Abstract
In this article, we analyze the historical development of quality-related reforms in German higher education using an organizational reform perspective. The purpose is to shed light on the processes behind recurring attempts to reform teaching quality since the beginnings of the modern research university to the present day. The development, variation, and also facilitation of quality approaches can be considered as a reaction to major changes in the context of universities, especially with regard to organizational growth. We argue that recurring reform initiatives can be interpreted as continuous, externally motivated self-improvement programs, which simultaneously contribute to communicating externally about quality. Overall, as the discourse on quality in universities intensifies and becomes more differentiated, the topic has increasing taken on a life of its own. Universities are internalizing quality management ideas and using them to distinguish themselves.
Introduction
That academic teaching should be of a high quality, carefully organized, oriented to the needs of students, and methodologically grounded is a general goal of all universities. How this is best achieved, and which processes and measures are appropriate, has been the subject of numerous reform discussions, especially in the context of universities with their strong focus on research. But despite the many reform initiatives aimed at improving teaching and learning in higher education (e.g., Harvey, 2018), there is no consensus on how best to manage quality in educational institutions. A major reason for this is that quality is a complex and multifaceted construct, especially in higher education (Harvey, 2018). Correspondingly, the intensity of reforms in the context of academic teaching and learning is high, and the implementation of each new reform brings new challenges. After more than 20 years of quality-related reforms, Harvey (2018) found that several fundamental challenges have not been resolved, for example, 1) the difficulty of assessing the impact of quality assurance, 2) the high bureaucratic burden required for quality assessment as well as 3) cynicism among academics concerning the efficacy and value of assurance processes (Harvey, 2018).
Quality-related reforms in higher education have already been studied in various contexts and countries. Pham Thi (2011) critically discusses quality improvement efforts in teaching and curriculum development in Vietnamese higher education since the 1990s. Hong Thanh shows that the implementation of reforms caused several unintended effects, especially with regard to the low quality and poor cohort of teaching staff. Aihua and Verdugo (2015) analyzed quality-related reforms in the education of Chinese teachers from a historical point of view. Their findings reveal that reforms are often driven by political and economic needs rather than the needs of the students. Quality-related reforms in higher education in Kosovo are discussed by Gilbert and Pratt-Adams (2020). They argue that the adoption of a learner-centered model of education necessitates an underlying transformation in the culture of teacher educators, which is a challenge in reform projects due to the “undecidability” of organizational culture (e.g., Kühl, 2018). Organizational theory has shown that changes in formal reform policy do not necessarily produce a corresponding shift in the actual behavior of an organization's members, e.g., the teachers, professors or administrative staff (e.g., Meyer & Rowan, 1977). It is quite possible to develop a new learner-centered teaching approach and not to follow it (cf. Gilbert & Pratt-Adams, 2020). Similarly, it is possible to collect huge amounts of evaluation data during quality assurance processes and then not use it to inform decisions. In particular, the significantly increased formal effort for the implementation of quality assurance in universities is viewed very critically, especially by academic staff (Steinhardt et al., 2018, S. 21). However, as Brunsson (1989) notes, these rituals and double standards can all be very important, if not essential, to a modern organization that wants to conform to societal demands for respectability, modernity, and rationality, thereby securing its inflow of resources and external support.
In this paper, we trace the historical course of reform developments in quality assurance in German (and for a period of time West German) higher education. 1 The history of quality-related reforms is much longer than is generally assumed in current quality discourse, extending as far back as the early nineteenth century to the foundation of the modern university in Germany and elsewhere. The German university, with its Humboldtian educational principle focusing on research-based learning exerted considerable influence on many other higher education systems. The reputable traditional American universities likewise drew significant inspiration from this period and the notion of a “unity of research and teaching” became an influential model that many aspired to across the globe. But with the onset of the First World War, the heyday and radiance of German academia began to wane.
