Mass university
The mass university is a catchphrase in the sociological and educational policy discourse of the German-speaking area. It describes a very large university (several thousand students) with certain ascribed characteristics, in particular loose or missing admission restrictions , a socially heterogeneous student body and mediocrity in research and teaching . The counter-term to the “mass university” is the “elite university” (see: education opportunity , top university ).
Both terms are often used polemically , i.e. without checking whether there is actually a connection between the number of students on the one hand and the social composition of the student body or the quality of the university on the other. The example of Columbia University ( New York ), for example, shows that the size of a university says very little about its quality or the composition of the student body , which has 33,032 students, although it only accepts 6.1% of applicants; Due to the extremely high quality of its scientific maintenance, this university takes 18th place in the QS World University Rankings (as of 2020).
Concept history
The German term mass university appears in sociological and educational policy discourse as early as the early 1960s. H. before the big run on the universities in the German-speaking area even really started. The German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers used the term as early as 1961 in the book The Idea of the University , co-authored with Kurt Rossmann : Designed for the present situation (Berlin, Springer Verlag, 1961). The generally negative concept of mass had only been analyzed and redefined a year earlier by Elias Canetti in his major work Mass and Power and was therefore on everyone's lips in academic circles. Nevertheless, the term mass university was and is tended to have a negative connotation , which makes one think of overcrowded lecture halls, long-haired hippies, student strikes and declining quality of education. It is therefore used deliberately polemically by opponents of a university entrance that is too open . However, its antonym Elite University also has a possible negative connotation, suggesting an exclusive institution from which one may be excluded.
History of the opening of universities to all walks of life
Before 1945
In earlier centuries, an academic education was often only available to a very small part of the population, particularly depending on the financial possibilities and the status of the person. From the 18th and especially in the 19th century, the number of students rose slowly, as the strengthening bourgeoisie in particular used higher education as an opportunity for social advancement over the aristocracy. Women, on the other hand, were usually completely excluded from higher education and could only fight for exceptions at the end of the 19th century (see women's studies ). A certain opening of the universities, especially in Germany and Austria, only took place after the First World War. Nevertheless, the number of students remained manageable and the universities as a whole were rather elitist institutions. This was only to change after the Second World War.
After 1945
In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, the number of students began to increase steadily in all Western European countries and North America, and a trend was started that continues to this day. This development was triggered by several different factors. On the one hand, class differences in post-war society were reduced, and so more parents from lower classes of the population could now afford to send their children to university. On the other hand, tuition fees were reduced or abolished or state, socially graded scholarship systems were created. The economic boom during the economic miracle intensified this development and the social hurdles for an academic education decreased. In addition, the economy increasingly demanded better trained staff, which also led conservative and bourgeois circles to advocate opening up the universities. In addition, more and more young women took the opportunity to start studying. In the United States in particular , more and more ethnic minorities, especially Afro-Americans, flocked to the universities as part of the civil rights movement .
In the USA, the trend towards large universities was triggered immediately after the Second World War by the GI Bill of Rights of 1944, which gave soldiers returning from the war access to the university. The number of students at some US universities tripled between 1945 and 1948 alone. In Western Europe a similar development towards a mass university did not begin until the 1960s and was staggered in the individual countries. France and Italy and the Scandinavian countries led the way, with the increase in Sweden and Denmark well ahead of that in Finland and Norway. In France, the number of students enrolled rose from 214,000 to 630,000 between 1960 and 1970, and in Italy from 268,000 to 682,000. Great Britain, the Benelux countries and Switzerland lagged somewhat behind this development. The universities in Germany and Austria, on the other hand, were still struggling with the consequences of the National Socialist educational policy, which had driven a large number of Jewish and politically unacceptable professors from the universities. The number of students in West Germany “only” rose from 240,000 to 410,000 between 1960 and 1970, but caught up massively in the 1970s. In 1975 there were already 680,000 students in the FRG and in 1982 even more than 930,000. In Austria, the student quota rose especially in the early 1970s and in 1975 was already higher than in West Germany, which was due to demographic reasons, among other things, to the education policy of the government of Bruno Kreisky and his education minister Fred Sinowatz . Only Spain and Portugal, both countries that were still ruled by reactionary dictatorships at that time, lagged behind this pan-western European trend. In Spain there were only about 65,000 students in 1965 with a population of 32 million, but even there the number of students rose to over 400,000 during the lifetime of the dictator Franco (as of 1976, immediately after Franco's death).
