Access to Higher Education in Germany: The Career of an Issue

After the Second World War, the widening of access to higher education became a central issue of higher education policy in all developed countries. Over recent decades, most of them have experienced an unprecedented expansion of higher education access, which is a matter of creating equal educational opportunities and also of assuring economic growth. This article analyzes the development of access to higher education in Germany in the transnational context of the issue and, at the same time, considers the specific German situation and its development. After more than thirty years of expansion, widening access even further is no longer the problem. Questions of quality, efficiency, and funding have come to the fore of German higher education policy.