In the following, we examine the historical development of quality assurance from an organization theory perspective (Brunsson, 2006, 2005; Esposito, 2005; Jung, 2008). Like many other reforms, quality reforms have been cyclical and discontinuous in German higher education, although the last two decades have witnessed a very intense reform phase commencing with the introduction of the Bologna reform. Of particular interest is the reciprocal influence of organization and environment: which internal and external impulses have had a normative impact and how have universities responded structurally to translate external expectations into internal organizational structures? An organizational reform perspective of the inner logic and mechanisms of change in higher education institutions is crucial for understanding how external interventions, e.g., in the form of governmental regulations, are processed by institutions. Even though there is extensive literature on quality assurance in higher education, no attempt has yet been made to synthesize the knowledge on the historical development of quality-related reforms in Germany, one of the largest higher education systems in Europe. A theoretical analysis is also instructive, raising questions about current quality reform approaches and expressing concerns for the future.
Our article begins with a brief presentation of a theoretical framework that can serve as a basis for analyzing the antecedents and effects of quality-related reforms. In a second step, we summarize the main historical developments in quality-oriented initiatives in German higher education. In the concluding discussion, we combine historical and theoretical analyses as a basis for developing theses on reforms and routine in higher education.
Reforming Reforms – An Organizational Theory Perspective
Etymologically, the term reform derives from the Latin reformatio, which can be translated as change. Although the term reform itself has neither a negative nor a positive connotation, it is often equated with positive changes or improvements (Esposito, 2005, p. 51). Reforms describe changes that are initiated in response to problems, inadequacies, and inefficiencies that have been identified and can therefore be interpreted as “organizational (self-)improvement intentions” (Jung, 2008, p. 103, own translation; von Krockow, 1976, pp. 12–13). Reforms are predicated on the assumption that the proposed changes will be beneficial in the future and essential for the long-term existence of the organization. They are often initiated in response to findings that suggest that current objectives or expectations are not being adequately met, or indeed are not being addressed at all. But there are also other reasons for initiating reforms. Brunsson (2006, 2005) points out that reform projects can be a product of organizational forgetfulness in which inadequacies already addressed in earlier reforms become the subject of renewed reform initiatives that are frequently only superficially new (Brunsson, 2005, p. 13; Krücken, 2014). A closer look reveals that reforms often make use of ‘tried and tested’ approaches but are given a different image with the result that not just innovations but also deviations and modifications become subsumed under the concept of reform.
Regardless of their origin, reforms can be interpreted as catalysts of self-actualization processes, which occur at certain intervals. It is thus hardly surprising that Brunsson (2006, 2005) describes reforms as routine actions, while Esposito (2005) emphasizes the normality of reform. If organizations find themselves repeating previously initiated reforms at regular intervals, the process of organizational change starts to acquire a certain practice and the reforms begin to lose their novelty character, being perceived as “[…] something quite ordinary […]” (Brunsson, 2005, p. 19, own translation). Even if change acquires a routine character, it does not necessarily follow that each subsequent change is more radical than the last. On the contrary, observations have shown that in many cases changes triggered by the reforms are often only cosmetic in nature and remain predominantly superficial while the underlying structures remain untouched. The increasing number and frequency, even regularity, of reforms can be attributed to their self-referential, oscillating, and self-generating character (Brunsson, 2005, pp. 18–21). They are repetitive in nature, resulting from previous projects and equally culminating in new ones, not least because their implementation and completion are accompanied by missed targets, new insights, and new problems. The resulting reform spirals resemble a cycle of demands, hopes, and disappointments.
