Source: Alamy

Too great a burden: redesigned courses led to protests over exam overload

Germany is having its biggest rethink of university teaching in more than 200 years, after the ¡°less than optimal¡± introduction of Bologna reforms, a leading university head has claimed.

Holger Burckhart, rector of the University of Siegen, in west-central Germany, and vice-president of the German Rectors¡¯ Conference (HRK), said that his country¡¯s adoption of three-year undergraduate degrees under the 1999 Bologna declaration, which sought to harmonise higher education practices across Europe, had caused significant problems that now had to be tackled.

Speaking at the European University Association¡¯s annual conference, which took place on 3-4 April in Brussels, Professor Burckhart said that the German switch to shorter degree programmes in 2006 had been rushed, often resulting in badly designed courses. ¡°Professors simply put everything that was in a four- or five-year degree into the new BA degree,¡± he said.

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Lecturers had also insisted on assessment after every module, sometimes in the first semester of university, which led to student protests in 2009 over exam overload, he added. Universities had now reduced workloads to make them ¡°more realistic¡±, which had led to a happier student body.

But other problems persisted, said Professor Burckhart, who led an HRK review into Germany¡¯s introduction of the Bologna Process, published in November last year, which was ¡°quite self-critical¡±.

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Many of the 8,000 undergraduate degree programmes offered at German universities were too specialised and did not offer many opportunities for further study.

¡°These programmes are so highly specialised that they are only compatible with one MA programme at the same institution,¡± he said.

The review also found Germany was ¡°performing badly¡± in its acceptance of the European Credit Transfer Scheme, which is used on less than 75 per cent of teaching programmes.

Such concerns had ¡°triggered the most thorough rethink of teaching and learning in German higher education¡­perhaps since Humboldt rethought higher education 200 years ago¡±, Professor Burckhart said, in a reference to Wilhelm von Humboldt, the 19th-century education reformer who instigated the concept that university scholars must research and teach.

The forthcoming review of courses would now implement some of the reforms that should have been put in place seven years ago, he said.

¡°Eighty per cent of universities started the changes in 2005, saying they would be ready in 2006,¡± Professor Burckhart said. ¡°But they were restructuring all their programmes, so there were a lot of mistakes and that started the bad feelings of students.¡±

He said that universities could have met the challenges of reform if they had received the funding that they needed. However, resources had been stretched as student numbers had grown by 50 per cent since Bologna was agreed, rising from 1.8 million in 2000 to 2.7 million in 2013, he added. The abolition of annual tuition fees of about €1,000 (?8) in recent years, following the decisions of devolved regional assemblies, had also impacted on resources available for curriculum reform, he added.

¡°For the first time this year more students are opting for higher education than vocational education,¡± Professor Burckhart said.

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¡°This vocational sector forms the backbone of the German economy and many are asking do we need so many graduates ¨C this debate has only started very recently.¡±

jack.grove@tsleducation.com