Abstract
The German higher education system has a remarkably rich history. When Wilhelm von Humboldt established the Berlin University in 1810 he founded the first research university. Historically, the notion of a university where research and teaching took place under one roof and were embodied in one role, the professor, was new and had ramifications for very different national systems worldwide—from Scandinavia through to Latin America and Japan. Today’s highly respected American research universities, which in many ways serve as a role model, are in fact based on the fundamental principles of the German university of the nineteenth century. Consequently, histories of the German higher education system fill whole libraries, and in international comparative research on national higher education systems the worldwide significance and appeal of German universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth century are just as indisputable as top American universities today (Ben-David 1991; Clark 1983; Rothblatt and Wittrock 2006).
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Notes
- 1.
The book is based on a German book from 2016 that provides an introduction to research on higher education (Hüther and Krücken 2016). The English edition has been brought up to date, reworked and expanded in some parts but reduced in others. The goals of our editing were to more fully explain certain contextual conditions to an international audience and to shift emphasis from introductory explanations to highlighting newer developments in the German higher education system. Consequently, there are considerable differences between the German and English editions, resulting in two very different books. It should be noted that German quotations have been translated.
- 2.
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Hüther, O., Krücken, G. (2018). Introduction. In: Higher Education in Germany—Recent Developments in an International Perspective. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 49. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61479-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61479-3_1
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