From a theoretical perspective, the phenomenon of constant reform changes can be explained using Luhmann's (2018) so-called decision-making premises. When seen as self-updating processes, reforms serve to review personnel, programmatic and communicative decision-making options. Accordingly, reform projects have their reference point in the past. They deal with existing situations, question their validity in the context of current circumstances, in turn raising new decision-making options which result in organizations gaining a better understanding of themselves (Jung, 2008, pp. 103–105). Reforms can thus be understood as deliberately planned irritations through which organizations are reminded of the need to relate to the present. They provide opportunities to pause for reflection, so that systems can be reviewed from an outside perspective detached from daily routine and prevailing decision-making premises can be put to the test. In this respect, the initiation of reform projects makes an essential contribution to system maintenance and can be seen as an aspect of organizational stability (Brunsson, 2005, p. 9; Jung, 2008, p. 103). From the perspective of organizational theory, the actual achievement of the reform intentions and targets postulated in advance recede into the past (Esposito, 2005), whereas reform communication itself gains in importance, as it stimulates processes of self-reflection and provokes the creation of new differences and needs for decision-making (Jung, 2008, p. 227). Accordingly, the specific task of reform lies less in reducing the distance between (reform) aspiration and (organizational) reality, and more in the actualization of existing decision structures. Specifically, organizations (here: higher education institutions) are given the opportunity to co-determine and decide on their own future form through the implementation of reform processes – regardless of whether they were initiated by the system (university) itself or imposed from outside (here: governments). Accordingly, they can by no means to be ascribed a passive status.
Reform programs represent a specific opportunity – or means of making time and space – for self-inquiry. The reform program provides a means of questioning embedded routines and examining ways of adopting external impulses more easily into their internal structures. Organizational and reform research therefore sees their primary purpose less in the respective specific objective of a reform (e.g., the implementation of a particular quality approach) and more in the cognitive opening, in the self-development of the organization, also and especially with regard to the anticipated demands of society as a whole (Brunsson, 2005; Jung, 2008; Schütz, 2022). In the case of higher education institutions, these are particularly evident in the development of social welfare, notions of equitable education, or the communicated requirements regarding educational services and qualifications. It seems reasonable to suggest that universities, as knowledge-intensive organizations that stake their claim on fundamental cognitive openness and development (novelty as a means of enabling cognition), are particularly conducive to self-optimization processes. In the following section, we describe quality-related reforms in German higher education and discuss them subsequently using an organizational reform perspective.
Historical Development of Quality Reforms in Germany
Even though the development of quality assurance is commonly associated with the new public management movement in the early 1990s and later the introduction of the Bologna reform, the idea of improving teaching quality dates back to the foundation of the modern university. In 1810, a new type of university was born: the research university founded by Wilhelm von Humboldt which, as the name suggests, saw itself prioritizing research over teaching. This interpretation is, as Dowe (2007) observes, only partly true: his historical account shows that the second half of the nineteenth century in particular came to be characterized as an “era of teaching” (Dowe, 2007, p. 57, own translation), a development that can be attributed to a rapid increase in student numbers. Between 1871 and 1914, student numbers quadrupled from roughly 13,000 to more than 60,000 students (Dowe, 2007, p. 58) – a phenomenon that contemporary observers already described as the “massification of higher education” (Titze, 1987, p. 26, own translation). Such growth processes caused universities to adapt their teaching conditions and especially their assessment procedures. While the specifications for a doctoral dissertation remained rather vague, the requirements for state examinations were subject to detailed regulations and specializations, which also included certain topics and new types of learning arrangement, such as tutorials and smaller seminars. According to Dowe (2007, p. 66, own translation), the much smaller seminar and practical tutorial can be considered as a “successful attempt to provide and improve research-based learning in a changing and increasingly expanding higher education system”.
In the process, parts of the educational faculty began debating approaches to higher education pedagogy, as reflected in the foundation of an association for higher education pedagogics and the establishment of a specialist academic journal (Dowe, 2007, p. 78). Their opponents claimed that academic teaching had no need for a particular pedagogical approach due to its direct connection to research discourse, which has its own rules for quality assurance, such as peer reviews. This notion of quality was based on the “idea of an autonomous educational strength through research” (Dowe, 2007, p. 80, own translation) and quality failings at that time were mainly attributed to non-compliance with the Humboldtian ideal, which stressed the primacy of research for higher education. This undisputed primacy of research meant that the professors (Ordinarien), were granted control over higher education quality. In essence, teaching quality was assumed to be directly connected to research quality. This quality ideal was fostered by the fact that the majority of students came from privileged families whose parents had at the very least attended the German Gymnasium, the German high school preparing for higher education (Lobkowicz, 1987, p. 149). This elitist tradition allowed German universities to uphold relatively high-quality standards for a small and wealthy part of society.
