EDUCATIONAL RIVALRIES 421
the diff erent states, however, they have appeared in several variations and
under diff erent names depending on the state. This two-tiered system was
touted as a trial compromise that aimed to make peace in the trenches of
the hefty confl ict between the proponents and opponents of integrated
and tiered schools systems. By 2012, just two decades after reunifi cation,
only fi ve of the federal states still had independent Hauptschulen.^124
Europeanization: The Bologna Reforms
and the Transformation of the Universities
The transformation of the higher education system in the new federal
states was not seen as a chance to take on a large-scale reform of the uni-
versities in all of Germany. Yet the voices in favor of a more comprehen-
sive reform of the universities grew louder and louder in the 1990s.^125 The
most important impetus behind these calls for more extensive changes
ultimately came from the European level. In 1998, the education minis-
ters of France, England, Germany, and Italy announced the joint goal of
creating a European higher education area; a year later in Bologna, the
education ministers from twenty-nine European states committed to de-
veloping comparable degree programs in Europe by 2010. This marked
the beginning of what has come to be known as the “Bologna process”
or the “Bologna reforms.” Germany introduced a system of study that fol-
lowed the Anglo-Saxon model, which consisted of a two-stepped degree
sequence, fi rst the three- or four-year bachelor’s degree and then the
master’s degree. As part of the transition process, the German universi-
ties had to go through a new accreditation process for their courses of
study, and the degree programs had to be fundamentally reorganized ac-
cording to modules, credit points, interim exams, etc. Higher education
policy, at about the same time as school policy, began to become much
more international in its outlook as a result of the debates over globaliza-
tion and competitiveness.^126
The Bologna process accomplished a series of reforms over a short
period of time that otherwise would never have made it past the strong
wall of resistance within the universities. The main goal of the higher ed-
ucation policy makers was to cut down on the time it took for students to
receive their degrees. For a long time, complaints had circled around the
lengthy amount of time that German university graduates needed to com-
plete their degrees, which also meant that they entered the job market at
an older age than many of their counterparts in other parts of the world.
Proponents of the Bologna process argued that the German universities
fi nally had to come to terms with the fact that they had become institu-