Tilman Reitz

Die Rationalität der Hochschulreform. Grundzüge eines postautonomen Wissensregimes

Based on the diagnosis that the German version of the current higher education reform in Europe is about to fail its own goals (more mobility, less bureaucracy ...), the article asks what may be latent functions of the reform process. A first account is summing up political objectives which are not suited for public representation and unintended structural effects which may stabilise: orientation by standardisation, a mid-term reduction of higher education costs combined with increased student numbers, a tightened social selection. But since all of these effects are only issues of prognosis at the moment, a second account is asking about reform tendencies which prove destructive of an older, now increasingly dysfunctional model of higher education. Accordingly, the second answer is that the current reform breaks with an academic life form characterised by the virtually anomic reflection of possible world views and subjectivities (as it has been installed in mass scale during the 1970s), turning towards the imperative that education and research permanently have to prove their normality and necessity. Thus the principles of the new knowledge regime are: applicability, control through communication, and marketing.