During the two World Wars university education in Germany experienced serious quality crises. According to Giles (1984), the competence of university students dropped significantly in many disciplines during the national socialist regime. One argument is that involvement in the Hitler-Jugend (“Hitler-youth”) demanded such commitment that little time was left for academic work. Another is that political loyalty was accorded greater prominence than academic performance with respect to how students were assessed, and how professors were selected or promoted, which deeply affected the quality of German higher education. During National Socialism, universities were tightly controlled by the regime, and the subjects taught had to correspond to the dominant ideology. The governing regime's general lack of interest in investing in higher education compounded the problem and many universities and technical colleges closed during World War II. Student numbers dropped significantly, and it was only when the victorious Allied Western powers decided that German universities should return to normal that teaching programs started again.
After the war, East and West Germany established two different higher education systems, albeit outwardly similar in a number of elementary institutional features (professorships, faculties, degrees, etc.). The differences, of course, lay particularly in the political and ideological programs. In this article, we focus on developments in West Germany: in the early fifties West German universities began to flourish once more, not least as a product of the Marshall Plan and the objective of quickly building up the basic university infrastructure (Lobkowicz, 1987, p. 147). The post-war period in German higher education was again characterized by an enormous explosion of student numbers. Student numbers more than doubled in the decade from 1950 to 1960. New universities and new types of higher education institutions were founded, which made the whole sector more expensive. But alongside this growth, complaints about the “inefficiency of the university system” (Lobkowicz, 1987, p. 150, own translation) grew louder and students as well as professors reported that teaching was chaotic and not well suited to the increasing student numbers. The students entering university were also held to be “less gebildet” (“less well-educated” Lobkowicz, 1987, p. 149) as a result of curricula reforms in secondary schools that resulted in less importance being accorded to Latin and Greek. Others complained that professors were misusing their freedom or that students were being expected to learn about very abstract theories. It is interesting to note that the loss of quality in higher education was no longer attributed to non-compliance with Humboldt's ideal of research-based learning. In contrast, the close connection between teaching and research was now criticized as cultivating an “ivory tower” mentality, producing graduates of little use for the increasingly industrialized economy.
According to Neusel (2010, p. 22), three societal developments were responsible for bringing about a change in the quality conception of higher education. 1) The existing elitist structures in German higher education had become dysfunctional and were impacting on the quality of university education. Georg Picht (1964) spoke of an “educational catastrophe” and demanded a massive investment in higher education to qualify graduates for the increasing demands of the economy and the labor market. 2) The close alignment of high schools (Gymnasium) and universities would, so the assumption, lead to larger numbers of well-schooled pupils, in turn creating growing demand for higher education; 3) Society and social democratic government policies called for greater equity in access to higher education which resulted in the creation of programs aimed at opening universities to socially disadvantaged groups and a further expansion of higher education. A number of new universities, technical colleges, and comprehensive universities were founded, and student numbers doubled during the 1970s, exceeding one million by 1980 (Neusel, 2010, p. 23).
Until the 1960s, full professors (“Ordinarien”) presided over their own institute without strong involvement in committees and collective decision-making structures, so that universities were typically comprised of parallel smaller institutions. This fragmented organizational structure of decentralized power units was seen, however, as a major barrier to meeting changing student needs and societal demands (Bartz, 2007, p. 157). The state started to intervene in teaching matters and introduced the concept of “rational higher education planning”. In response, politicians drew up a higher education framework that proposed a broad restructuring and expansion of university structures, including the introduction of group universities (“Gruppenhochschulen”) and content-related reforms (Neusel, 2010, p. 31). The passing of the Hochschulrahmengesetz signaled the end of the classical professor oriented Ordinarienuniversitäten. In line with the wider trend towards democratization in society, the chairs were modified, i.e., more closely integrated into institutes and their management of resources and positions. New intermediate forms that lie between faculty and professorship emerged – research units or departments. This development mainly shaped the image of the so-called “reform universities” that complemented the higher education landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. In traditional universities, the chair model has survived more strongly. At many universities, there are generally hybrid forms between chairs and departments. Cross-university decision-making structures were introduced, diminishing the influence of the professors, although they still had a majority say. The contrast between newly founded reform universities and the traditional old universities is also reflected in their openness to new ideas of higher education didactics: progressive approaches stood in opposition to classical ones. Typical for German education policy, this also reflects the contrast between social-democratic and conservative policies.
