors in the educational system: the institutional logic of segregation, the structure of secondary schooling, the division or schism between the organisational fields of VET and HE, and limited permeability throughout. Regardless of isomorphic pressures that led Germany to quickly implement undergraduate bachelor's (BA) and graduate master's (MA) courses of study, these factors limit the extent of HE expansion visible among other European countries.

Keywords:

• higher education
• vocational training
• educational expansion
• Europeanisation
• Germany

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the Project ‘Internationalization of Vocational and Higher Education Systems in Transition (INVEST)’. For helpful comments, we thank David Baker, Nadine Bernhard, Lukas Graf, John Meyer, Reinhard Pollak and Alessandra Rusconi, the participants of the INVEST workshop held at WZB in July 2010, and the reviewers.

Notes

1. Whether or not one views HE expansion as desirable, the global norm is to increase tertiary participation rates. This goal challenges Germany, especially given Länder control over education, which leads to significant regional disparities. Further, due to other countries' lack of a well‐developed VET systems and ‘vocational order’, such qualifications have often been devalued in international comparisons that classify HE degrees higher than VET certificates in qualification frameworks.

2. While Austria and Switzerland have relatively similar secondary schooling systems to Germany and also offer high‐level VET qualifications (e.g. Meister) that can compete with HE certificates in income and status, the former have instituted a number of hybrid organisational forms (e.g. higher vocational schools) and certificates (e.g. Berufsmatura) – that span the VET/HE‐nexus with flexible pathways, which are less well developed in Germany (Graf, Lassnigg, and Powell forthcoming).

3. In reunified Germany after 1990, the Western model was imposed on Eastern Germany's education and science system, which further countered the diffusion of the global consensus undergirding HE expansion.

4. Berufe are vocations or professions to which an individual feels a calling and which reflect social status within stratified labour markets. Beruflichkeit means that, in congruence with education and educational certificates, employment selection processes, labour markets and rewards (prestige, income) are organised around the principle of traditional, well defined and official Berufe.

5. The Allgemeine Hochschulreife requires certification of knowledge of a second foreign language, whereas the fachgebundene Hochschulreife does not. Thus, the latter certificate allows access only to certain subjects at universities, but to all subjects at universities of applied sciences.

6. The Fachhochschulreife is the second highest general school‐leaving certificate, which can be attained at various upper‐secondary schools.

7. Germany will experience a serious decrease in birth cohort size, a trend already evident in Eastern Germany. In 1991, about 830,000 children were born, but by 2008 only 638,000 were – a reduction of about 18% (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2010, 5).

8. However, Germany exhibits a huge ‘employability premium’ – much larger than in many other countries: University graduates have a much lower unemployment rate than persons holding a VET degree.