Hochschulsteuerung im deutschen Bildungsföderalismus

Abstract

For quite some time reforms within the framework of new public management have been especially conducted in German Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). These reforms are intended to strengthen HEIs' self-governance. The article presents a comparison of higher education governance of the sixteen German federal states. The currently used governance instruments are systemised and assigned to one of two governance-models: the bureaucratic-oligarchic model and the management-model. A classification of the compared HE systems shows that instruments of the managementmodel-type are dominating. Nevertheless, there are clear-cut differences between the sixteen HE systems. Therefore it is not surprising that a dependence of the success of a federal states' HEIs on the legal codification of the management-model cannot be proved. This is illustrated by the so-called Initiative for Excellence. © (2010) Swiss Political Science Review.