Institutionelle Durchlässigkeit im Bildungs- und Wissenschaftssystem in Deutschland und Frankreich

This article analyses to what extent and in what way changing regulations in Germany and France from 2000 to 2013 have facilitated institutional permeability between vocational and higher education. The authors discuss the relevance of this topic for related questions of social mobility between and within vocational training, higher education, and science systems. Because higher education is prerequisite to accessing scientific careers, the level of permeability between vocational and higher education institutions also has implications for the social selectivity of science. The authors develop a multidimensional conception of permeability that comprises questions of access, recognition, organisational linkages, and learner diversity to explain how and to what extent, in these countries with contrasting education and science systems, permeability has been facilitated. Given the existing higher education structures, such regulative changes have more potential to affect developments – for example, to reduce social selectivity – in Germany than they do in France.