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This paper analyses the conditions and factors influencing non-university researchers' career transitions back into academia. Using affiliation data in publications of German researchers, their cross-sector career transitions from the public research organisation Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and industry to universities are analysed. Although the rate of transitions is small, there are distinctive windows of opportunity at a junior career stage, especially for Fraunhofer researchers. Researchers who publish more and in more acclaimed journals, Fraunhofer researchers who co-publish with universities, and women are more likely to gain a university affiliation over the course of their career. These results indicate the influence of institutional proximity for cross-domain career transitions. The quality and impact of academic knowledge could be improved if the higher education sector was more open to recruitment of researchers from other sectors. Policy needs to target the barriers that preclude applied researchers from pursuing university careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all high school students who wish to study think that they will be able to realize this wish. This article examines whether admission barriers to higher education (HE) are a potential reason for this mismatch between educational aspirations and expectations and whether they are more constraining for students from socially less advantaged backgrounds. It does so for the German context in which the role of admission barriers for social inequality in HE has long been neglected. Empirically, the paper uses a unique combination of individual data on high school students' educational aspirations and expectations and institutional data on admission barriers that vary by field of study. Findings indicate that the socially most privileged students stick to their college aspiration regardless of admission barriers to their aspired field of study. However, they seem to be willing to compromise their preferred field of study if this comes along with high admission barriers. Contrastingly, socially less privileged students seem willing to compromise both their general college aspiration and their aspired field of study if admission appears difficult. The concluding section discusses the implications of these findings for social inequality in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the accumulation of financial resources in higher education. Its focus lies on the Quality Pact for Teaching (QPT) , a large-scale funding programme that aimed to improve the quality of tertiary education in Germany. Starting in 2011, the QPT allocated almost 2 billion euros over a 10-year period. Yet, unlike prior national funding schemes, the QPT was strongly inspired by New Public Management measures and marked the first time that a substantial amount of teaching grants was awarded in a competitive manner. My estimations show that institutions with a successful history of acquiring third-party funds coped best under these novel circumstances, thus revealing a clear pattern of cumulative advantage. Although typically dedicated to research purposes, the level of previous third-party funding emerges as a strong predictor of QPT success. Therefore, it appears that the QPT unintentionally contributed to steeper financial gaps in Germany's academic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights events of the German History Society in 1998. Presentation of papers on the Thirty Years War in the Annual General Meeting of the society; Announcement of the death of Professor Bob Scribner, founding member of the German History Society; Recommendation of Higher Education Funding Council for England of persons to serve as researchers.

We provide—to the best of our knowledge—the first empirical study on the political economy of public spending on vocational education. Vocational schools raise human capital among non-academics and give the latter a stronger bargaining position in wage negotiation—thereby supporting the clientele of leftwing parties. At the same time, they provide publicly funded inputs that raise firm productivity—an aim particularly important for conservative parties. We analyze expenditures on vocational schools of 301 West-German counties between 2002 and 2013 using two-way fixed effects and mixed models. We find the counties' expenditures on vocational schools to decrease in the political power of Social Democrats and increase in the political power of Christian conservatives in the county council. Expenditures are higher in election years. We find no support for the conjecture building on Jensen (2011 , Compar. Polit. Stud. 44, 412–435) according to which expenditures on vocational education are higher in regions suffering from deindustrialization. (JEL codes: H75, D72). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the consequences of starting in overeducation often focuses on either secondary or tertiary graduates. We focus on both within one country, Germany. While matching and search models imply the improvement of initial overeducation, human capital theory and stigma associated with overeducation predict entrapment. The strongly skill- and occupation-based labour market for the vocationally trained in Germany mitigates the bridge function of overeducation. As the less standardized tertiary system creates more uncertainties, initial overeducation should be more prevalent and should serve as a bridge to better positions. However, depreciation of human capital and the stigma associated with overeducation oppose the bridge function of overeducation here, too. Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we compare labour market positions of career starters in overeducation with those not in overeducation in subsequent years using propensity score matching. In the fifth year after labour market entrance, the differences in overeducation between initially overeducated and non-overeducated individuals amounts to 38 percentage points for graduates and 28 for vocationally trained persons. In addition, vocationally trained persons starting in overeducation face higher unemployment risks later on. Our findings challenge the assumption of a bridge function in both educational groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores higher education reforms in the federally organized education systems of Germany and Switzerland. We argue that the increasing internationalization of education—spearheaded by the Bologna Process—has brought about changes not only in higher education policy, but also led to significant reconfigurations of the higher education polity. These processes present an empirical puzzle: while higher education policies in both systems have broadly moved in the same direction, they have significantly diverged regarding the higher education polity. While Germany has decentralized its higher education system, Switzerland has embraced more centralized structures. Drawing on historical institutionalism, we explain why Germany and Switzerland reacted to essentially identical external challenges with diametrically opposite polity reforms. We contend that this “polity divergence”—despite “policy convergence”—was channeled by the preexisting institutional configurations of educational federalism which steered partisan conflicts along specific paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of the Bologna Process, European higher education systems have experienced major reforms. In Germany as in several other countries, the main novelty was a reduction of the length of study to get a first-level degree (Bachelor), together with the introduction of a second-level degree (Master's). One of the priorities of the Bologna Process is the so-called 'social dimension', meaning that participation in higher education should be widened by fostering the potential of students from under-represented groups, such as those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. To evaluate this reform goal, this article tests whether the shortening of the length of study to get a first degree countervails the under-representation. I use variation introduced by the non-uniform adaption of the new degree structure to identify the effect. Using repeated cross-sectional student survey data to generate panel data at the level of study courses, fixed-effects estimators indicate that the shortening has no (positive) effect on the share of students from low social origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution focuses on a scheme developed to characterize the level of difficulty of an examination in the course ‘Linear Algebra for Engineers’ and on the transfer of the underlying idea to a similar scheme for examinations in the course ‘Analysis I for Engineers’. Using these schemes, it is possible to define standards for examinations without standardizing the examination questions. The proposed schemes depend on experience gained by working with students and on an analysis of student performance in previous examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For scholars of social stratification one of the key questions regarding educational expansion is whether it diminishes or magnifies existing inequalities in educational attainment. The effect of expansion on educational inequality in tertiary education is of particular importance, as tertiary education has become increasingly relevant for labour market prospects and life course opportunities. Our article studies the access to tertiary education of students with different social origins in light of educational expansion in Germany. First, we examine inequalities in access to four vertical alternatives of postsecondary education by means of multinomial regression with national data from four school-leaver surveys from 1983, 1990, 1994, and 1999. Second, for those students who enrol at a tertiary institution, effects of social origin on horizontal choices of fields of study are analysed. Results show that unequal opportunities to access postsecondary and tertiary institutions remain constant at a high level. Likewise, social background effects have not changed over time for the choice of field of study. Thus, students from different social backgrounds did not change their educational strategies irrespective of the ongoing expansion of secondary and tertiary education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many surveys, such as PISA, the German educational system shows a strong social inequality, particularly in the transition to higher education (`Gymnasium') and to university. Above all, rational choice models and approaches from conflict theory are used as tools for the explanation of these findings. In this contribution, the capital theory of Pierre Bourdieu is tested on the basis of a follow-up survey, which refers to the ages between sixteen and thirty-five. As a result it can be shown that there is a substantial reproduction effect by the transmission of cultural capital in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]