From this point on, key quality-related criteria (e.g., on student admission, teaching load, lecturer-student ratios) were regulated by the state. To utilize university capacities as efficiently as possible, the state introduced regulations governing the number of students admissible per subject at each university (“Kapazitätsverordnung”), the number of teachers at each university, their teaching load and the courses prescribed in a curriculum. Much of this direct state intervention was motivated by the intention to improve access to higher education for disadvantaged students. Universities were obliged to offer every high school leaver a university place in the desired field at the desired university. A dysfunctional effect of these capacity regulation parameters (that still exists to this day) is that it directly entails an increase in educational capacities: the appointment of a new professor requires the university to provide a corresponding number of new student places. Because a central determinant of quality assurance – the professor to student ratio – is determined by the federal states, the universities have little own control. The opponents of such detailed state regulation argued that this resulted in an expansion of university administration and an increase in bureaucracy in the state ministries while crippling the universities’ freedom to regulate teaching issues and quality (Lobkowicz, 1987, p. 153). With the beginning of the oil crisis and its impact on the funding of government policies and the ensuing change of German federal government, the first period of higher education reforms came to an end. Higher education policies were accorded less significance – at least for a while. Bartz (2007, p. 167; own translation) states: “Since the mid-1970s, the German higher education landscape has been characterized by increasing stagnation and a multitude of legal and administrative obstacles. Lacking a core driving ideal, the system has quickly reemerged as resistant to reform.”
As in many other higher education systems, the 1990s are generally regarded as the decade in which new, decentralized quality assurance system emerged. According to this new quality ideal, it is not sufficient to merely correspond to government requirements. Instead, German universities – which since the reunification of Germany were organized according to Western university standards – were expected to actively demonstrate their performance in teaching and research and to develop an output-oriented quality assurance system, which could be used to measure the discrepancy between self-defined targets and actual performance. This was the birth of the modern quality conception consisting of performance evaluation, controlling and accreditation (Serrano-Velarde, 2008, p. 60). In addition, the pressure to reform the German higher education system in the 1990s was without doubt also a product of the new reformed and reunited Federal Republic, which now comprised more federal states with many more universities, and a changed distribution of students.
In higher education reform discourse, this era marks a turning point away from the idea of an interventionist state to that of a managerialist idea of the lean state. Both these quality conceptions share the same assumption, however, that the quality of higher education can be steered and controlled, if not by the state, then by the idea of an autonomous university. As will be discussed, the new ideal was similarly flawed, because German universities never became “complete organizations” but remained a hybrid between organization and institution (Müller, 2016, p. 191). Although the reforms of the late 1990s stimulated a process of universities becoming organizations, they continue to be “specific organizations” (Musselin, 2007) with loosely coupled units, limited control of management bodies, state regulations, state financing and professional norms that guide the actions of academic staff.
The image of universities as autonomous actors prevails to the present day and influences the political quality agenda. In the emerging quality approach of the (partly) autonomous university, higher education institutions were made responsible for quality assurance themselves. This new system employed a two-pronged approach of 1) internal evaluation and 2) external accreditation as a means of assuring compliance to minimum quality standards in educational programs. The hope was that this new type of quality assurance would reduce state bureaucracy and, in conjunction with the introduction of bachelor's and master's degree programs, would increase differentiation in the German higher education sector while also enabling diversity (Serrano-Velarde, 2008, p. 69).