Special features of individual countries
This rapid increase in the number of students led to the emergence of the mass university throughout Western Europe and North America, which was now open to much broader strata of the population and slowly lost its elitist character. It is interesting to note that the social base of the universities was particularly broad in the loser countries of World War II, i.e. West Germany, Austria and Italy. There, the traditional elites such as the nobility and the bourgeoisie in particular had lost their influence and prestige, and the universities were all state institutions, while dedicated elite universities and private universities were largely unknown. France and Great Britain, however, retained their staggered higher education system, as a result of which only some developed into mass universities, while other institutes retained their character as elite universities (in Great Britain, for example, Oxford and Cambridge and in France the Grandes Écoles ).
Situation in Europe, especially in German-speaking countries
Consequences of the opening of the universities
The above-mentioned increase in the number of students and, consequently, also graduate numbers not only led to a generally higher level of education in society, but now also made it possible for socially disadvantaged and uneducated sections of the population to receive an academic education. This changed not only the social composition of the student body, but also of the academic research and teaching staff and with it the whole character and culture of these universities. Elitist and “dusty” traditions as well as conservative student associations lost their importance, while new social structures emerged. In the now overcrowded university cities, new forms of coexistence such as flat shares emerged , as classic forms of living such as student dormitories could no longer provide enough space. In addition, there was a politicization of the students, and the large mass universities developed into centers of the political and social upheaval of this time. The 1968 movement began in the major universities, although it began in Europe primarily in France and from there spread to other Western European countries. The phenomenon of the mass university was already more advanced in France, which made Paris in particular the epicenter of this upheaval. In Germany, the major university locations in Frankfurt and West Berlin were the main centers of the student movement , in Austria, to a lesser extent, Vienna ( Uni-Ferkelei ). In addition, not only did the number of students increase, but the range of courses also changed. Especially in the humanities , the curricula have been modernized and completely new fields of study have been established.
In addition to the positive effects of the opening of the universities, the resulting development towards a mass university naturally also had negative effects on research and teaching. Equipping universities with structural and human resources has always lagged behind the increase in the number of students. Politicians could not or would not increase the budget as the student population increased. This led to overcrowded lecture halls, limited seminar and laboratory spaces and waiting lists for courses and exams. There were often more than a hundred students for one professor. Previously, a professor usually knew all of his students by name, and the students in a field of study or faculty usually knew all of their fellow students , whereas the course of study was now becoming more and more anonymous. The universities reacted to this with increasing bureaucracy, so you now had to register for courses and exams using a form, where a personal interview was usually sufficient beforehand. Overall, a process of schooling at universities began, curricula were increasingly prescribed, compulsory attendance introduced and options abolished. As a result, the Humboldtian educational ideal of free, autonomous study faded into the background. In addition, the average length of study was extended considerably, and the number of students who left the university without a degree (drop-out rate, drop-out rate) also increased. In order to cope with the onslaught of students, many universities shifted their budget more and more from research to teaching, which led to the criticism that the mass universities were degenerating into pure training factories.
