Student protests for better education. Are reforms of the Bologna process needed?

The Bologna process, initiated in 1999, was meant to be a decisive step in creating a European university system. Has the reform failed? Annette Schavan, Federal Minister for Education and Research, stresses that the Bologna process has successfully brought about many important changes at German universities and allowed a convergence of the European university systems. However, mistakes have also been made, for example, where the curriculum of the Diplom or Magister courses has been simply transposed to the Bachelor curriculum. Another problem with the reform is the unnecessary density of regulations. But not least because of the student protests some movement has come to the university landscape. For Dieter Timmermann, Rector of the University of Bielefeld, a reform of the Bologna process is urgently necessary. He proposes the implementation of the North American model, namely a gradated system of study with the goals of an "academically based personality formation in the Bachelor course", a profession-oriented academic masters training in the "professional schools" and the training of doctoral students at the highest academic level in the "graduate schools". Wolfgang Heubisch, Bavarian State Minister for Science, Research and Art, sees no need for reform, neither of the goals not of the instruments. What is lacking is a systematic implementation of the Bologna process at the European and national levels. Also Horst Hippler, President of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, sees deficiencies in the implementation of the reform.