The central decision-making body in the current quality assurance system in German higher education is the Accreditation Council. The assessment procedures are overseen by accreditation agencies, who are authorized by the Accreditation Council. In the beginning of the accreditation phase, universities typically accredited individual study programs. Since 2007, the so-called “system accreditation” has emerged as an alternative to program accreditation, not least because the latter came under strong criticism for the cost and effort it entailed, its demotivational consequences on academic staff, its lack of effectiveness and controlling character (cf. Blossfeld et al., 2013; Röbken & Overberg, 2021). While program accreditations focus primarily on the specific profiles of bachelor's and master's programs, system accreditation assesses the internal quality management system of a higher education institution. However, this too has met with criticism at universities for its continuing “certifying and thus strongly controlling character” (Nickel & Ziegele, 2012, p. 2, own translation) and the “reduction in the depth of review” (Kaufmann, 2012, p. 221, own translation). It is interesting to note that the criticisms pointed at system accreditation are similar to those initially voiced against program accreditation (specifically with regard to formalism and bureaucratization). Higher education actors entrusted with the implementation of system accreditation are subjected to a range of tensions. Not only do they have to deal with pressure to act on the one hand and resistance on the other, they must also take diverse interest groups into account and gain their acceptance. At the same time, they must make decisions on the design of quality management systems appropriate for higher education institutions that take into account existing resources and structures while also meeting external requirements (Suwalski, 2020). The criticism leveled at system accreditation gave rise to the next reform idea – the so-called “quality audit” which places a stronger focus on development than on certification (e.g., Blossfeld et al., 2013; Nickel & Ziegele, 2012).
In contrast to accreditation procedures, quality audits are less focused on external control and more concerned with self-imposed goals that are intended to promote the autonomy and profile of individual universities. During the audit process, university leadership as well as faculties and departments must demonstrate that they are jointly pursuing the continuous development of quality in teaching. Unlike accreditation, the quality audit is not linked to the approval of study programs. The “Hochschulrektorenkonferenz” (HRK, 2012) 2 has advocated a transition from the idea of system accreditation towards an institutional quality audit with a view to strengthening the universities’ autonomy and reducing bureaucracy. The first universities have already taken up the audit idea, varying it with their own ideas. For example, the universities in Mainz and Siegen follow an internationally oriented approach and exchange information with international partner universities about joint quality development. This should provide impulses for their own quality development. Table 1 summarizes the different models of quality assurance implemented in German higher education institutions over the last 20 years:
Re-reforming Quality Assurance in German Higher Education.
Discussion
In this section, we shall discuss the mechanisms behind the repeated reforms aimed at improving teaching quality in German higher education in the context of organizational theory. A historical review shows that teaching-related reforms have always been closely linked to the diversification and growth of higher education systems, on the one hand, and to social and political expectations that drive and control this growth, on the other. These developments interact with each other. Increasing student numbers and the accompanying diversification and growth in the size of universities in turn raised several challenges that are reflected in subsequent reform phases. In the initial period of the elite-oriented university, there were no general, i.e., interdisciplinary formal quality assurance structures and mechanisms. Universities were relatively manageable entities for a comparatively homogeneous group of privileged people. In the elite system, professors were responsible for defining and controlling academic standards, and the professors and lecturers in small institutions knew each other well, shared similar values and norms, and made decisions based on informal direct discussions (local professional bureaucracy). Standards for teaching were derived from research – at least as measured by the Humboldtian ideal – and provided relatively high and uniform standards for the members of the university (Trow, 2007). In this exclusive university, reform cannot be understood as continuous improvement, but rather – from an internal academic perspective – as an unlikely and inappropriate imposition. There is no acceptable concept of (external) “quality management” at all.
A first marked change in quality reform followed much later as part of the significant expansion of higher education in the 1960s. As in many other educational systems, Germany sought to broaden access to higher education, driven by an ambition to ensure equal opportunities in education and employment prospects. The German higher education system strove to provide better access to more social groups and to educate these groups with uniform (and high) quality standards in line with the equality principles. The aim of reforms was therefore to expand the quantity of higher education offered, while at the same time maintaining the (high) quality of education offered. To minimize differences in the status and quality of higher education institutions, the German state (specifically the individual federal Länder), as the guarantor of uniformity and fair conditions of access, assumed responsibility for key decision-making areas, such as resource allocation, recruitment of staff and the admission of students. In addition to the important aspect of social participation and educational aspiration, this period of reform also sought to compensate for, or rectify, the deficits and difficulties caused by the Second World War and the consequences of the rapid and rather superficial – i.e., poorly structurally differentiated – reconstruction of universities after the war. The creation of universities of applied sciences and profile universities alongside the traditional full universities led to a certain degree of alignment, primarily through a greater emphasis on technical and vocational education. The impression was of having “cleared out the cobwebs” in the German higher education system.
