Mussten die Gesamthochschulen »scheitern«?

This article attempts to refute Volker Eppings' monocausal claim, namely that problems of the concept of a »comprehensive university« ('Gesamthochschule'), a concept that was created in 1972 in North Rhine Westphalia, resulted chiefly from the cooperation in these universities' »integrated« study programmes of academic staff with different qualification levels. The present author justifies his view, in essence, as follows: Giving the »comprehensive universities« in North-Rhine Westphalia the status of »proper« universities ('reine Universitäten') in 2002, a step to be welcomed under the conditions at that time, was mainly a consequence of the following circumstances: – the concept of a so-called »major reform of university education« ('große Studienreform'), which led to the founding of comprehensive universities at the beginning of the 1970s, was replaced by a so-called »minor reform of university education« ('kleine Studienreform') in 1985 as a result of a policy change in Germany with regard to higher education, – the comprehensive universities had not been made competitive enough and for decades they were at a disadvantage compared with »proper« universities in terms of staff and other facilities, and – from around 2000 on, during the implementation of the Bologna agreement, the »proper« universities had to introduce the intra-institutional differentiation of a two-stage degree system (Bachelor/Master) and thus – mutatis mutandis – had to adopt one of the special features of the comprehensive universities.