Part 1
Higher Education to Support a Knowledge-Based Society Full of Creative Vitality - New Developments in Higher Education Reform
Chapter 4
Higher Education Reform in Other Countries
Section 5
Germany
In Germany, institutions of higher education are roughly divided into universities and colleges of technology. Students continue on to universities after a 13-year primary and secondary education that begins at age six, and continue on to colleges of technology after a 12-year primary and secondary education.
Higher education in Germany in the 1990s, following German reunification and against the backdrop of a need to revive the German economy as well as social and economic change including EU integration and an internationalization of the labor market, has further strongly been met by issues regarding contribution to society and the economy through knowledge. The federal government responded to these issues by amending several times from 1998 the Higher Education Principles, which lays out the principles of higher education, and initiating full-scale reforms that encourage competition including an expansion of the discretion of institutions of higher education and instituting achievement-oriented principles to strengthen international competitiveness in Germany's higher education.