The phase of state-controlled quality policy was, however, relatively short, as new problems arose as a product of the fundamental dilemma between widening access and ensuring high-quality standards, and the accompanying difficulties of financing the increased demand for higher education (see also Trow, 2007). Massive funding bottlenecks in the 1970s compounded the problem, causing reform efforts to stagnate for more than a decade before a new reform phase was ushered in the 1990s. It was hoped that through a new model of autonomous universities, local actors could address quality issues autonomously using tailored approaches. However, rather than solving the fundamental dilemma, this only shifted it to another level – the level of university organization – though for a while it successfully concealed the issue. This new reform phase saw universities transform themselves (at least partially) into autonomous organizations responsible for their own quality assurance. The resulting reforms were not radical, and indeed remained conservative in parts, because essential decision-making parameters for quality (such as staff recruitment, resource allocation, and student admissions) still needed to be jointly negotiated with the federal state financing them. The accompanying accreditation processes, both at the level of the program and the system, were also linked to state approval procedures. Inevitably, subsequent reform cycles have followed, as reflected in current debates on developing the accreditation system into a “softer” alternative: the quality audit.
A particular aspect of this more recent quality assurance approach is the focus on “quality development processes” – as opposed to actual teaching contents, outcomes, methodologies, and academic standards. In elite higher education, academic standards were linked to academic performance criteria and were presumably also shared and relatively high (Trow, 2007). The accreditation system, by contrast, focuses on standardized quality processes, the assumption being that uniform administrative processes lead to good (and uniform) educational quality for all. Staff-related quality dimensions, such as lecture-student ratios, represent a more meaningful measure, however, these are set out by the state in Germany and not controlled by university decision makers. Overall, it can be said that the democratization and standardization of higher education have led to a partial restriction of internal self-control mechanisms for academic quality. In the traditional system of the elite university, it was the other way around: the internal order (with advantages and disadvantages) practically immunized itself against micromanagement by the state or society. In other words, every progress has its price.
The reforms in quality management in German universities offer an interesting example of re-reforming reforms. As argued above, organizational reforms exhibit a cyclical pattern because while they are initiated to solve existing problems, they also cause new problems in their wake (Brunsson, 2005, pp. 10–16; Overberg et al., 2020). Over time, new solutions arise to address these problems creating spirals of changes and cycles of reform. The preceding analysis shows that more recent quality reforms have relatively quickly become the subject of corrections and improvements. The transition from accreditation processes to quality audits can be interpreted as a reaction to at times vehement criticism from academia, students, and administration. The appearance of quality assurance has therefore also changed over time in response to different stakeholder demands.
The current shift towards quality auditing reveals a softening of the objectives, which are now only loosely coupled with the overall goal of achieving high academic standards for a broad range of students. The original concept of external quality control via accreditation has been given a fresh, brighter coat of paint that enables the organization to signal its ability to learn to the outside world. While the shift in focus may be seen as being largely “cosmetic”, it underscores the necessity and legitimacy of continuing the entire quality assurance system. The quality assurance system can be understood as a cumulative solution that does not necessarily follow a continuous internal logic.
In general, one can observe that the cumulation and successive adjustment of these reforms through management concepts has taken on a character of its own within the system. Universities now feel under pressure to keep pace with developments, to develop own independent ideas, even to distinguish themselves through management concepts. That this has developed into an independent mechanism is quite different to the early reform phases – and shows how indirect effects can set in motion a mechanism of its own that is detached from its original intentions.
One can see this reflected in the more recent development of quality audits. While quality audits are supposed to free universities from the constraints of the accreditation procedures, which are often criticized as being too directive or bureaucratic, universities now have to demonstrate greater own initiative, professionalization and international networking in the design of their quality management. To this end, they must strengthen their own departments and offices, introduce new procedures and invest cognitive and organizational resources in the independent further development of quality management.