Approaches to solving the problems
Politics, university administrations and parts of the professorships subsequently developed new concepts in order to master the ever-increasing mass universities and the associated consequences. Initially, attempts were made to expand the university infrastructure, new buildings were erected and new university locations were also established in the regions. In Austria, where the Viennese universities in particular had become mass universities, the University of Linz (1966) and the revived University of Salzburg (1962) emerged. In France, in response to the student protests of 1968, the large mass universities in Paris, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Marseille and Lille were split up into small sub-universities, new faculty buildings were deliberately placed on the outskirts, and new university locations were built and existing ones expanded in the provincial cities. In 1974, the Hagen Open University was founded as a new idea in the Federal Republic of Germany . In the 1980s, more and more old admission restriction models and tuition fees came back into discussion. If such models could not be politically implemented, the alternative was to split up the large mass universities and, for example, to establish the medical, economic and technical faculties as independent universities. At the end of the 1990s, tuition fees were discussed again in German-speaking countries. In 2001, following a change of government, these were introduced in Austria for the first time since the 1970s; in addition, the newly created form of universities of applied sciences created a parallel system to the established universities, which offers a shortened course that is specifically geared to the needs of business. In Germany, the requirements of the numerus clausus for certain fields of study were gradually raised, and following a landmark ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2005, some federal states took the opportunity to charge tuition fees again for the first time since 1970 (see tuition fees in Germany ).
Despite these measures, the trend towards ever increasing student numbers throughout Western Europe continues, albeit in a weaker form. In recent times, therefore, the call has been growing louder from various sides, such as business, conservative and economically liberal politicians and individual researchers, to create explicit elite universities alongside the state mass universities in the interests of globally competitive research. These should only accept particularly qualified professors and students with a profile specifically geared towards research, in order to guarantee particularly productive scientific operations in the fields of technology, medicine, biology and business administration. These institutes, some of which have already been established, are to concentrate on post-graduate and post-doctoral teaching and research, while the previously existing mass universities are to provide basic services for under-graduate students. The completion of the Bologna Process planned for 2010 , in which the basic features of the Anglo-American university model with the graduated degrees Bachelor , Master and PhD are to be introduced uniformly for the entire European Union , is an important step towards this university division of labor.
Examples of very large universities
Number of students in the winter semester 2012/13 (rounded):
- Germany: Open University in Hagen (88,000 = largest university in Germany ), LMU Munich (2018: 50,900), FU Berlin (33,300, formerly 60,000), University of Cologne (50,500), University of Frankfurt (42,100), TU Dresden (2018: 33,500) , TU Berlin (31,100)
- Austria: University of Vienna (91,000 = largest university in German-speaking countries), WU Vienna (24,230), University of Graz (31,600), University of Innsbruck (22,700) and Vienna University of Technology (20,300)
- Switzerland: University of Zurich (25,900)
- France: Paris Sorbonne , split into 12 sub-universities after 1968; former University of Bordeaux (today 4 parts), University of Montpellier (today 3 parts), University of Aix-Marseille (today 3 parts)
- Italy: Sapienza Rome , University of Naples (101,000), University of Bologna (100,000)
- Spain: Complutense Madrid (88,200), Sevilla (73,400), Barcelona (62,000)
- Greece: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (81,500), Kapodistrias Athens (104,000)
- Denmark: University of Copenhagen (30,300)
- Romania: Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj (49,600), University of Bucharest (43,600)
- Great Britain: The Open University (200,000 = largest university in Europe), University of London (135,000 in 19 colleges), Leeds Metropolitan University (41,200), University of Manchester (39,200), Manchester Metropolitan University (33,200)
Individual evidence
- ^ QS World University Rankings. Retrieved January 20, 2020 .
- ↑ Manfred Spitzer: Nervensachen: Perspectives on mind, brain and society. Schattauer Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-7945-2202-6 , page 197 .
- ↑ Michael Hartmann: Elites and Power in Europe: An International Comparison. Chapter 3.1.1 .: The transition to the mass university. Campus Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38434-4 .
- ↑ Meinrad Peterlik: Science and Freedom: Ideas on University and Universality. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1989, ISBN 978-3-486-55691-9 .
- ↑ Eurostat: students / tertiary sector (data 1998-2007).
- ↑ Numbers and facts - LMU Munich. Retrieved October 25, 2018 .
- ↑ Numbers and facts about TU Dresden. Retrieved July 30, 2018 .