In our opinion, this pattern of profiling and internalization follows a logic that is recognizably different to that of the original reforms and their objective to “fulfill targets” in the context of quality. One could also say that the universities are further detaching themselves from their broader environment, since the expectation is that they will now identify their own optimization potentials and adapt independently in response to external conditions. It would seem to even increase the burden of previous approaches. The risk here is that giving primacy to demonstrable quality assurance may cause universities to lose sight of actual scientific and professional quality criteria even more than is already the case. It does not automatically follow that academic quality in teaching, and the presentation of this quality through management concepts that are not rooted in this scientific basis, are one and the same.
In this respect, an increasing orientation towards the environment can be assumed. The notion of an increasing “environmentalization” is closely related to the core idea of neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). From this perspective, the spread of certain organizational forms is not solely attributable to their “technical rationality”. Instead, organizations adopt specific elements in their organizational structure “ceremonially” in order to correspond to the expectations of important stakeholders and to gain legitimacy or cultural support. The various processes that cause an organization to change its structure are described as “isomorphism” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Isomorphic pressures can be exerted by powerful organizations (e.g., government) upon which the respective organization depends. This form of isomorphism occurs when higher education institutions adopt similar quality practices in response to external regulations or mandates. This was the case, for example, when European higher education institutions implemented the Bologna reform, which encouraged European cooperation in implementing quality assurance within higher education and apply comparable criteria and methodologies.
While these practices may not necessarily align with the institution's internal goals or values, they are adopted to legitimize universities to internal and external stakeholders (Csizmadia et al., 2008; Stensaker et al., 2019). Along with a general trend towards the marketization in higher education, in which competition between universities has increased, education is treated more and more as a commodity and students as ‘consumers’. Here, the legitimation function of quality management gains importance. Not only in Germany, but in almost all tertiary education systems, governments request external evaluations in order to reassure themselves that investments in higher education generate a value for the clients and society as a whole (Karakhanyan & Stensaker, 2020). In many higher education systems around the world, quality management is considered proper, adequate, rational, and necessary (Karakhanyan & Stensaker, 2020). This approach has become so deeply rooted that it has acquired the status of myth – a belief so widely held that it is beyond objective testing (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).
From an organizational theory perspective, it is uncertain whether reforms actually succeed and by what measure. Reforms can have unforeseeable side effects, including undesirable effects, as was observed especially during the Bologna study reform (Kühl, 2014; Röbken & Schütz, 2017). The most important function is the initiation of the reform itself. According to Jung (2008, p. 227), a reform helps ensure the survival of an organization by deriving new differences and generating additional decision options. A further goal is the external communication and legitimation function of the reform. This helps raise the issue of quality assurance on university agendas, ideally leading to a broader acceptance of quality management both within and outside the universities.
In our view, this is the particular challenge that universities face: to understand the decoupling of interventions and effects of quality development and in turn to relativize expectations of the unambiguousness and effectiveness of reforms. This does not mean that higher education institutions should ignore quality reforms or even reject them wholesale, but also that they should not accept them naively and uncritically. It also poses a particular challenge with regard to the ambivalent role of experts as those affected, involved in, and critical of academic quality development. To what extent this understanding – the emphasis on the personal factor as opposed to that of organizational programs – has so far been given sufficient attention in the conception and implementation of current reform ideas is another question.
To sum up, the introduction and development of Germany quality assurance system was a response to the expansion of higher education and issues caused by globalization and diversification. External political and societal expectations have led to an increased internalization of managing quality in higher education. This internalization creates its own pressure to optimize, especially in the competition between universities, which also leads to critical questions about what is the right measure and to what extent higher education should be guided by standardized quality criteria. The German case study serves as a mirror to other countries in recognizing and managing the changes and tensions of quality management in higher education. The concept of re-reforming may also open up new research questions in terms of theoretical and empirical studies, since findings of the paper can be used to investigate other national higher education systems and other reform initiatives.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
